Page 44 - Scottish Alchemists

Alexander Seton, or the Cosmopolite.

Of the early life of Alexander Seton very little is known. According to
Dempster,13 who seems to have been acquainted with him, he was a native
of Edinburgh, and he states that Seton was also known under the name of
Cobrethus. It was, however, under the name of ‘the Cosmopolite’ that he
travelled over Europe, and the origin of this designation is still a subject of
controversy with the historians of the hermetic science. From the almost
universal custom of Latinising proper names at the period when he
flourished, his name occurs in a great variety of forms, such as Sethon,
Seidon, Sithonius Scotus, Setonius, Sidonius, Suthoneus, Suethonius, and
Sechtonius. The designation Scotus, however, with which nearly all
references to him are accompanied, sufficiently indicates that it is attachable
to the same person; and his recent biographer, M. Figuier,14 infers that he
belonged to the noble family of Seton, whose chief residence was Seton
House, in the county of Haddington.

The account of the first successes of Alexander Seton in the hermetic art
is to be found in Morhof’s Epistola de metallorum transmutatione, ad
Joelem Lengelottum, in which the following incident is related:-

During the summer of the year 1601, a Dutch pilot, called James
Haussen, being with his crew caught in a storm in the North Sea, was thrown
upon the coast of Scotland. The shipwrecked mariners received shelter in the
house of a gentleman, who, possessing a mansion and grounds on that coast,
attended with much kindness to the sailors while with him, and procured
them the means of returning to Holland. This instance of the humanity of the
Scotsman was gratefully felt by the pilot, while the pleasure which both his
host and he felt in each others society, during the few days they passed
together, made them promise on parting to meet again at some future time.

In the beginning of the year 1602, continues Professor Morhof, Seton
began his peregrinations by a voyage to Holland. He went to visit his guest
and friend Haussen, who then lived in the small town of Enkhuysen. The

13 Hist. Eccl. Gent. Scot. ii. p. 603.
14 L'alchimie et les Alchimistes, p.254.

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