The Mirror of Alchemy, written in the 1541 in Latin and translated to English at the closing of the 16th century, stands out both as a misattributed work (not having actually been written by Bacon) and an exceptional, if short, guide to the process of creating elixir. Categorizing the metals according to their digestion through natural processes, it posits the replication of nature in a laboratory setting as the sole way to work with alchemical materials, through cosmic forces as then understood to be true.