THE BOOKS ON SUBTILTY. 57 



were soon reprinted at Lyons and at Basle. These books, 

 we are told, were first suggested to their author in a 

 dream, wherein it appeared to him that he saw a book in 

 twenty-one parts, containing various treatises, and about 

 the middle a little geometry, written in the most delight- 

 ful style, not without some agreeable obscurity, wherein 

 there were revealed all the secrets of the world about him. 

 In it was made clear whatever was dark in all the sciences, 

 and he derived such pleasure from the contemplation of 

 this book, that when he was awake the delight abided 

 with him, and he remembered even its form and plan. 



There is something within us, he says, commenting on 

 such a dream, something besides ourselves 1 . 



Then there arose in him a great desire to write such a 

 book, though it was larger and more ambitious than any 

 that he had yet attempted, and he could not hope to 

 make a mortal work so perfect as the one of which he 

 dreamed. He began then to write it, and for three years, 

 not only was writing it by day among his other labours, 



Ad Illustrem Principem Eerrandum Gonzagam Mediolanensis Pro- 

 vincise Praefectum. Parisiis. Apud Jacobum Dupuys, 1551." Dupuys 

 had for his emblem and sign " The Samaritan Woman," that Scrip- 

 ture subject being chosen because it introduced the image of a well, 

 and the idea of his own name. This is the edition cited in succeeding 

 references. 



1 De Subtilitate, Lib. xviii. p. 299, for this account of the first con- 

 ception of the work, compared with statements in De Lib. Prop. Lib. 

 ult. Op.Tom. i.p. 71. 



