[In the excerpt below, the anonymous writer considers Agrippa an example of a scientist more interested in wealth and self-promotion than in new discoveries.]

In these days of wonder-working and new lights, it may not be amiss to turn our observation to the lights and wonders which awed and astonished our ancestors. The search after the elixir vitae and the philosopher's stone was a dignified and difficult life employment, to say the least of it; and the great alchymists should not be despised or forgotten by electro-biologists, magnetisers, and table-movers. The great physical philosophers of our own time have not been backward in acknowledging the obligations of science to those men of a by-gone age….

[Our] present task is to show how some among them—men of fame and scientific repute—allowed other desires and other aims to corrupt their search after truth….

In the case of Cornelius Agrippa, the desire of fame and a lofty place in the world mingled with his studies, and we are forced to rank him with the great charlatans, rather than with the great philosophers….

Cornelius Agrippa was a native of Cologne. He was born in 1486, and died in 1524. Long before other men of scientific fame had ceased to study at the feet of a master, Agrippa set up claims to be an accomplished alchymist, and had his claims allowed. When he was only twenty years old, his fame had spread to Paris. The doctors and alchymists of that city sent to Cologne, inviting the young adept to come and settle among them, and to give them the benefit of his wisdom and experience in their search after the philosopher's stone. In no case of the kind do we meet with higher pretensions to extraordinary powers than in that of Cornelius Agrippa. The transmutation of metals, which others are said to have achieved after a long and laborious process, he was believed to have the power of effecting by a word. He could call upon all manner of spirits, and 'they would come when he did call on them,' as they would not at the call of Glendower, or a dozen Glendowers. His power to evoke the spirits of men long passed away from this earth, was not doubted in his own day, nor long after. Most of our readers are acquainted with the tradition alluded to by Sir Walter Scott in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, which tells how the learned Erasmus, and other men of cultivation, including our English Lord Surrey, prevailed on Agrippa to call up in bodily presence before them several of the famous philosophers of Greece and Rome. On this occasion, too, he is said to have made the ghosts speak to some effect; and Cicero was induced to deliver for their benefit his famous oration for Roscius. Every lover of poetry and romance knows also the tradition which says, that Lord Surrey, then in Germany, saw, in a magic mirror presented to his eyes by Agrippa, the form of his beloved and far-distant Geraldine, as she was actually employed at the moment—namely, lying on a couch reading Lord Surrey's poems, and weeping for his return—a circumstance not likely to be forgotten, or treated lightly by the author or the lover. At the request of the Emperor Charles V., Cornelius Agrippa is said to have evoked the forms of the great Hebrew monarchs, David and Solomon. Credat Judieus. There is a marvellous story told of his raising to life for several hours a pupil of his, who, during his absence, had presumed to enter his sanctum, and was struck dead by the guardian spirits of the place. This resucitation was not prompted by pity for the poor prying youth, but by his own fear of exciting the suspicions of his fellow-townsmen. These, however, he did not escape; and fearing the result of the judicial inquiries instituted, he left the city (Louvain) with undignified celerity. Throughout his life, he was a denizen of courts, and held offices under some of the most distinguished potentates of the time. Early in life, he was made secretary to the Emperor Maximilian, who gave him the command of a regiment, though he knew as much of military matters as of the true method of scientific investigation. He was afterwards appointed physician to Louisa of Savoy, mother of Francis I. He foretold a splendid fortune to the celebrated Constable of Bourbon. He was invited by Henry VIII. to take up his abode in his court, but Agrippa probably feared the caprices of the cholerie monarch, and would not put his neck in jeopardy. He was afterwards an honoured resident at the court of the Archduchess Margaret, the governess of the Netherlands; and she obtained for him the post of historiographer to the Emperor Charles V. It was while he was in her service that he resided at Louvain. For her he wrote a treatise on The Vanity and Nothingness of Human Knowledge, and another on the Superiority of the Female Sex, neither of which bears the impress of genius or talent; nor is it easy for those who have considered his character and conduct impartially, to believe that he wrote what he thought true in either.

After the death of his kind friend and patroness, the popular feeling against him prevailed, and he was imprisoned on a charge of sorcery at Brussels. He was set at liberty after a year, and left the Low Countries. He lived in obscurity, and, some say, in absolute poverty, until the year 1534, when he died.

In the life of Cornelius Agrippa, it is a significant fact that there is much more talk of court favour, place seeking and holding, of marvels wrought to astonish the great and win their favour, than of long years of patient study, and that earnest desire for leisure and retirement from the world which are ever characteristic of the genuine student and lover of science….