CHAPTER III. Scot At Toledo

SCOT AT TOLEDO

In following the course which Michael Scot held in his voyage to Spain, we approach what was beyond all doubt the most important epoch in the life of that scholar. Hitherto we have seen him as the student preparing at Paris or Bologna for a brilliant future, or as the tutor of a youthful monarch, essaying some literary ventures, which justified the position he held in Sicily, and recommended him for future employment. But the moment was now come which put him at last in possession of an opportunity suitable to his training and talents. We are to see how he won in Spain his greatest reputation in connection with the most important literary enterprise of the age, and one which is indeed not the least remarkable of all time.

The part which the Arabs took in the intellectual awakening of Europe is a familiar theme of early mediæval history. That wonderful people, drawn from what was then an unknown land of the East, and acted on by the mighty sense of religion and nationality which Mohammed was able to communicate, fell like a flood upon the weak remains of older civilisations, and made huge inroads upon the Christian Empire of the East. Having reached this point in their career of conquest they became in their turn the conquered, not under force of arms indeed, but as subdued by the still vital intellectual power possessed by those whom they had in a material sense overcome. In their new seat by the streams of the Euphrates they learned from their Syrian subjects, now become their teachers, the treasures of Greek philosophy which had been translated into the Aramaic tongue. Led captive as by a spell, the Caliphs of the Abassid line, especially Al Mansour, Al Rachid, and Al Mamoun, encouraged with civil honours and rewards the labours of these learned men. Happy indeed was the Syrian who brought to life another relic of the mighty dead, or who gave to such works a new immortality by rendering them into the Arabic language.

Meanwhile the progress of the Ommiad arms, compelled to seek new conquests by the defeat they had sustained in the East from the victorious Abbassides, was carrying the Moors west and ever westward along the northern provinces of Africa. Egypt and Tripoli and Tunis successively fell before their victorious march; Algiers and Morocco shared the same fate, and at last, crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, the Moors overran Spain, making a new Arabia of that western peninsula, which in position and physical features bore so great a likeness to the ancient cradle of their race.

It is true indeed that long ere the period of which we write the Moorish power in the West had received a severe check, and had, for at least a century, entered on its period of decay. The battle of Tours, fought in 732, had driven the infidels from France. The Christian kingdoms of Spain itself had rallied their courage and their forces, and, in a scene of chivalry, which inspired many a tale and song, had freed at least the northern provinces of that country from the alien power. But weapons of war, as we have already seen in the case of the Arabs themselves, are not the only means of conquest. The surest title of the Moors to glory lies in the prevailing intellectual influence they were able to exert over that Christendom which, in a political sense, they had failed to subdue and dispossess. The scene we have just witnessed in the East was now repeated in Spain, but was repeated in an exactly opposite sense. The mental impulse received from the remains of Greek literature at Bagdad now became in its turn the motive power which not only sufficed to carry these forgotten treasures westward in the course of Moorish conquest, but succeeded, through that nation, in rousing the Latin races to a sense of their excellence, and a generous ambition to become possessed of all the culture and discipline they were capable of yielding.

The chief centre of this influence, as it was the chief scene of contact between the two races, naturally lay in Spain. During the ages of Moorish dominion the Christians of this country had lived in peace and prosperity under the generous protection of their foreign rulers. To a considerable extent indeed the Moors and Spaniards amalgamated by intermarriage. The language of the conquerors was familiarly employed by their Spanish subjects, and these frequented in numbers the famous schools of science and literature established by the Moors at Cordova, and in other cities of the kingdom. Proof of all this remains in the public acts of the Castiles, which continued to be written in Arabic as late as the fourteenth century, and were signed by Christian prelates in the same characters; in the present language of Spain which retains so many words of eastern origin; but, above all, in the profound influence, now chiefly engaging our attention, which has left its mark upon almost every branch of our modern science, literature, and art.

