THE LAST DAYS OF MICHAEL SCOT 175 



Schools ' ^ At the time of which he speaks, Bacon, 

 born in 1214, may probably have been at Oxford 

 pursuing his studies. It is not necessa.ry to dwell 

 upon the support which this brings to the tradition 

 of Scot's visit to England. We may take it as al- 

 most certain that Oxford was one of the univer- 

 sities where he appeared and was made welcome. 



The tradition that he thereafter pursued his 

 journey to Scotland rests rather upon arguments 

 derived from the probability oft he case than from 

 direct evidence. Scot had been a lifetime absent 

 from his native land, and, finding himself so near it, 

 a strong impulse must have urged him to revisit 

 the scenes of his boyhood. Nor is it easy to ac- 

 count for the fact that his fame, though he spent 

 so much of his time abroad, attained, and yet re- 

 tains, such a currency in the North, except upon 

 the supposition that he did actually yield to this 

 attraction and thus once more made himself a fami- 

 liar figure in the land of his birth. 



One matter of great interest is at least certain. 

 Scot's death occurred just at this time, when he 

 was in the very height of his fame and influence, 

 and probably while he was still in the North. The 

 account, so often repeated and reprinted, which 

 makes him live almost to the close of the century 

 need not occupy our attention more than a moment. 

 Already incredible from the time when Jourdain 

 discovered that Scot's version of Alpetrongi had 

 been produced in 1217, such a notion becomes more 

 than ever impossible since we have been able to 



1 Opus Majus, pp. 30, 37, ed. Jebbi. ' Tempore Michaelis Scoti, qui, 

 annis 1230 transactis, apparuit, deferens librorum Aristotelis partes ali- 

 quas de naturalibus et mathematicis, cum expositoribus sapientibus, 

 magnificata est Aristotelis philosophia apud Latinos.' 



