154 TH E INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



Although it is representative of the temper and mode of 

 thought of the times, the Bible of Guyot would scarcely 

 merit the notice here given it were it not constantly re- 

 ferred to in modern literature as the earliest known writ- 

 ing on the compass. It has frequently also been made the 

 basis for the claim to the original invention of that instru- 

 ment by the French. Both the treatise of Neckam and 

 the poem ascribed to William the Clerk are in all prob- 

 ability of much earlier date, while the signs of the copyist 

 are certainly more apparent in the imperfect work of the 

 troubadour than in the logically complete structure of the 

 trouvere monk. 



The theory to which William the Clerk alludes as ex- 

 plaining the action of the needle soon begins to assume 

 definite form, and align itself with the general hypothesis 

 of magnetic virtue laid down by Galen. Thus the two 

 lines of magnetic discovery, attractive power of the stone 

 and its directive tendency, hitherto merely linked by 

 Neckam, now begin to coalesce. u The magnet is found 

 in India, and draws the iron to it by a certain occult 

 nature. An iron needle, after it has touched the stone, 

 always turns to the northern star, which does not move 

 around the axis of the heavens as do the other stars; whence 

 it is very necessary to those who navigate the sea," ' writes 

 Cardinal de Vitry in 1218, thus bringing the statement of 

 both phenomena side by side in a single paragraph. 



Still more suggestive are the lines of Guido Guinicelli, 

 the first of Italian poets who embodied in verse the subtle- 

 ties of philosophy, and whose fame Dante has recorded : 



text appears in Wol fart's work (cit. sup.), and in Fabliaux et Contes des 

 Poetes Franois des xi., xii., xiii., xiv. and xvme siecles. Nouv. ed. 

 Paris, 1808, pp. 327-8. Bertelli, in his Memoria sopra P. Peregrinus, 59, 

 gives the poem, and a partial bibliography in a foot-note. An English 

 translation of it appears in Lorimer's Essay on Magnetism. London, 

 1795- 

 1 Historiae Hierosolimitanae, cap. 89. 



