ANNOTATION. 73 



remain ; but there was a disappointment also. What 

 I have said of it is rather what one should have 

 wished it to be than what it is ; for in reality it 

 presents few very distinct ideas, and hardly any 

 curious points of any kind, being written in a florid, 

 verbose, rhetorical manner. Yet it might deserve to 

 be transcribed and printed, to which no doubt the 

 Master and the College would yield their consent, as 

 being so early a treatise expressly relating to the 

 sister cities, and so little known, or rather not known 

 at all. 



[6] The name of Adelardus de Bada occurs in the 

 great Roll of the Pipe of the thirty-first year of the 

 reign of King Henry the First, the time when the 

 Adelard of science lived. A small payment was 

 made to him by the Sheriff of Wilts, for some service 

 probably which he had done for the King. I should 

 not easily be persuaded that this could be any other 

 person so named and so described than the famous 

 Adelard. If it was another, then there were two 

 persons both of some eminence, contemporaries, and 

 bearing the same name and addition. This is not 

 probable, and the improbability is not overcome by 

 the vague and shadowy reasoning by which it has 

 been attempted to show that the philosopher Adelard 

 was not the person spoken of in that noble record. 



