Previously Unpublished Works, Fascicle 5

the method of glossing would dispose us to put it early in his career. In the second, the fact that he alters the manuscripts before him when they treat of the length of the year (p. 80), preferring the worse to the better reading, shows that he had not, at the time of writing the note, arrived at the sense of the importance of accuracy in astronomy which he entertained, say, in 1267, when he wrote the Opus Majus original: "Opus Majus," meaning "Greater Work," Bacon's most significant treatise on the sciences.. Thirdly, a number of the notes were written soon after his return to Oxford, after a stay in Paris (pp. 34, 38). I am therefore inclined to put the completion of the text and notes at some date before 1257, when he returned to Paris. The glosses, interlinear in the MS., are printed here immediately below the text as large-print notes.

The introductory treatise is much later. It must be some time after the comet of August, 1264 (p. 10³²). It must even be after 1267. On p. 3¹⁴ Bacon is very severe on ‘grammar masters ignorant of Greek’ original: "glomerelli nescientes Grecum" for their confusion of ‘knowledge’ original: "matesis" and ‘divination’ original: "mathesis", translating the first as ‘knowledge’ and the second as ‘divination’. Unfortunately he had in 1267 fallen into the same mistake (Greater Work i. 239¹⁵), and repeated it next year (Third Work original: "Op. Tert." or "Opus Tertium", Brewer, p. 27⁶), though he corrected it in his Greek Grammar (p. 118²), and in his Mathematics. I am inclined to place the date of the introduction at about 1270, especially in view of Bacon’s remarks about a forthcoming total eclipse (11³²), which must refer either to that of June 13, 1276, visible in the polar regions, or of Oct. 28, 1277, visible in East Asia, which however did not become visible in England or France (unless the passage was written before the eclipse of May 25, 1267, visible in Italy).

The Secret of Secrets original: "Secretum Secretorum" exercised so great an influence on the mental development of Roger Bacon that merely on this ground a study of it would be interesting. From his first work to his last he quotes it as an authority, and there can be no doubt that it fortified, if it did not create, his belief in astrology and natural magic: the study and use of hidden powers within nature to produce effects, considered a legitimate science distinct from sorcery. It came to him and his contemporaries as an unquestioned work of Aristotle, which must have been known to exist for over a century, since it was quoted by Mesue, p. 273 (eleventh or twelfth century¹) and a portion of it was translated around 1135 in Spain, though Averroes in 1177 says, in his commentary to the Ethics (Book X at the end), that the ‘On the Conduct of Life’ original: "de regimine vite" had not yet come into his hands. The

¹ He quotes, however, only from the intrusive ‘on the eyes’ original: "de oculis", and even then not from any text known to us.