ith English, in spite of his Oxford career, because he was a
Welsh speaking man, and when he took to writing books, he apologises for
his awkward diction. He accentuates also his youth, which would be
warrantable at the age of twenty-eight, but would be absurd in a writer
approaching forty years. This point may be verified by any one who will
refer to my edition of Vaughan's _Anthroposophia Theomagica_. The works
of Thomas Vaughan, besides _Anthroposophia Theomagica_, are _Anima
Magica Abscondita_, published in 1650; _Magia Adamica_ 1650, apparently
forgotten by the "authentic documents" of Miss Vaughan, as are also "The
Man-Mouse" and "The Second Wash, or the Moore scoured once
More"--satires on Henry More, written in reply to that Platonist, who
had attacked the previous books. These belong to the year 1651, as also
does _Lumen de Lumine_; "The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity
R.C." appeared in 1652, not 1659, as the "family history" affirms; _Aula
Lucis_, 1652 (not 1651); and "Euphrates," 1655. What is obvious
everywhere in these priceless little books is the devotion of a true
mystic to Jesus Christ, and to gift them with the sordid interpretation
of a French-born cultus of Lucifer is about as possible as to attribute
a Christian intention to the calumnies of Miss Vaughan's documents.

In the year 1665, at the house of the rector of Albury, a chemical
experiment with mercury cost the Welsh alchemist his life, and he was
buried in the churchyard of that village in Oxfordshire.

It is clear, therefore, that the wonderful archives in the possession of
Miss Vaughan give a bogus history of Eugenius Philalethes, but they are
also untrue of Eirenaeus. It is untrue that this mysterious adept, whose
identity has never been disclosed, was born in 1612; he was born some
ten years later.

The source of both dates is "The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of
the King"; but that which Miss Vaughan champions is based upon a
corrupt reading in a bad version, and she has evidently never seen the
original and best of the Latin impressions, that of Langius, though she
has the presumption to cite it. That edition establishes that he wrote
the treatise in the year 1645, he being then in the twenty-third year of
his age--whence it follows that the date of his birth was most probably
1622, and the history with which he is invested by Miss Vaughan is again
a misfit; it is putting man's garments on a boy. Furthermore, there is
not o