THE LAST DAYS OF MICHAEL SCOT 163 



but also of the Hebrew and Arabic languages. 1 

 So far as can be seen, however, the attempt of 

 1227 shared the fate of that which had been 

 made in 1223. Canterbury gave no signs of acqui- 

 escence, and Michael Scot, for all his distinction, 

 remained without the preferment which his friends 

 so constantly sought to obtain for him. 



There is reason to think that from this time a 

 change took place in the spirit of the philosopher. 

 The natural chagrin he must have felt as it became 

 plain that no position he could accept would be 

 offered to him in the Church affected deeply his 

 fine and sensitive nature. He soon passed into 

 a brooding and despondent mood, which remained 

 unaffected by all the praise and fame paid by the 

 learned world as a tribute to his remarkable talents 

 and achievements. It is in this change of temper 

 to a morbid depression that we are to find the 

 occasion and inspiring spirit of those strange pro- 

 phetical verses which bear his name and which 

 differ so widely from all the other productions of 

 his pen. 



Such compositions were indeed far from being 

 uncommon in Italy. The reputed prophecies of 

 the Erythraean Sibyl were extant in the form of 

 an epistle supposed to be addressed to the Greeks 

 under the walls of Troy. This curious composition 

 is said to have been rendered into the Greek 

 language from the Syriac by a certain Doxopatros. 

 His version was one of those volumes which had 

 reached Sicily from the library of Manuel Com- 



i 'Nee contentus littera tantum erudire Latina, ut in ea melius 

 formaretur, Hebraice et Arabice insudavit laudabiliter et profecit, et sic 

 doctns in singulis grata diversorum varietate nitescit,' Hamilton MSS, 

 in British Museum, vol, iii, p. 57, 



