too long upon these cogitations, or to give place to such a flame in
his heart. Hitherto (without boasting I speak it) I have throughout
the whole course of my life kept myself safe and free from it, and I
pray and invoke God to vouchsafe me his Grace that I may keep holy
and inviolate the faith which I have sworn, and live contented with
my spiritual spouse, the Holy, Catholick Church. For no other reason
have I alleaged these than that I might express the love with which
all tinctures ought to be moved towards metals, if ever they be
admitted by them into true friendship, and by love, which permeates
the inmost parts, be converted into a better state

The application of the figure at the end of his long digression is
characteristic of the period in which he wrote and to a considerable
extent also of the German literary methods of the time.

In this volume on the use of antimony there are in most of the
editions certain biographical notes which have sometimes been accepted
as authentic, but oftener rejected. According to these, Basil
Valentine was born in a town in Alsace, on the southern bank of the
Rhine. As a consequence of this, there are several towns that have
laid claim to being his birthplace. M. Jean Reynaud, the distinguished
French {72} philosophical writer of the first half of the nineteenth
century, once said that Basil Valentine, like Ossian and Homer, had
many towns claim him years after his death. He also suggested that,
like those old poets, it was possible that the writings sometimes
attributed to Basil Valentine were really the work not of one man, but
of several individuals. There are, however, many objections to this
theory, the most forceful of which is the internal evidence of the
books themselves and their style and method of treatment. Other
biographic details contained in "The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony"
are undoubtedly more correct. According to them, Basil Valentine
travelled in England and Holland on missions for his Order, and went
through France and Spain on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella.

Besides this work, there is a number of other books of Basil
Valentine's, printed during the first half of the sixteenth century,
that are well-known and copies of which may be found in most of the
important libraries. The United States Surgeon General's Library at
Washington contains several of the works on medical subjects, and the
New York Academy of Medicine Libr