is latter respect, no parts of his writings are more
remarkable than those in which he urges the importance of philological
and linguistic studies. His remarks on comparative grammar, on the
relations of languages, on the necessity of the study of original texts,
are distinguished by good sense, by extensive and (for the time) exact
scholarship, and by a breadth of view unparalleled, so far as we are
aware, by any other writer of his age. The treatise on the Greek
Grammar--which occupies a large portion of the incomplete "Compendium
Studii Philosophiae," and which is broken off in the middle by the
mutilation of the manuscript--contains, in addition to many curious
remarks illustrative of the learning of the period, much matter of
permanent interest to the student of language. The passages which we
have quoted in regard to the defects of the translations of Greek
authors show to how great a degree the study of Greek and other ancient
tongues had been neglected. Most of the scholars of the day contented
themselves with collecting the Greek words which they found interpreted
in the works of St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Origen, Martianus Capella,
Boethius, and a few other later Latin authors; and were satisfied to use
these interpretations without investigation of their exactness, or
without understanding their meaning. Hugo of Saint Victor, (Dante's "Ugo
di Sanvittore e qui con elli,") one of the most illustrious of Bacon's
predecessors, translates, for instance, _mechanica_ by _adulterina_, as
if it came from the Latin _moecha_, and derives _economica_ from
_oequus_, showing that he, like most other Western scholars, was
ignorant even of the Greek letters.[33] Michael Scot, in respect to
whose translations Bacon speaks with merited contempt, exhibits the
grossest ignorance, in his version from the Arabic of Aristotle's
History of Animals, for example, a passage in which Aristotle speaks of
taming the wildest animals, and says, "Beneficio enim mitescunt, veluti
crocodilorum genus afficitur erga sacerdotem a quo enratur ut alantur,"
("They become mild with kind treatment, as crocodiles toward the priest
who provides them with food,") is thus unintelligibly rendered by him:
"Genus autem karoluoz et hirdon habet pacem lehhium et domesticatur cum
illo, quoniam cogitat de suo cibo." [34] Such a medley makes it certain
that he knew neither Greek nor Arabic, and was willing to compound a
third language, as obscure to his readers as