e for the first time, he adds in relation to this
subject,--"Teachers are not wanting, because there are Jews everywhere,
and their tongue is the same in substance with the Arabic and the
Chaldean, though they differ in mode.... Nor would it be much, for the
sake of the great advantage of learning Greek, to go to Italy, where the
clergy and the people in many places are purely Greek; moreover, bishops
and archbishops and rich men and elders might send thither for books,
and for one or for more persons who know Greek, as Lord Robert, the
sainted Bishop of Lincoln,[20] did indeed do,--and some of those [whom
he brought over] still survive in England."[21] The ignorance of the
most noted clerks and lecturers of his day is over and over again the
subject of Bacon's indignant remonstrance. They were utterly unable to
correct the mistakes with which the translations of ancient works were
full. "The text is in great part horribly corrupt in the copy of the
Vulgate at Paris, ...and as many readers as there are, so many
correctors, or rather corruptors, ...for every reader changes the text
according to his fancy."[22] Even those who professed to translate new
works of ancient learning were generally wholly unfit for the task.
Hermann the German knew nothing of science, and little of Arabic, from
which he professed to translate; but when he was in Spain, he kept
Saracens with him who did the main part of the translations that he
claimed. In like manner, Michael Scot asserted that he had made many
translations; but the truth was, that a certain Jew named Andrew worked
more than he upon them.[23] William Fleming was, however, the most
ignorant and most presuming of all.[24] "Certain I am that it were
better for the Latins that the wisdom of Aristotle had not been
translated, than to have it thus perverted and obscured, ...so that the
more men study it the less they know, as I have experienced with all who
have stuck to these books. Wherefore my Lord Robert of blessed memory
altogether neglected them, and proceeded by his own experiments, and
with other means, until he knew the things concerning which Aristotle
treats a hundred thousand times better than he could ever have learned
them from those perverse translations. And if I had power over these
translations of Aristotle, I would have every copy of them burned; for
to study them is only a loss of time and a cause of error and a
multiplication of ignorance beyond telling. And since