136 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



way of reproving the imperfections of which he 

 complained would have been to shame these scholars 

 to some purpose by producing better versions on 

 his own account. But the truth of the matter lies 

 here, that Bacon was no linguist. This appears 

 plainly from the tale he tells against himself in the 

 Compendium Studii ; how a hard word in Aristotle 

 had baffled him till one day there came some out- 

 landish students to hear him lecture, who laughed 

 at his perplexity, telling him it was good Spanish 

 for the plant called Henbane.^ ' Hinc illae lachry- 

 mae ' then, and a plague on Michael Scot and all 

 his tribe, who know Spanish so well they will not 

 put a plain Latin word for the puzzled professor 

 to understand. No wonder that to Scot rather than 

 to Bacon, for all his genius, that age owed the chief 

 part of the first translation of Aristotle and a good 

 beginning of the second. 



^ Compendium Studii, p. 467. The De Plantis is found at p. 83 of 

 MS. Fondo Vaticano 4087. 



