146 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



the invention of printing as well as before it : ^ a 

 popularity chiefly due, we may believe, to its 

 suggestiveness, which caused many of the learned 

 to enrich the Sphere of Sacrobosco with their own 

 notes and observations. One of the first to do so 

 was Michael Scot. His commentary on the work 

 of Holywood contains several subtle inquiries and 

 determinations regarding the source of heat, the 

 sphericity of the heavenly bodies, and other matters, 

 which have been repeated by Libri with the remark 

 that their author must have been far in advance of 

 his times.^ 



We may notice here a curious legend of Naples 

 to which Sir Walter Scott has drawn attention in 

 the account he gives of his great namesake.^ It 

 would seem to suggest that this age, perhaps by 

 means of Michael Scot, was acquainted with philo- 

 sophical instruments rarer if not more useful than 

 the astrolabe. The romance of Vergilius tells how 

 that hero founded ' in the middes of the see a fayer 

 towne, with great landes belongynge to it ; . . . and 

 /Called it Napells. And the fandacyon of it was of 

 ' egges, and in that towne of Napells he made a tower 

 with iiii corners, and in the toppe he set an apell 

 upon an yron yarde, and no man culd pull away 

 that apell without he brake it ; and thoroughe that 

 yren set he a bolte, and in that bolte set he a egge. 

 And he henge the apell by the stauke upon a cheyne, 

 and so hangeth it still. And when the egge styrreth, 

 so shoulde the towne of Napells quake; and when the 

 egge brake, then shulde the towne sinke.' The 

 reference here is of course to the Castel del Ovo at 



' See Narducci's Catalogue of the Boncompagni siss., Rome, 1862. 



2 Histoire des Sciences Mathemnfvjves. 



2 Lay of the Last Minstrel, Author's Edition, Note 3 I. 



