single page of the history will stand the test of criticism.. What amount of truth may be mixed up with the mass of falsehood it is impossible now to determine. But the book must ever possess an abiding literary interest, because, like the pretended history of Charlemagne by Archbishop Turpin, it furnished a rich mine of materials to the cycle of romance writers, of whom we shall have to speak presently. It is to Geoffrey's ardent Welsh nationality, and disregard of historic precision, that we owe the undying story of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

3. Geoffrey Vinesauf, who, as we have said, accompanied King Richard to the Crusade, died early in the thirteenth century. We shall have to notice him again as a versemaker.

4. Roger of Wendover, a monk of St. Albans, Prior of Belvoir at the time of his death, in 1237, left behind him a chronicle entitled Flores Historiarum, which is considered to be divided into three parts. The first, extending from the Creation to the year A.D. 447, is entirely copied from older authors, and is of no value. The second part, which reaches to about the year 1200, is in the main copied from other chronicles, but is valuable inasmuch as it preserves to us many extracts from lost works. The third part, recording the history of Roger's own times, is exceedingly valuable as an original authority.

5. Matthew Paris, also a monk of St. Albans, wrote, under the title of Historia Major, a history of England, commencing with the Norman Conquest, and coming down to 1259, the year in which he died. It is a work which has always been considered as of great authority, though Dr. Lingard has shown that the extreme Anglicanism of the writer has led him into many misstatements.

6,7. Nicholas Trivet, a Dominican, and Ranulph Higden, a monk of St. Werburgh's, in Chester, composed, the one a valuable and well-written series of Annals, extending from 1135 to 1307, the other, a work, entitled Polychro

nicon, which comes down to 1357, the English translation of which, by Trevisa, was a popular book in the fifteenth century.

Law and Medicine.

Early in our period the study of laws and jurisprudence was revived, and carried on with the eagerness and exclusiveness which are incidental to revivals. Up to the twelfth century the Roman law had been known either by tradition or imperfect copies. But the Pisans, when they took Amalfi, in 1137, are said to have discovered an entire copy of the Pandects of Justinian,-the work in which (together with its sister publications, the Codex and Institute), the laws of the Roman empire were by the orders of that emperor (about the year 534) collected, classified, and explained. Copies of the treasure were soon multiplied, and it was studied, among others, by Gratian, a monk of Bologna, who conceived the idea of collecting and arranging in a similar way what may be called the statutory and traditional law of the Christian Church. He published, in 1151, under the name of Decretum, a collection of the canons of councils, the decrees of popes, and the maxims of the more ancient Fathers, all which branches are included under the general term of Canon Law. The fame of Gratian and his work drew students to Bologna from all parts of Europe, and noted schools of canonists and civilians (for the Roman or civil was studied there pari passu with the canon law) grew up at that city. English ecclesiastics resorted there in great numbers, and imported the legal knowledge thus gained into the ecclesiastical courts of their own country. These courts, both on account of the greater simplicity and clearness of the law administered in them, and as less open to be tam

* See however Hallam's Literature of Europe, vol. i.

p. 62.

pered with by royal or aristocratic influences, were much resorted to by the laity in preference to the temporal or common law courts. They were consequently the object of keen ill-will among the lawyers, and of jealousy or opposition on the part of the crown. But they seem to have had this good effect, if no other;-that their rivalry stimulated the lawyers to polish, digest, and present in a rational and consistent form, the ancient common law of the land, which otherwise could not have stood its ground against its twin foreign rivals. Hence arose, near the end of the twelfth century, the work of chief justiciary Ranulf de Glanville, On the Laws and Customs of England, the earliest extant treatise upon English law.

The chief seat of medical science during this period was the University of Salerno in Italy. This university was in existence before the time of Charlemagne, who founded a college in it. It was known as "the city or commonwealth of Hippocrates" (civitas Hippocratica), and was at the zenith of its reputation in the twelfth century; early in which the Schola Salernitana, a learned poem in leonine, or rhyming Latin verses, on the mode of preserving health, was composed and published. In 1225 the University received from the Emperor, Frederic II., the exclusive right of granting medical degrees in his dominions. Like all other sciences at this period, medicine was greatly indebted to the researches of the Arabians, for profiting by which, Salerno, from its position on the Mediterranean, was singularly well fitted.

Science.

Here, too, but for the name of one great Englishman, there would be nothing to detain us long. We have seen how astronomy, and the subsidiary sciences of arithmetic and geometry, were included in the old Quadrivium, the course of study which had struggled down from the

Roman empire. The reason of this lay in the absolute necessity of the thing; for without some degree of astronomical knowledge the calendar could not be computed, and the very church feasts could not be fixed to their proper dates. Moreover, the ignis fatuus of astrologythe delusive belief that human events were influenced by the aspects and conjunctions of the heavenly bodies,-led on the student, duped for the benefit of his race, to a more careful study of the phenomena of the heavens than he would otherwise have bestowed. But, besides these longestablished studies, scientific teaching in other branches had been ardently commenced in France by Gerbert, as we have seen, early in the eleventh century. But in spite of the intrinsic attractiveness of such studies, they languished and dwindled away. One cause of this is to be found in the suspicion and dislike with which they were popularly regarded. Gerbert was believed to have been a magician, and to have sold his soul to the evil one. Roger Bacon was popularly regarded in England as a sorcerer down to the reign of James I. To trace this feeling to its sources would be a very curious inquiry, but it is one foreign to our present purpose. The second principal cause of this scientific sterility lay in the superior attractiveness of scholasticism. It was pleasanter to be disputatious than to be thoughtful; easier to gain a victory in dialectics than to solve a problem in mechanics. Moreover, men could not distinguish between the applicability of the scholastic method to a subject, such as theology, in which the postulates or first principles were fixed, and its applicability to subjects of which the postulates either had to be discovered, or were liable to progressive change. They tried nature, not by an appeal to facts, but by certain metaphysical canons which they supposed to be impregnable. Thus Roger Bacon says that it was the general belief in his time that hot water exposed to a low temperature in a

vessel would freeze sooner than the same quantity of cold water, because, say the metaphysicians, "contrarium excitatur per contrarium"-contraries reciprocally produce each other. "But I have tried it," he says, with amusing earnestness, "and it is not the fact, but the very reverse. It thus happened that Roger Bacon, one of the most profound and penetrating thinkers that ever existed, had no disciples, and left no school behind him. This great anticipator of modern science only serves for a gauge whereby to test the depth and strength of the mediæval intellect; the circumstances of the time did not permit the seed which he cast abroad to fructify.

But few particulars are known of his life. He was born at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, in 1214; received his education at the universities of Oxford and Paris; and, after taking the Franciscan habit, commenced a long life of unbroken study at Oxford. Among his numerous works the most important is the Opus Majus, which he dedicated and presented in 1267 to Clement IV. This highminded and enlightened Pope he had known when, formerly, as Guido, Bishop of Sabina, he had visited England in the capacity of legate. Clamours and accusations were already beginning to be raised against him, for dabbling in unlawful arts; but the Pope promised him his protection, and kept his word. But after the death of Clement the efforts to silence him were renewed, and at a chapter of Franciscans held at Paris, his writings were condemned, and he himself was placed in confinement. For ten years, dating from 1278, he remained a prisoner, and was liberated at last owing to the intercession of some English noblemen with the Pope. He died, according to Anthony Wood, in 1292.

The Opus Majus is an investigation of what he calls “the roots of wisdom." The introductory portion discusses at great length, and with masterly handling, the relations between philosophy and religion. Then he treats of gram