collecting materials for his admirable edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, wrote about half a century afterwards a series of poems on the principal events of the reign of Edward III., which have been very vehemently lauded by the learned but eccentric Mr Ritson, to whom the world is indebted for their first appearance from the press. He writes with very considerable vigour and animation, and has upon the whole a good deal more about him of the true poet than any of his predecessors.

John Duns Scotus.

BORN A. D. 1266.-died A. D. 1308.

THIS famous scholastic doctor was born towards the close of the thirteenth century, in the north of England, or, as some are of opinion, in Scotland. At this time, the Aristotelian logic enjoyed very great popularity and authority. It was also the age in which the several recently established orders of mendicant friars were in the very height of their reputation. These were four in number, the Dominicans, or Black friars, called also Friars preachers; the Carmelites or White friars; the Augustins, or Grey friars, as they were called, from the colour of their principal robe; and the Franciscans, also called Grey friars, for the same reasons, or Cordeliers, in allusion to the cord which they wore as a belt, or Minorites, that is inferiors, a title they were fond of giving themselves, in affectation of extreme humility. Of the four orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans were by far the most celebrated. The different associations of mendicant friars took their rise about the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the establishments of the regular monks, in consequence of the large revenues of which they had become possessed, having generally fallen into a state of extreme disorder, dissoluteness, and inefficiency, the church felt the necessity of endeavouring to keep alive the attachment of the people, by means of a new description of religious labourers, constituted upon principles which would insure in them at least an extraordinary activity, and all that show of zeal, by which the popular applause is most apt to be gained. The mendicant orders were accordingly established, and the experiment was attended with even more than the expected success. The new ascetics neglected nothing by which they might draw to themselves the favour and reverence of the multitude; and among the mear's to which they resorted for this purpose, none produced a more remarkable effect than the ardour with which they devoted themselves to literature, and the celebrity which, in consequence, they speedily acquired, for their skill in the frivolous pursuits then known by the name of learning. They had begun, in particular, even before the time of Duns Scotus, to apply themselves with great eagerness to the study of that disputatious philosophy which had been raised on the basis of the logical and metaphysical writings of Aristotle; and an active rivalry had already arisen, in regard to their respective pretensions in this department of erudition, between the Franciscans and the Dominicans,the former counting among their number the seraphic Doctor Bonaventura, and the irrefragable Alexander Hales,-while the latter boasted

of their Albert the great, and the angelical St Thomas Aquinas ; these strange epithets being titles which had been solemnly conferred in some cases by the universities, along with their degrees, upon the individuals in question. It was destined for Duns, however, to become eventually the greatest glory of the Franciscans, among whom he was first introduced, if we may believe the story that is told by two brethren of the order, who found him tending his father's cows, and were so much struck with his intelligence, that they requested his father to allow them to take him along with them to their monastery in the neighbourhood, that so promising a genius might be duly reared up to the service of the church. The proof, indeed, which the legend informs us he gave of his capacity, was no mean one; for the good friars, it seems, finding the boy quite destitute of religious knowledge, and having thereupon resolved to attempt teaching him the Lord's Prayer, were confounded by his repeating the whole to them, without a blunder, after only once hearing it. We are not sure, however, that this anecdote is quite reconcileable with another still more marvellous, which is also told respecting the youth of this great doctor: namely, that he was originally very stupid and slow of apprehension, a circumstance which gave him great distress, till, having one day taken it into his head to address himself very earnestly in prayer, upon the subject, to the Virgin Mary, she condescended to appear, and enter into conversation with him, promising that she would wonderfully illuminate his understanding, if he would only engage to devote his powers to her service; upon consenting to which condition, he found himself accordingly endowed, on the instant, with the rare talents of which his future career gave such splendid proof. Such of the biographers of Scotus as are for our believing both of these stories, hold that the adventure of the interview with the Virgin must have happened previously to that with the friars; while those who are willing to give up one of them, to save the credit of the other, pass over in silence the proof young Duns is said to have afforded of his extraordinary memory; the anecdote of his obligations to, and compact with, the Virgin, being one they will by no means part with. Indeed this notion of his having enjoyed the peculiar favour of Mary colours nearly the whole narrative of his life, as commonly told. After remaining for some time in the Franciscan monastery-the locality of which, we may remark, by the by, is not very clearly settled, it being doubtful whether it was in England, Scotland, or Ireland—he was removed to the university of Oxford. Here he soon distinguished himself by his ardour and proficiency in all the studies of the place, but particularly by so unrivalled a skill in logical and metaphysical quibbling, that he gained for himself the name of the Sophist, and was by many, we are told, already esteemed a greater philosopher than Aristotle himself. After a time he commenced the public teaching of his favourite sciences, and speedily attained such extraordinary celebrity, that pupils absolutely flocked to him in mobs. We are assured by various authorities, that his lectures used to be attended by thirty thousand auditors! But in regard to this matter, there is probably a great deal of truth in Anthony Wood's explanation, who tells us, that of this immense multitude many were merely "varlets, who, pretending to be scholars,

