462 MERTON COLLEGE AND CANADA. 



Astronomy ; and Harvey, tlie discoverer of the circulation of the 

 blood, adorned this most ancient Society. In regard to Duns Scotiis 

 I give the testimony of Johannes ab Incarnatione, from my own 

 folio copy of that learned friar's edition (Conimbricse, Nonis Martii, 

 in die Beati Thomse Aquinatis, Anno Domini, 1609,) of the Oxoni- 

 ense Scriptum of Duns in Librum 23rimum Sententiarum Magistri 

 Petri Loinbardi. He says : Is adolescens, seu fere puer, ordine Sera- 

 phici Patris \_FrancisGi\, et regidam profiteretur Oxonil in provincia 

 Angliae, inihi studio artium liheralmm quamprimum destinatur. 

 And then, after relating his removal to Paris for the study of Theo- 

 logy, he adds : Inde ad suos regressus in Angliam Oxonii in Gollegio 

 Mertoneusi ante annum etiam aetatis suae vigesinium sacrae Tlieo- 

 hqiae lector instituitur. Ibique quatuor Sententiarum libros \P. Lom- 

 bardi'\ publice est interpretatus. 



Prom the Opus Magus of Roger Bacon above mentioned, I will 

 here add a brief utterance in the true Mertonian spirit, showing that 

 ho discerned clearly the defective condition of education as con- 

 ducted by the majority of his contemporaries, and desired its reform. 



"There never was such an apjoearance of wisdom," he says, "nor 

 such activity in study in so many faculties, and so many regions as 

 during the last forty years, [he is writing in the time of Walter de 

 Merton himself,] for even the doctors [the public teachers] are 

 divided in every state, in every camp, and in every burgh, especially 

 through the two studious orders [Dominicans and Franciscans] ; 

 when neither, perhaps," he continues, "was their ever so much ignor- 

 ance and error. The students," he says, "languish and stupify them- 

 selves over things badly translated ; they lose their time and study : 

 appearances only hold them ; and they do not care what they know, 

 so much as to maintain an appearance of knowledge before the insen- 

 sate multitude." And again in the same work, the Opus Magus, 

 in respect of Aristotle, he ventures to express such heresy as this : 

 "If I had power over the books of Aristotle, I would have them all 

 burnt, because it is only a loss of time to study them, a cause of error 

 and multiplication of ignorance beyond what I am able to explain." 

 He refers of course to the wretched translations and abstracts which 

 were then alone generally accessible ; but it is curious to observe that 

 his view of the Aristotelian philosophy was strongly confirmed three 

 centuries later by his still greater namesake, Lord Bacon, who said, 

 after many years' devotion to Aristotelianism, that it was "a philo- 



