Previously Unpublished Works, Fascicle 5

names and predictions therefrom) was in the original tenth discourse original: "dictio decima", while there is no other trace of geomancy a method of divination using earth, stones, or sand in any Latin text. (2) Bacon expressly tells us that most valuable sections of the text had been removed by dunderheads. (3) Though all the texts are Vulgate common or standard versions yet in some manuscripts original: "MSS." the chapter headings at the beginning show the Arabic order, for example, physiognomy the practice of judging character from facial features before justice, and the title "tenth discourse" original: "dictio decima" in its right place, indicating that some manuscripts must have existed with that arrangement. (4) In all the best Vulgate manuscripts the proper ending of the original tenth book is preserved, and may be found at the end of Book II before Justice.

All the Latin manuscripts are then of one main variety. They differ among themselves by omissions and additions, the principal additions being a chapter "on the eyes" original: "de oculis", another from Avicenna a Persian polymath and physician "on vipers" original: "de viperis", and a note from Pliny the Roman author of Natural History as to the effect of the moon. Bacon’s text is a variety of the Vulgate, modified by dividing it into four books, and adding new captions to the chapters. This text is otherwise a very good one, but it has had no effect on the manuscript tradition.

The first printed Latin texts are very much abbreviated, printed from late fifteenth century manuscripts. Two editions of the Vulgate text were printed before 1500. But in that year a composite text was printed for Achillini which had no manuscript authority. He seems to have got hold of the Hebrew version of the Western text, or of some early Latin version, and to have inserted its thirteenth and last section, which has no relation to the Eastern text, in suitable places of Philip’s version. As the Achillini text is the one generally met with, this has caused a certain amount of confusion.

THE SYRIAC ORIGINAL.

In the introduction to the work as we now have it we are told that it was translated from Greek into Rumi Syriac, and from Rumi into Arabic, by Yuhanna ibn el-Batrik (or Ibn Yahya al-Baṭrik). Rumi is the common word for Syriac when it does not mean Greek. Yuhanna, who died A.D. 815, was a well known translator and physician to the Caliph Al-Ma’mun. He is said to have rendered the Politics and the History of Animals original: "Historia Animalium" into Syriac, and the On the Heavens and the World original: "De caelo et mundo" and the On the Soul original: "De anima" in shortened form, with other works, into Arabic. There does not seem anything obviously unlikely about the statements that a Syrian text has existed, and that it was translated into Arabic about the beginning of the ninth century by Ibn al-Batrik, while it is to be hoped that English scholars, at any rate, have dropped the pose that