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of the comparatively unlearned Friars Minors we 

 find, as elsewhere in the history of thought, that 



were Latin ; its best tradition lay in Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, 

 Virgil. The ill-starred Boetius was the last of the Grecians. 

 Greek was driven East and West : West into Ireland, where 

 in the ninth century a few Greek MSS. survived, and were read 

 in the original by Erigena and his disciples ; but this Irish 

 Greek tradition was soon lost, and there were no teachers of 

 Greek. Yet it seems certain that, in Oxford, Robert of Lincoln 

 and Adam Marsh had at any rate learned assistance in the 

 production of some Greco-latin translations of Aristotle, of the 

 Ethics for example. Dr Jackson has pointed out to me a 

 passage in Aquinas' Commentary on the Ethics, where 

 " the presentation of the right reading misspelt, and of a 

 ludicrous etymology side by side with one which is very nearly 

 right, seem to show that, whilst Aquinas had about him people 

 who knew Greek, he himself had no substantial knowledge of 

 it." Grosseteste himself may have had some efficient know- 

 ledge of Greek ; " vir in latino et in greco peritissimus," says 

 Matthew Paris. Dr Jackson (in a private letter) feels assured 

 that " Roger Bacon was plainly a competent Greek scholar. 

 Of this there is proof in the Opera inedita, edited by Brewer 

 for the Master of the Rolls." We know also that more than one 

 scholar of the 11 12th centuries travelled in the East, though, 

 as Dr Daremberg says, travellers to the East were more apt to 

 bring back false relics than genuine manuscripts. There was a 

 small Greek community and a Greek monastery at Auriol, near 

 the old colony of Marseilles. Still, for lack of masters and 

 materials, Greek then was a very rare accomplishment ; and it 

 is manifest, from much internal evidence, that Albert had no 

 Greek ; though he certainly possessed Greco-latin translations 

 of some few Aristotelian treatises by other hands, of the De 

 anima and of the Physics for example, whence he makes quo- 

 tations without interspersion of Arabic titles, proper names, 

 nouns and terms, such as he rather helplessly reproduces in 



