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226 HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.
my
readers an abstract of those considerations which have
induced several erudite investigators to accept Andreas as
the author of the Rosicrucian documents.
I. I have said in the fifth chapter that the whole contro-
versy to some extent centres in the "Chymical Marriage of
Christian Rosen creutz," and since the publication of Seybold's
"Autobiographies of Celebrated Men" in 1796, and
which printed for the first time, albeit in a German version,
the posthumous autobiography of Johann Valentin An-
dreas, 1 there has been no room for doubt as to its author-
ship.
There he includes it among his earliest productions,
states that it was written at the age of fifteen, and that it
was one of a series of similar juvenilia which, for the most
part, had perished. 2 Now the " Chyniical Marriage," hav-
ing remained several years in manuscript, was printed at
Strasbourg in 1616. The C. R. C. of the preceding mani-
festoes was immediately identified with the Christian Rosen-
creutz of the allegorical romance, and albeit the first
1 The original Latin text was not printed till 1849, when it appeared
in octavo at Berlin under the editorship of F. H. Rheinwald.
2 For the information of students of the Rosicrucian mystery I
append the whole passage which refers to the juvenile productions
"
of Andreas. Jam a secundo et tertio post millesimum sexcentesimum
coeperam aliquid exercendi ingenii ergo pangere, cujus facile
prima fuere Esther et Hyacinthus comoediae ad aemulationem
AngUcorum histrionum juvenili ansu factae, e quibus posterior, quae
mihi reliqua est, pro aetate non displicet. Secuta sunt Veneris detestatio
et Lachrymae tribus dialogis satis prolixis, ob infelicem, de
quo postea, casmn meum expressae, quae invita me perierunt.
Superfuerunt e contra Nuptiae Chymicae, cum monstrorum foecundo
foetu, ludibrium, quod mireris a nonullia aestimatum et subtili in-
dagine explicatum, plane futile et quod inanitatem curiosorum prodat.
Invenio etiam in chartis meis titulos Julii Sive Politiae libros
tres, Judicium astroligicum contra astrologiam, Iter, sed quod
dudum interierunt, quid iis consignarim, non memini. "
Vita Lib.,
i. p. 10, Ed. Rheinwald, 1849.