This result was largely owing to a singular enterprise of the twelfth century with which the learned researches of Jourdain have made us familiar. Scholars from other lands, such as Constantine, Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II., Adelard of Bath, Hermann, and Alfred and Daniel de Morlay, had indeed visited Spain during that age and the one which preceded it, and had, as individuals, made a number of translations from the Arabic, among which were various works in medicine and mathematics, as well as the first version of the Koran. But in the earlier half of the twelfth century, and precisely between the years 1130 and 1150, this desultory work was reduced to a system by the establishment of a regular school of translation in Toledo. The credit of this foundation, which did so much for mediæval science and letters, belongs to Don Raymon, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain. This enlightened and liberal churchman was by origin a French monk, born at Agen, whom Bernard, a previous Primate, had brought southward in his train, as he returned from a journey beyond the Pyrenees. Don Raymon associated with himself his Archdeacon, Dominicus Gundisalvus, and a converted Jew commonly known as Johannes Hispalensis or John of Seville, whom Jourdain has identified with Johannes Avendeath: this latter being in all probability his proper name. These formed the heads of the Toledo school in its earliest period, and the enterprise was continued throughout the latter half of the century by other scholars, of whom Gherardus Cremonensis the elder was probably the chief. Versions of the voluminous works of Avicenna, as well as of several treatises by Algazel and Alpharabius, and of a number of medical writings, were the highly prized contribution of the Toledo school to the growing library of foreign authors now accessible in the Latin language.

It is probable that when Michael Scot left Sicily he did so with the purpose of joining this important enterprise. His movements naturally suggest such an idea, as he proceeded to Toledo, still the centre of these studies, and won, during the years of his residence there, the name by which he is best known in the world of letters, that of the chief exponent of the Arabo-Aristotelic philosophy in the West.

The name and fame of Aristotle, never quite forgotten even in the darkest age, and now known and extolled among Moorish scholars, formed indeed the ground of that immense reputation which Arabian philosophy enjoyed in Europe. The Latin schools had long been familiar with the logical writings of Aristotle, but the modern spirit, soon to show itself as it were precociously in Bacon and Albertus Magnus, was already awake, and under its influence men had begun to demand more than the mere training of the mind in abstract reasoning. Even the application of dialectics to evolve or support systems of doctrine drawn from Holy Scripture could not content this new curiosity. Men were becoming alive to the larger book of nature which lay open around them, and, confounded at first by the complexity of unnumbered facts in sea and sky, in earth and air, they began to long for help from the great master of philosophy which might guide their first trembling footsteps in so strange and untrodden a realm of knowledge. Nor was the hope of such aid denied them. There was still a tradition concerning the lost works of Aristotle on physics. The Moors, it was found, boasted their possession, and even claimed to have enriched these priceless pages by comments which were still more precious than the original text itself.

The mere hope that it might be so was enough to beget a new crusade, when western scholars vied with each other in their efforts to recover these lost treasures and restore to the schools of Europe the impulse and guidance so eagerly desired. Such had, in fact, been the aim of Archbishop Raymon and the successive translators of the Toledan school. The important place they assigned to Avicenna among those whose works they rendered into Latin was due to the fact that this author had come to be regarded in the early part of the twelfth century as the chief exponent of Aristotle, whose spirit he had inherited, and on whose works he had founded his own.

The part of the Aristotelic writings to which Michael Scot first turned his attention would seem to have been the history of animals. This, in the Greek text, consisted of three distinct treatises: first the De Historiis Animalium in ten books; next the De Partibus Animalium in four books; and lastly, the De Generatione Animalium in five books. The Arabian scholars, however, who paid great attention to this part of natural philosophy and made many curious observations in it, were accustomed to group these three treatises under the general title De Animalibus, and to number their books or chapters consecutively from one to nineteen, probably for convenience in referring to them. As Scot’s work consisted of a translation from Arabic texts it naturally followed the form which had been sanctioned by the use and wont of the eastern commentators.

At least two versions of the De Animalibus appeared from the pen of Scot. These have sometimes been confounded with each other, but are really quite distinct, representing the labours of two different Arabian commentators on the text of Aristotle. We may best commence by examining that of which least is known, the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, as it is commonly called, and this the rather that there is good reason to suppose it represents the first Arabian work on Natural History which came into Scot’s hands.

