ABSTRACT
There is something which much too often has to be taken perforce on trust, tentatively or otherwise, in the examination of alchemical texts. I have tested there and here the validity of attributions to great names of the past and have found them worthless. But there is also the question of antiquity in respect of various tracts which either lay claim on the far past or have had the benefit of such claim preferred in their favour. On this subject we shall be read an instructive lesson in the case of a supposititious eastern text and have learned something already in that of Nicholas Flamel. The question thus intervenes as to where we stand in reality respecting several others, and we can find nothing reassuring by way of answer. When Michael Maier printed the Claves Duodecim under the name of Basil Valentine it is certain that he used a manuscript which had come into his hands—as he did in the case of Norton’s Ordinal. On the other hand, whence came the Valentine text, its real age and the authenticity of its supposed authorship are mysteries which no one can solve, for Maier tells us nothing himself. What also was the antiquity of that notable document which was first printed in 1567, while it is held that its author, under the name of Bernard Trévisan, was born in 1406? What library possesses a codex in MS. which is prior to the date of publication? With all his seeming sincerity he may have wished, for purposes of concealment, to put himself back in the centuries, while it is even possible that his story is pure invention. It happens fortunately, however, as regards Denys Zachaire—another writer of memoirs—that he is sufficiently late, and that his romantic story was printed sufficiently near to his own affirmed time, for it to be idle to ask whether he was really in evidence during the first half of the sixteenth century. He may be presented like Trévisan, less or more at full length and mainly in his own words.
