A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HOAX 597 



belief in the fraudulent character of the work and that Tholde himself 

 was the writer as well as the editor of the alleged Basil Valentine works. 

 With reference to this Tholde, Professor John Ferguson, of the Uni- 

 versity of Glasgow, the first of British students of chemical literature 

 of this period, in his "Bibliotheca Chemica" (1906), gives some per- 

 tinent information and ideas. 



Ferguson calls attention to the fact that Tholde published a work 

 in his own name " Haliographia," on salts, salt works, etc. (1603). It 

 consists of four parts. Ferguson says: 



This fourth part, it is said, appeared in 1618 6 with the name of Basilius 

 Valentinus. It was certainly published at Bologna, 1644, "Ex manuscriptis et 

 originalibus Fratri Basilii Valentini ordinis S. Benedict! collecta, " without any 

 mention of Tholde. This may be all quite straight, but somehow it needs explana- 

 tion. Especially when we remember that the works of Basil Valentine are said 

 to have been not merely edited by Tholde but actually written by him. It is a 

 dilemma; either Tholde had appropriated the work of Basil Valentine without 

 acknowledgment, or else he has put out or allowed to be put out, a work of his 

 own under the name of Basil Valentine. In his discussion of this subject in the 

 "Beitriige z. Gesch. d. Chemie, " Kopp has occasion to consider the connection 

 between Basil Valentine and his reputed editor, and he is inclined to regard 

 Tholde as editor merely, on the ground that as the works contain a good deal of 

 chemistry that was new for the period, he can not see why Tholde should have 

 ascribed that knowledge to one to whom it did not really appertain. He con- 

 siders that there is nothing in Tholde 's life otherwise which would give occasion 

 to believe him untrustworthy. Well, he may have been quite an honest man, but 

 appearances are rather against him and one can sympathize with Dr. Caius: 

 "What shall de honest man do in my closet? Dere is no honest man dat shall 

 come in my closet ! " It makes one suspicious that if Tholde could tacitly absorb 

 into his "Haliographia" without acknowledgment a tract which afterwards 

 appeared under Basil Valentine's name, there is no reason why he should not 

 have used the name of Basil Valentine all along as a stalking horse and under 

 presentation of that shot his alchemy. But on this occasion he had forgotten his 

 pseudonymity. 



Subsequently ("Die Alchemie," 1886, I., pp. 29-33) Kopp changed his 

 views regarding Tholde and Basil Valentine, and said that there is reason to 

 think that the writings of the latter were composed about the end of the six- 

 teenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century instead of a hundred years 

 earlier; that Basil Valentine's name is fictitious; that the publication of these 

 writings was an intentional literary deception; and in that case that the responsi- 

 bility must rest with Tholde. It is very remarkable that in this view, so decidedly, 

 uncompromisingly, different from that enunciated by him eleven years earlier he 

 should have come to exactly the same result as that elaborated one hundred years 

 earlier and expressed with emphasis by the author of ' ' Beytrag, ' ' a work which, 

 so far as I have observed, was unknown to Kopp, as I do not think that he ever 

 refers to it. 



Professor Ferguson in his comments on Kopp's change of views 

 between 1875 and 1886 seems to have overlooked or forgotten that even 



8 Schmieder, ' ' Geschichte der Alchemie, ' ' in his bibliography of Basil Valen- 

 tine gives 1612 and 1644 as dates of these editions. 