Nothing is known certainly regarding the author of this commentary. Jourdain and Steinschneider conclude with reason that the text must have been an Arabic and not a Hebrew one, as Camus and Wüstenfeld contend. No one, however, has hitherto ventured any suggestion throwing light on the personality of the writer. The colophon to the copy of Scot’s version in the Bibliotheca Angelica of Rome contains the word Alphagiri, which would seem to stand for the proper name Al Faquir. But in all probability, as we shall presently show, this may be merely the name of the Spanish Jew who aided Michael Scot in the work of translation.

The expression ‘secundum extractionem Michaelis Scoti,’ which is used in the same colophon, would seem to indicate that this version, voluminous as it is, was no more than a compend of the original. The title of the manuscript too: ‘Incipit flos primi libri Aristotelis de Animalibus’ agrees curiously with this, and with the word Abbreviatio (Avicennae), used to describe Scot’s second version of the De Animalibus of which we are presently to speak. Are we then to suppose that in each case the translator exercised his faculty of selection, and that the form of these compends was due, not to Avicenna, nor to the unknown author of the text called in Scot’s version the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, but to Scot himself? The expressions just cited would seem to open the way for such a conclusion.

The contents of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem may be inferred from the Prologue which is as follows: ‘In Nomine Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Omnipotentis Misericordis et Pii, translatio tractatus primi libri quem composuit Aristoteles in cognitione naturalium animalium, agrestium et marinorum, et in illo est conjunctionis animalium modus et modus generationis illorum cum coitu, cum partitione membrorum interiorum et apparentium, et cum meditatione comparationum eorum, et actionum eorum, et juvamentorum et nocumentorum eorum, et qualiter venantur, et in quibus locis sunt, et quomodo moventur de loco ad locum propter dispositionem presentis aetatis, aestatis et hiemis, et unde est vita cuiuslibet eorum, scilicet modorum avium, et luporum, et piscium maris et qui ambulant in eo.’ It seems tolerably certain that the substance of this prologue came from the Arabic original, which must have commenced with the ascription of praise to God so commonly employed by Mohammedans: ‘Bi-smilláhi-r-rahhmáni-r-rahheém’ (In the Name of God, the Compassionate; the Merciful). The clumsiness of the Latin, which here, as in the body of the work, seems to labour heavily in the track of a foreign text, adds force to this assumption. The hand of Scot is seen, however, where the name of our Saviour has been substituted for that of Allah, and also in the closing words, which ring with a strong reminiscence of the eighth Psalm. The churchman betrays himself here as in not a few other places which might be quoted from his different writings.

By far the most interesting matter, however, which offers itself for our consideration here, lies in the comparison we are now to make between this book and a former work of Scot, the De Physionomia. This comparison, which has never before been attempted, will throw light on both these texts, but has a special value as it affords the means of dating, at least approximately, the composition of Scot’s version of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem.

We have already remarked that the last two chapters of the first book of the Physionomia suggest that in compiling them the author had before him an Arabic treatise on Natural History. A natural conjecture leads us further to suppose that this may have been the original from which he translated the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, and this idea becomes a certainty when we pursue the comparison a little more closely. Take for example this curious passage from the Physionomia (Book I. chap, ii.): ‘Incipiunt pili paulatim oriri in pectine unitas quorum dicitur femur … item sibi vox mutatur.’ Its obscurity disappears when we confront it with the corresponding words in the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, and thus discover what was no doubt the original source from which Scot derived it: ‘Incipiunt pili oriri in pectore Kameon alkaratoki, et in isto tempore mutatur vox eius.’ There is no need to extend the comparison any further than this significant passage. Doubt may arise regarding the depth and accuracy of Scot’s knowledge of the Arabic tongue, the nature of the text that lay before him, or the reason he may have had for retaining foreign words in the one version which he translated in the other; but surely this may be regarded as now clearly established, that some part of the first book of the Physionomia was derived by compilation from the same text which appeared in a Latin dress as the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, and that this source was an Arabic one.

