26 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



was rarest in learning and brightest in wit, held 

 daily disputation, while the delicate fountains played 

 and Monte Pellegrino looked down on the curving 

 beauties of the bay and shore. A strange contrast 

 truly to the arcades of Bologna, now heaped with 

 winter snow and now baked by summer sun ; to the 

 squalor of mediaeval Paris, and much more to the 

 green hillsides and moist forest-clad vales of southern 

 Scotland. Here at last the spirit of Michael Scot 

 underwent a powerful and determining influence 

 which left its mark on all his subsequent life. 



As royal tutor, his peculiar duty would seem to 

 have been that of instructing the young Prince in 

 the different branches of mathematics. This , we 

 should naturally have conjectured from the fact 

 that Scot's fame as yet rested entirely upon the 

 honours he had gained at Paris, and precisely in 

 this department of learning ; for ' Michael the 

 Mathematician ' was not likely to have been called 

 to Palermo with any other purpose. We have 

 direct evidence of it however in an early work 

 which came from the Master's pen, and one which 

 would seem to have been designed for the use of 

 his illustrious pupil. This was the Astronomia, or 

 Liber Particular is, and in the Oxford copy, 1 the 

 colophon of that treatise runs thus : ' Here endeth 

 the book of Michael Scot, astrologer to the Lord 



1 Bibl. Bodl. MSS. Canon Misc. 555 ; cod. memb. in 4to ff. 97, saec. 

 xiv. ineunt, with a portrait of Michael Scot in one of the initials. The 

 preface opens thus : ' Cum ars astronomic sit grandis sermonibus 

 philosophorum.' The book begins : ' Cronica Grece Latine dicitur series 

 ut temporis temporum sicut dominorum,' and closes thus : ' De exposi- 

 tione fundamenti terrae volentes hie finere secundum librum quern 

 incepimus in nomine Dei, Cui ex parte nostra sit semper grandis laus et 

 gloria, benedictio et triumphus in omnibus per infinita saecula saecu- 

 lorum Amen.' Other MSS. of the Astronomia are found at Milan, Bibl. 

 Ambros. L. 92, sup. cumfiguris and at Munich, see Halm and Meyer's 

 Catalogue, vol. ii. part i. p. 156, No. 1242, saec. xviii. 



