But of these enough; for it becomes not a religious man to insist 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.