This point settled, it becomes possible to establish another. One of the copies of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem has the following colophon: ‘Completus est liber Aristotelis de animalibus, translatus a magistro michaele in tollecto de arabico in latinum.’ Now if the version was made in Toledo, it was probably posterior in date to the Physionomia. This indeed is no more than might have been asserted on the ground of common likelihood; for, when a compilation and a complete version of one of the sources from which it was derived are both found passing under the name of the same author, it is but natural to suppose that the first was made before the other, and that in the interval the author had conceived the idea of producing in a fuller form a work he had already partially published.

Resuming then the results we have reached, it appears that Scot had met with this Arabic commentary on the Natural History of Aristotle while he was still in Sicily, and had made extracts from it for his Physionomia. Coming to Spain he probably carried the manuscript with him, and as his version of the De Animalibus ad Caesarem seems to have been the first complete translation he made from the Arabic, and to have been published shortly after he came to the Castiles, he may possibly have begun work upon it even before his arrival there. On every account, there being no positive evidence to the contrary, we may conjecture that the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, like the Physionomia, belongs to the year 1209. If the latter work appeared at Palermo in time for the royal marriage, which took place in spring, the former may well have been completed and published towards the end of the same year, when Scot had no doubt been already some time settled in Toledo.

The second form in which Michael Scot produced his work upon the Natural History of Aristotle was that of a version called the Abbreviatio Avicennae. The full title as it appears in the printed copy is: ‘Avicenna de Animalibus per Magistrum Michaelem Scotum de Arabico in Latinum translatus.’ Like the De Animalibus ad Caesarem it consists of nineteen books, thus comprehending the three Aristotelic treatises in one work.

The name of Ibn Sina or Avicenna, the author of the Arabic original, is significant, as it enables us to connect in a remarkable way the present labours of Scot’s pen with those which had in a past age proceeded from the school of translators at Toledo, and to place the Abbreviatio in its true relation with the system of versions which had been published there nearly a century before. We have already remarked that Don Raymon directed the attention of his translators to Avicenna as the best representative, both of Aristotle himself and of the Arabian wisdom which had gathered about his writings. A manuscript of great interest preserved in the library of the Vatican shows what the labours of Gundisalvus, Avendeath, and their coadjutors had been, and how far they had proceeded in the task of making this author accessible to Latin students. From it we learn that the Logic, the Physics, the De Cœlo et Mundo, the Metaphysics; the De Anima, called also Liber sextus de Naturalibus; and the De generatione Lapidum of Avicenna, had come from the school of Toledo during the twelfth century in a Latin dress. The last-named treatise was apparently a comment on the Meteora of Aristotle, and the whole belonged to that Kitab Alchefâ, which was called by the Latins the Assephae, Asschiphe or Liber Sufficientiae. This collection was said to form but the first and most common of the three bodies of philosophy composed by Avicenna. It represented the teaching of Aristotle and the Peripatetics, while the second expounded the system of Avicenna himself, and the third contained the more esoteric and occult doctrines of natural philosophy. Of these the first alone had reached the Western schools.

It is plain then that until Michael Scot took the work in hand Toledo had not completed the Latin version of Avicenna by translating that part of the Alchefâ which concerned the Natural History of Animals. The Abbreviatio Avicennae thus came to supply the defect and to crown the labours of the ancient college of translators. This place of honour is actually given to it in the Vatican manuscript just referred to, where it follows the De generatione Lapidum, and forms the fitting close of that remarkable series and volume. Thus, while the De Animalibus ad Caesarem connects itself with the Physionomia, and with Scot’s past life in Sicily, the Abbreviatio Avicennae joins him closely and in a very remarkable way with the whole tradition of the Toledo school, of which, by this translation, he at once became not the least distinguished member.

