228 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



her parents, who bade put horses to the carriage 

 and fetch the wizard, who was presently with 

 them. First he commanded her to cure her 

 brother, and then he read for her in his Magic 

 Book that she might be loosed, and so she died. 

 But when the skin and earthen pot were cast 

 away, they sank straight underground. Thus the 

 witch, who still came back every night to get the 

 skin, and take the form of a cat, found all her 

 magic art in vain ; for Michael Scotti had taken 

 her power away.' 



' Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne ! ' To 

 such vain and trivial conclusions has a reputation, 

 justly renowned in its own day, been reduced in 

 ours. Michael Scot, now become a troglodyte, lifts 

 his head timidly and occasionally from a den in the 

 Florence fields ; he who, while alive, filled Europe 

 with his fame, and, by his Averroes, ruled the 

 schools of Padua as late as the seventeenth century. 

 If a remedy is still to be had for this, the fruit of 

 Guelphic rancour, it must be found in the direction 

 we have sought to keep throughout these pages : 

 that of a serious and impartial study of Scot's life, 

 and of those labours of his in philosophy and science 

 which are so really, though remotely, connected 

 with the intellectual attainments of our own times. 



