Complaining of the want of books, Bacon says,—­“The books on philosophy by Aristotle and Avicenna, by Seneca and Tully and others, cannot be had except at great cost, both because the chief of them are not translated into Latin, and because of others not a copy is to be found in public schools of learning or elsewhere.  For instance, the most excellent books of Tully De Republica are nowhere to be found, so far as I can hear, and I have been eager in the search for them in various parts of the world and with various agents.  It is the same with many other of his books.  The books of Seneca also, the flowers of which I have copied out for your Beatitude, I was never able to find till about the time of your mandate, although I had been diligent in seeking for them for twenty years and more."[18] Again, speaking of the corruption of translations, so that they are often unintelligible, as is especially the case with the books of Aristotle, he says that “there are not four Latins [that is, Western scholars] who know the grammar of the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Arabians; for I am well acquainted with them, and have made diligent inquiry both here and beyond the sea, and have labored much in these things.  There are many, indeed, who can speak Greek and Arabic and Hebrew, but scarcely any who know the principles of the grammar so as to teach it, for I have tried very many."[19]

In his treatise entitled “Compendium Studii Philosophiae,” which is printed in this volume 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