The authority of this manuscript, now perhaps for the first time appealed to, is sufficient not only to determine the relation of Scot’s work to that of the earlier Toledan school, but even, by a most fortunate circumstance, enables us to feel sure of the exact date when the translation of the Abbreviatio was made. For the colophon to the Vatican manuscript, brief as it is, contains in one line a fact of the utmost interest and importance to all students of the life of Scot. It is as follows: ‘Explicit anno Domini mºcºcºx.’ The researches of Jourdain had the merit of making public two colophons from the manuscripts of Paris, containing the date of another and later work of Scot, but since the days of that savant no further addition of this valuable kind has been made to our knowledge of the philosopher’s life. The date just cited from the Vatican copy of the Abbreviatio shows, however, that further inquiry in this direction need not be abandoned as useless. We now know accurately the time when this version was completed, and find the date to be such as accords exactly with our idea that Scot must have quitted Sicily soon after the marriage of Frederick; for the year 1210 may be taken as a fixed point determining the time when he first became definitely connected with the Toledo school. It will be remembered that we anticipated this result of research so far as to use it in our attempt to conjecture the date of Scot’s birth.

Like the De Animalibus ad Caesarem, the Abbreviatio Avicennae bears a dedication to Frederick conceived in the following terms: ‘O Frederick, Lord of the World and Emperor, receive with devotion this book of Michael Scot, that it may be a grace unto thy head and a chain about thy neck.’ It will always be matter of doubt whether in this address Scot appealed to a taste for natural history already formed in his pupil before he left Palermo, or whether the interest subsequently shown by this monarch in studying the habits of animals was awakened by the perusal of these two volumes. In any case they must have done not a little to guide both his interest and his researches. The chroniclers tell us of Frederick’s elephant, which was sent to Cremona, of the cameleopard, the camels and dromedaries, the lions, leopards, panthers, and rare birds which the royal menagerie contained, and of a white bear which, being very uncommon, formed one of the gifts presented by the Emperor on an important occasion. We hear too that Frederick, not content with gathering such rarities under his own observation, entered upon more than one curious experiment in this branch of science. Desiring to learn the origin of language he had some children brought up, so Salimbene tells us, beyond hearing of any spoken tongue. In the course of another inquiry he caused the surgeon’s knife to be ruthlessly employed upon living men that he might lay bare the secrets and study the process of digestion. If these experiments do not present the moral character of the Emperor in a very attractive light, they may at least serve to show how keenly he was interested in the study of nature.

This interest indeed went so far as to lead Frederick to join the number of royal authors by publishing a work on falconry. In it he ranges over all the species of birds then known, and insists on certain rarities, such as a white cockatoo, which had been sent to him by the Sultan from Cairo. He thus appears in his own pages, not merely as a keen sportsman, but as one who took no narrow interest in natural history. Clearly the dedication of the De Animalibus and the Abbreviatio Avicennae was no empty compliment as it flowed from the pen of Scot. He had directed his first labours from Toledo to one who could highly appreciate them, and to these works must be ascribed, in no small measure, the growth of the Emperor’s interest in a subject then very novel and little understood.

As regards the Abbreviatio Avicennae indeed, we have actual evidence of the esteem in which Frederick held it. The book remained treasured in the Imperial closet at Melfi for more than twenty years, and, when at last the Emperor consented to its publication, so important was the moment deemed, that a regular writ passed the seals giving warrant for its transcription. Master Henry of Colonia was the person selected by favour of Frederick for this work, and, as most of the manuscripts of the Abbreviatio now extant have a colophon referring in detail to this transaction, we may assume that Henry’s copy, made from that belonging to the Emperor, was the source from which all others have been derived.

This Imperial original would seem to be more nearly represented by the Vatican copy than by any other which remains in the libraries of Europe. From it we discover that the Arabic names with which the Abbreviatio abounds were given in Latin in the margin of the original manuscript, which Scot sent to the Emperor. These hard words and their explanations were afterwards gathered in a glossary, and inscribed at the end of the treatise; an improvement which was probably due to Henry of Colonia. The glossary has, however, been quite neglected by later copyists, nor does it appear in the printed edition of the Abbreviatio Avicennae. The completeness with which it is found in the Vatican manuscript shows the close relation which that copy holds to the one first made by the Emperor’s permission. The Chigi manuscript seems to be the only other in which the glossary is to be found. It therefore ranks beside that of the Vatican, but is inferior to it as it presents the glossary in a less complete form.

