and procreate all things, as is further spoken of in Canto III. l. 204.
It is now discovered that pure air, or oxygene, uniting with variety of
bases forms the various kinds of acids; as the vitriolic acid from pure
air and sulphur; the nitrous acid from pure air and phlogistic air, or
azote; and carbonic acid, (or fixed air,) from pure air and charcoal.
Some of these affinities were perhaps portrayed by the Magi of Egypt,
who were probably learned in chemistry, in their hieroglyphic pictures
before the invention of letters, by the loves of Jupiter with
terrestrial ladies. And thus physically as well as metaphysically might
be said "Jovis omnia plena."]


VI. "GNOMES! as you pass'd beneath the labouring soil,
The guards and guides of Nature's chemic toil,
YOU saw, deep-sepulchred in dusky realms,
Which Earth's rock-ribbed ponderous vault o'erwhelms,
275 With self-born fires the mass fermenting glow,
And flame-wing'd sulphurs quit the earths below.


[_With self-born fires_. l. 275. After the accumulation of plains and
mountains on the calcareous rocks or granite which had been previously
raised by volcanic fires, a second set of volcanic fires were produced
by the fermentation of this new mass, by which after the salts or acids
and iron had been washed away in part by elutriation, dissipated the
sulphurous parts which were insoluble in water; whence argillaceous and
siliceous earths were left in some places; in others, bitumen became
sublimed to the upper part of the stratum, producing coals of various
degrees of purity.]