200 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



astronomy appear to have had some popular circulation. For instance, 

 a French poem of the time of Edward the Second, called Ymage du 

 Monde, contains a metrical account of the earth and heavens, accord- 

 ing to the Ptolemaic views ; and in a manuscript of this poem, pre- 

 served in the library of the University of Cambridge, there are repre- 

 sentations, in accordance with the text, of a spherical earth, with men 

 standing upright upon it on every side ; and by way of illustrating the 

 tendency of all things to the centre, perforations of the earth, entirely 

 through its mass, are described and depicted ; and figures are exhibited 

 dropping balls down each of these holes, so as to meet in the interior. 

 And, as bearing upon the perplexity which attends the motions of tip 

 and down, when applied to the globular earth, and the change of the 

 direction of gravity which would occur in passing the centre, the readers 

 of Dante will recollect the extraordinary manner in which the poet and 

 his guide emerge from the bottom of the abyss ; and the explanation 

 which Virgil imparts to him of what he there sees. After they have 

 crept through the aperture in which Lucifer is placed, the poet says, 



" Io levai gli occhi e credetti vederc 

 Lucifero com' io P avea lasciato, 

 E vidile le gambe in su tenere." 



" Questi come e fitto 



Si sottasopra?" 



"Quando mi volsi, tu passast' il punto 

 Al qual si traggon d' ogni parte i pesi." 



Inferno, xxxiv. 



"I raised mine eyes, 



Believing that I Lucifer should see 



Where he was lately left, but saw him now 



With legs held upward." .... 



" How standeth he in posture thus reversed ?" 



" Thou wast on the other side so long as I 

 Descended ; when I turned, thou didst o'erpass 

 That point to which from every part is dragged 

 All heavy substance." Cakt. 



This is more philosophical than Milton's representation, in a more 

 scientific age, of Uriel sliding to the earth on a sunbeam, and sliding 

 back again, when the sun had sunk below the horizon. 



" Uriel to his charge 



Keturned on that bright beam whose point now raised, 

 Bore him slope downward to the sun, now fallen 

 Beneath the Azores." Pa?: Lost, B. iv. 