The originality of the Vatican text perhaps appears also in the curious triplet with which it closes: ‘Liber iste inceptus est et expletus cum adiutorio Jesu Christi qui vivit, etc.

Frenata penna, finito nunc Avicenna Libro Caesario, gloria summa Deo Dextera scriptoris careat gravitate doloris.’

Several other copies of the Abbreviatio have the first two lines, but this alone contains the third. In the Chigi manuscript, the place of these verses is occupied by a curious feat of language:—

latinum arabicum sclauonicum teutonicum arabicum Felix el melic dober Friderich salemelich.

To whatever period it belongs, the writer’s purpose was doubtless to recall to the mind the four nations over which Frederick II. ruled, and the splendid kingdoms of Sicily, Germany, and Jerusalem which he gathered in one under his imperial power.

In the Laurentian Library there is a valuable manuscript, written during the summer and autumn of 1266, for the monks of Santa Croce. It contains the De Animalibus ad Caesarem; the Abbreviatio Avicennae, and, as a third and concluding article, an independent version of the Liber de Partibus Animalium, corresponding, as has been said, to books xi.-xiv. of the other versions which the volume contains. Bandini, in the printed catalogue of the library, asserts that this third translation, unlike the two which precede it, was made from the Greek. This is probably correct, as it was only the Greek text which treated these four chapters of the Natural History as a distinct work. He further ascribes the version to Michael Scot, relying no doubt on the general composition of the volume, for this particular translation does not seem to contain any direct evidence of authorship. Thus the doubt expressed by Jourdain in this matter is not without reason, though the balance of probability would seem to incline in favour of Bandini’s opinion; for such a volume can scarcely be assumed to have been a mere miscellany without clear evidence that the contents come from more than one author. Taking it for granted then that the De Partibus Animalium came from Scot’s pen, then this is the third form in which his labours on the Natural History of Aristotle appeared.

In any case, however, his chief merit in this department of study belonged to Michael Scot as the exponent of the Arabian naturalists. It is difficult for any one who has not read the books in question to form an adequate idea of their contents, and still more of their style; even from the most careful description. We are made to feel that the task of the translator must have been a very difficult one. There is a concentration combined with great wealth of detail, and withal a constant nimble transition from one subject to another, seemingly remote, under the suggestion of some subtle connection, which result in a style almost baffling to one who sought to reproduce it in his comparatively slow and clumsy Latin.

No greater contrast could be imagined than that which separates such works from those which are the production of our modern writers on the same subject. Nor does this difference depend, as one might suppose, on the fact that a wider field of observation is open to us, and more adequate collections of facts are at our disposal. Rather is it the case that between ancients and moderns, between the eastern and western world, there is an entirely different understanding of the whole subject. A different principle of arrangement is at work, and results in the wide diversity of manner which strikes us as soon as we open the De Animalibus or the Abbreviatio. We find ourselves in the presence of a system of ideas, more or less abstract, which a wealth of facts derived from keen and wide observation of the world of nature is employed to illustrate. There is a finer division than with us. The unit in these works is not the species nor even the individual, but some single part or passion. This the author follows through all he knew of the multitudinous maze of nature, comparing and discerning and recording with a bizarrerie which comes to resemble nothing so much as the fantastic dance of form and colour in a kaleidoscope.

