TEMPORIS PARTUS MASCULUS. 25 



Siquidem utile genus eorum est, qui de theoriis non 

 admoduin solliciti, mechanica quadam subtilitate rerura 

 inventaruin extensiones prehendunt ; qualis est Bacon. 1 

 Sceleratum et sacrum eorum, qui undique theoriis suis 

 plausus conquirunt, ambientibus etiam et pro iis suppli- 

 cantibus religione, spe, et impostura. Talis est Isaac 

 Hollanclus, 2 et turbse Chymistarum pars longe maxima. 

 Age citetur jam Hippocrates, antiquitatis creatura et 

 annorum venditor. In cujus viri authoritatem cum 

 Galenus et Paracelsus magno uterque studio, velut in 

 umbram asini, se recipere contendat, quis non cachin- 

 num toll at ? Atque iste homo certe in experientia 

 obtutu perpetuo hadrere videtur, verum oculis non 

 natantibus et anquirentibus, sed stupidis et resolutis. 

 Deinde a stupore visu parum recollecto, idola quiedam, 

 non immania quidem ilia theoriarum, sed elegantiora 

 ista quse superficiem historian circumstant, excipit ; 



1 Roger Bacon, whom his namesake has here so faintly praised, was be- 

 yond all doubt one of the greatest men of the age in which he lived. He 

 was born in 1214 at Ilchester, and died in 1292 or 1294. One of the most 

 remarkable circumstances connected with him is the influence which a 

 passage in the Opus Mnjus exercised on Columbus, who perhaps had never 

 heard of him. Peter de Alliaco, whose Imago Mundi was compiled in 

 1410, transcribed almost literally, but without acknowledgment, from 

 Roger Bacon a passage (containing quotations in favour of the possibility 

 of reaching India by sailing westward, from Aristotle, Pliny, and Seneca) 

 which seems to have made a profound impression on Columbus; Avho, as 

 Humboldt remarks, was familiar with the Imago Mundi. Compare the 

 three passages ; viz. the passage in the Opus Majus, that in the Imago 

 Jfttndi, and that contained in the letter which Columbus wrote to Ferdi- 

 nand and Isabella from Haiti, given by Humboldt. vol. i. p. 65. of his 

 Examen Critique de I'Histoire de la Geographic. 



2 Very little is known of Isaac Hollandus. He is said by Suertius 

 (Athence Belgicce'] to have been a native of the Netherlands, and to have 

 Dublished in 1582 a work entitled " Abdita quaedam de Opere Animali et 

 Vegetabili .'* But Sprengel speaks of Isaac Hollandus as one of the pre- 

 cursors of Paracelsus. There is also a John Isaac, said to be a son of 

 Isaac's. See Sprengel Hist. Medic, iii. 270. I have not seen Adami, to 

 whom Sprengel refers. 



