dead as astrology, scarce as alchymists

 

An Alchemist. 1661, Adriaen van Ostade via The National Gallery

 

SCENES BEYOND THE WESTERN BORDER (JUNE 1852)

"Only too true! Other works of genius are scarcely recognized: poetry is as dead as astrology: life is exhausted, and the mind overpowered by the accumulation of facts." --June 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and revised in Scenes and Adventures in the Army ("by the accumulation of facts" changed to "in the attempt to master a vast accumulation of facts.")

PIERRE (1852)

And though this state of things, united with the ever multiplying freshets of new books, seems inevitably to point to a coming time, when the mass of humanity reduced to one level of dotage, authors shall be scarce as alchymists are to-day, and the printing-press be reckoned a small invention.... --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities