ne item in her statements concerning the "Open Entrance" which is
not directly and provably false. It was not printed, as she indicates,
under the supervision of the author; it was not printed from the
original MS., nor was that MS. returned to Philalethes after it had
passed through the press. It is shameful for any person, male or female,
however little they may consider their own fair fame, to so far violate
the canons of literary honour as to make dogmatic statements concerning
a work which they cannot have seen. The preface prefixed to this
edition by Langius completely refutes Miss Vaughan. Here is a passage in
point:--"Truly who or what kind of person was author of this sweet,
must-like work, I know no more than he who is most ignorant, nor, since
he himself would conceal his name, do I think fit to enquire so far,
lest I get his displeasure." Again--"To pick out the roses from the most
thorny bushes of writings, and to make the elixir of philosophers by his
own industry, without any tutor, and at twenty-three years of age, this
perchance hath been granted to none, or to most few hitherto." Langius,
moreover, laments explicitly the fact that he did not print from an
original MS. He printed from a Latin translation, the work of an unknown
hand, which had come into his possession, as he tells us, from a man who
was learned in such matters. Miss Vaughan's pretended autograph, with
its despicable marginal readings, is obviously a Latin copy, whatever be
its history otherwise. The original was in English, and when Langius was
regretting its loss, "a transcript, probably written from the author's
copy, or very little corrupted," was in possession of the bookseller
William Cooper, of Little Saint Bartholomews, near Little Britain, in
the city of London, who published it in the year 1669, to correct the
imperfections in the edition of Amsterdam. This transcript also
establishes that the "Open Entrance" was penned when the author was in
his twenty-third year.

As a matter of fact, Philalethes does not appear to have superintended
the publication of any of his writings, and here Miss Vaughan again
exhibits her unpardonable ignorance concerning the works with which she
is dealing. To prove that her reputed ancestor was alive after the
accepted date of Thomas Vaughan's death, she triumphantly observes that
in the year 1668 he published his experiments on the preparation of
Sophic Mercury and _Tractatus Tres_. But the latter v