Milton dictates in a sidelit room beside a pale crystal.

The sun as alchemist

John Milton (1608–1674) was an English poet. In Book III of Paradise Lost Satan lands on the sun. To give a sense of its brightness, the narrator reaches for the lustre of earthly gems.

An experiment with familiar colours

Among the examples are ruby and topaz. Then the comparison changes direction: sunlight may itself explain why such colours can come into being on the dark earth.

What wonder then if fields and regions here
Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run
Portable gold, when with one virtuous touch
The arch-chemic sun, so far from us remote,
Produces, with terrestrial humour mixed,
Here in the dark so many precious things
Of colour glorious and effect so rare?[1]

A workshop in the dark

Milton casts the sun as master of an art the alchemists have long pursued in vain. The darkest place under the ground is precisely where it makes its finest colours. The contrast briefly bridges the distance between the surface of the sun and a stone in the earth. The Lovell printing reads “Portable gold”; Bodmer’s German edition has “trinckbarem Golde”, drinkable gold.