‘Birds,’ says Avicenna, ‘have a way of life that is peculiar to themselves. Those that are long-necked drink by the mouth, then lift their head till the water runs down their neck. The reason of this is that their neck is long and narrow, so that they cannot satisfy their thirst by putting beak in water and straightway drinking. There is, however, a great difference between different birds in their way of drinking, and the mountain hog loveth roots to which his tusk helpeth, wherewith he turneth up the ground and breaketh out the roots. Six days or thereabout are proper for his fattening, wherein he drinketh not for three, and there are some who feed their hogs and yet will not water them for perchance seven days on end. And in their fattening all animals are helped by moderate and gentle exercise, save the hog, who fatteneth lying in the mud, and that mightily, for thereby his pores are shut upon him so that he loseth nothing by evaporation. And the hog will fight with the wolf, and that is his nature, and cows fatten on every windy thing, such as vetches, beans, and barley, and if their horns be anointed with soft wax, straightway, even while still upon the living animal, they become soft, and if the horns of ox or cow be anointed with marrow, oil, or pitch, this easeth them of the pain in their feet after a journey.’

In another place he continues: ‘Some animals have teeth which serve them not save for fighting, and not for the mastication of their food. Such are the hog and the elephant, for the elephant’s tusks are of use to him in this matter as we have said. And there are animals which make no use of their teeth save for eating or fighting, nay, I believe that every animal having teeth will fight with them upon occasion, and some there are whose teeth are sharp and stand well apart, so that they are therewith furnished to tear prey: such is the lion. And those animals that have need to crop their food, as grass and the like, from the ground, have level and regular teeth, and not long tusks or canines, which would hinder them from cropping; and since in some kinds the males are more apt to anger than the females, tusks have been given them that they may defend the females, because these are weaker in themselves and of a worse complexion, and this is true in a general way of all animals, even in those kinds that eat no flesh, and need not their tusks for eating, but only for defence, such as boars, and this is the reason why they have the strength of which we have just spoken. It is the same with the camel, and so we pass to speak of this general truth as it appears with regard to all other means of defence. Hence hath the stag his horn and not the hind; the ram and not the ewe; the he-goat and not his female, and fish which eat not flesh have no need of teeth that are sharp.’

The city where these strange writings were deciphered and translated into Latin, being itself so strange and remote from the ways of modern life, had a certain poetic fitness as the scene where Michael Scot undertook his labours upon the Arabian authors. No passage of all their texts was more bizarre and tortuous than the mass of intricate lanes which formed then, as they form to-day, the thoroughfares of communication in Toledo. No hidden jewel of knowledge and observation could surprise and reward the translator in the midst of his tedious labours with a flash of sudden light and glory more unexpectedly delicious than that felt by the traveller, when, after long wandering in that maze and labyrinth, he finds a wider air; a stronger light beats before him, beckoning, and in a moment he stands in the full sunshine of the plaza mayor, with space to see and light to show the wonders of mind and hand, and all the toil of past ages in the fabric of the great cathedral.

Such as it now stands, the Cathedral of Toledo had not yet begun to rise above ground when Michael Scot had his residence there, but enough of the ancient city remains to show what Toledo must have been like in these early days. The splendid and commanding site, swept about by the waves of the Tagus; the famous bridge of Alcantara; the steep slope of approach crowned by ancient fortifications; and above all the massed and massive houses of the old town, so closely crowded together as hardly to give room for streets that should rather be called lanes; all this, beneath the unchanging sky of the south, recalls sufficiently what must have been the surroundings of Scot’s life during ten laborious years. Even yet, where white-wash peels and stucco fails, strange records of that forgotten past reveal themselves in the walls and on the house fronts: sculptured stones of every age; bas-reliefs, arabesques; windows in the delicate Moorish manner of twin arches, and a central shaft with carved cornices, long built up and forgotten till accident has revealed them.

Here then, perhaps in some house still standing, the scholar come from Sicily made his home. The quiet courtyard is forgotten; the azulejos have disappeared from walls and pavement; the rich wood-work of the ceilings, still bearing dim traces of colour and gold, looks down on the life of another age; even the curious cedar book-chest has crumbled to dust, for all its delicate defence of ironwork spreading away like a spider’s web from hinges and from lock. But the name and the fame endure, and the years which Michael Scot spent in Toledo have left a deep mark upon that and every succeeding age.