PREFACE.

His works.

Still, after making every allowance for his being credited with much to which he has no claim, there remain so many undoubted works which proceeded from his pen as fully to justify the expression of the writers quoted above; for besides his sermons and lengthy theological works, we find a large number on both physical and mental philosophy, commentaries on Aristotle and on Boethius, translations from the Greek (besides the undoubted translations which are known to be his, he is said by Boston of Bury to have translated Suidas), French poems1, works on husbandry, to say nothing of such treatises as the De Cessatione Legalium On the Cessation of Legal Rites, or those published among the Letters in the present volume; and perhaps after reading the list we may not be surprised at some writers of a later date attributing to him powers more than human, and adding to all the above, treatises on magic and astrology, and ascribing to him the fabrication of the brazen head and the infernal horse. Nor should we forget that besides a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, at that time very rare in England, he possessed also at least considerable knowledge in medicine, as we find stated in the letter of Giraldus Cambrensis introducing him to the Bishop of Hereford (Brewer's Giraldus Cambrensis, i. p. 249), and to this a love of music and skill on the harp must be added.2 In spite of all this, in our own time his

1. Polycarp Leyser, History of Poets and Poems of the Middle Ages original: "Historia Poetarum et Poematum Medii Ævi", p. 996, attributes to him the "Metric Disputation between the Body and the Soul" original: "Disputatio Metrica inter Corpus et Animam", which is published among the Poems attributed to Walter Mapes, Camd. Soc., pp. 95–106, and some verses: "On the Civility of Morals" original: "De civilitate morum", beginning "Stans puer ad mensam" A boy standing at the table.

2. The following extract from Robert de Brunne’s English version of Grosseteste’s Manual of Sins original: "Manuel des Peches" is given by Warton, History of English Poetry, i. p. 61, and is also given in Pegge’s Life of Grosseteste, p. 362:
"I shall you tell as I have heard / Of the bishop Saint Robert; / His surname is Grosteste, / Of Lincoln, so says the story. / He loved much to hear the / harp, / For man's wit it makes / sharp; / Next his chamber, beside his / study, / His harper's chamber was fast / by. / Many times, by nights and / days, / He had solace of notes and / lays. / One asked him the reason why / He had delight in minstrelsy: / He answered him in this / manner / Why he held the harp so dear: / 'The virtue of the harp, through / skill and right / Will destroy the fiend's / might; / And to the cross by good / skill / Is the harp likened well,' etc."