ii ART OF LULLY 333 



Art of Memory ; and it is possible that he may have 

 had Bruno in his mind in writing both passages. " Some 

 men, rather ostentatious than learned, have laboured 

 about a certain method not deserving the name of a 

 true method, as being rather a kind of imposture, 

 which may nevertheless have proved acceptable to some 

 triflers. Such was the Art of Lully, simply a massed 

 collection of technical terms. This kind of collection 

 resembles an old broker's shop, where many fragments 

 of things are to be found, but nothing of any value." J 

 Again, a there exists certainly some kind of art (of 

 memory), but we are convinced that better precepts for 

 confirming and extending the memory might be laid 

 down than are contained in this art, and also that the 

 practice of the art might be made better than as it has 

 been received. As now managed, it is but barren and 

 useless." 2 



On the Continent it was rather the cosmological 

 theories of Bruno that attracted attention ; and there, 

 no less than in England, every suspicion of sympathy 

 with the heretic was avoided. Only Kepler had the 

 courage to complain (as a letter of Martin Hasdal to 

 Galilei tells) that Galilei had omitted to make praiseful 

 mention of Bruno in his Nuntius Sidereus? Galilei, a 

 thorough diplomatist, would hardly have gone so far : 4 

 yet in the metaphysical basis of his theory of the 

 universe, and in his theory of knowledge, he only 

 elaborates ideas already suggested by Bruno. 5 But 

 Kepler, fearless before men, shrank from the thought of 

 the infinite world in which Bruno found a glorious 



1 De Augm. vi. ch. ^. z Ib. v. ch. 5. 3 Berti, Vita dl G. B. p. 9. 



4 Vide Cay von Brockdorff, Galilei's Philosophische Mission (Vierteljahrschrift fur 

 Wiss. Philos. und Sociol., 1902). 



5 Vide the Discorsi : and cf. the truculent Brunnhofer : " Galileo, der Bruno 

 Zugleich auibeutete und ignorirte " (op. cit., p. 69). 



