Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, Vol. I (Bridges ed.)

PREFACE.

a well-known astrological writer who died in 1623, which fixes the date of this MS. at the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century. A glance at the MS. shows that the figures were drawn simultaneously with the text, room being left in each page for their insertion. The character of the writing quite corresponds with this date. It is referred to in this edition as D.

In 1825 another MS. of the Opus Majus was bought for the Bodleian Library. It belonged at one time to Thomas Allen, the astrologer of Gloucester Hall, who early in the seventeenth century gave twenty MSS. to the Bodleian. This one, however, passed into the possession of Sir Kenelm Digby, whose well-known signature and motto are inscribed on the first page. It is now numbered 235 of the Digby MSS. The greater part of it is of the fifteenth century. But a portion of it (pp. 249-295) is in an older and more beautiful handwriting, considered by Mr. Coxe to be the fourteenth century. This portion includes a considerable portion of the Perspectiva Optics.

These two MSS. have been carefully collated for the present edition. In the course of the collation unmistakable proof was given that the Dublin MS. was a copy of that in the Bodleian. At the close of p. 470, col. 2, of this latter, the sentence breaks off midway, and is continued on the first line of p. 487, col. 1. An error of this kind, analogous to that caused by the transposition of sheets in binding a modern book, is easily explicable. In the Dublin MS. the same rupture of the sentence occurs, but in the middle of a column (fol. 224, col. a, line 12), the sentence being ultimately continued on fol. 229, col. d, line 14. It may be added that these two MSS. exhibit through-