5 



It exists in MS. in sevoi-al libravios and was first oilited wiLli 

 translation, introduction, and notes by Robert Hendrie, in 1847.''^ 

 The date is not exactly known, but the work seems to have been 

 written in the eleventli century. It is in three books. The first 

 ti'eats of the materials used in painting and illuminating; the 

 second of the making and colouring of glass ; the third of metal 

 working, bell making, organ building, lapidary work, colours. 

 It is, therefore, a very important and interesting woi-k for tlie 

 history both of the sciences and practical arts. It mentions a 

 number of substances and the manner of making them, which 

 involved chemical skill, and it treats of arts, the results of which 

 remain to this day the admiration and tlie despair of connoisseurs. 

 One of the biggest, if it be not the biggest, book written in the 

 middle ages and printed in the fifteenth century, was the work of 

 a Dominican monk, called Vincent de Beauvais. t It is a vast 

 compilation or encyclopaedia, a mirror of human knowledge as he 

 called it — Speculum quachiijjlex — divided into four main parts, of 

 which science and art form one. Of this huge work I have never 

 encountered a copy, and have only seen a fragment about alchemy 

 reprinted in a collection of such pieces. The author was born 

 about 1190, and died about 1264. His labour's, like those of his 

 contemporaries, were chiefly devoted to pliilosophy — moral, meta- 

 physical, and theological — and he engaged in the conflict then 

 raging between the realists and nominalists, but he was able to 

 turn from discussions on words and definitions, to the contemi)la- 

 tion of external objects. The Speculum Naturale or history of 

 nature, is a commentary in thirty-two books, the text being the 

 narrative of the creation as given in Genesis. This treatise 

 deals less with arts than with cosmogony and natural history. 



* A French translation had appeared previously in 1843, edited by Count 

 de I'Escalopier. 



+ For information — not much — about the author, an abstract of the 

 bibliography of his work, and an outline of the contents of it, reference 

 may be made to the article " Vincent de Beauvais " by Daunou, in Ilistoire 

 Lltt6raire de la France, Paris, 1835, 4to, T. xviii., pp. 44'.)-519, and the 

 numerous authorities there (|uoted. Through some ovcrsiglit, Hain, wliilc 

 giving a cross reference, lias omitted Vincent's name in the right alphalicti- 

 cal place in his Bepertorlum B'lhlioijrapliiriim, Tlio Spccuhiiii appears to 

 have been printed by.Tohann Mentelin at Strasburg, and thiishcd liy 147t). 

 It is in 1) volumea folio: Speculum natiualo, "2; nu)ra]i'. '2; (h>itrinali'. I ; 

 liistoriale, 4. 