An anecdote very similar to this, we may just remark, is also told of Albertus Magnus, who flourished a short time before Duns Scotus.

shuffled themselves in, and did act much villany in the university, by thieving," and other irregularities which he names; adding, "they lived under no discipline, neither had any tutors, but only for fashion's sake, would sometimes thrust themselves into the schools at ordinary lectures, and, when they went to perform any mischief, then would be accounted scholars, that so they might free themselves from the jurisdiction of the burghers." The number of students at this time at the university of Bologna, is stated to have been ten thousand; and, in 1453, a contem porary writer relates that there were twenty-five thousand at that of Paris.

The most memorable event in the life of Duns, took place on occasion of a visit he made to Paris, during the period of his residence at Oxford. Remembering, we may suppose, his promise to the Virgin, in whose honour he had already written doughtily and largely, he determined to make his appearance in the French capital, to defend against all oppugners the celebrated article of faith touching her alleged freedom from original sin, of which he has sometimes even been accounted the first deviser and promulgator. A day having been accordingly appointed, for a public disputation on the subject, before the university, Duns presented himself; and never was known any thing more admirable than the skill with which he encountered alone a host of opponents, or more splendid than his triumph. He allowed the adverse party, in the first place, to state their case without interruption; and it may give the reader some idea of the fertility of the scholastic logic, when he is informed that, upon this occasion, the single point which had to be made out was supported, on the part of these ingenious reasoners, by just two hundred arguments! At last, when they had confessed themselves, as well they might, after such an expenditure, fairly exhausted, the redoubtable Duns, nothing dismayed, rose in his turn; and, wonderful as it may seem, is said to have actually gone over, without ever hesitating for a moment, the whole two hundred arguments, in the order in which they had been stated, and, when he had completely demolished them, one after another, to have concluded with such a cloud of altogether irrefutable ones, in favour of his own side of the question, that all present were converted to his opinion, and he was unanimously declared to have placed the matter for ever beyond the reach of controversy. He is described by an eye-witness, Pelbartus a Temeswar, to have, on this occasion, "snapped the knottiest syllogisms, as Sampson did the bonds of Delilah." He was immediately graduated by the title of the subtle doctor;' and an order of the university was passed, that no one should in future be admitted to any degree whatever, without previously swearing to defend the doctrine which had thus been so triumphantly established. Such, at least, is the story told by the different writers, who, in more recent times, have attempted to collect the particulars of the life of Scotus. But it is not a little curious that in the subtle doctor's own commentary on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, we find him delivering his opinion upon the subject in ques tion, in terms very different from what this statement would lead us to expect. Instead of any decisive assertion of the doctrine which he has the credit of having so victoriously vindicated, his language here is that of ignorance and doubt. "The probability," he says, "is rather in favour of the Virgin having been conceived without original sin, but the

author determines nothing: "Conclusio est negativa, si placet, nihil enim determinat auctor." (p. 262). What makes Duns's hesitation on this occasion the more remarkable is, that it is, as far as we have observed, the only instance in which he has the modesty to confess himself in doubt throughout the volume. The learned Luke Wadding, a Spanish Franciscan, but an Irishman by birth, who writes a life of Duns Scotus, tells us, with all imaginable gravity, that, as Duns was proceeding along one of the streets of Paris, on his way to this famous disputation, he came up to a certain image of the Virgin, and kneeling down before it, begged for aid and support from his celestial patroness. in the combat he was about to wage in her cause, upon which the image actually answered him by nodding its head. A fact, adds the historian, which it is impossible to doubt, since any one who will take the trouble of going to Paris, may behold the image with its head still inclined, in perpetual commemoration and testimony of the miracle! One wonders to read such a passage as this, in a work written about the middle of the seventeenth century; but the same tale is repeated, with equal gravity, even by subsequent writers.2

Wadding, by-the-by, labours hard to prove Scotus to have been an Irishman, a theory which his common designation by no means refutes, since the name of Scotland was at one time given to Ireland, as well as to the northern part of Britain. He acknowledges, however, that the matter is by no means perfectly clear, quaintly remarking, that "the subtlety of Duns may be said to have commenced even before his birth, since no one has yet been able to track him to his first appearance in our world." An old English translator of one of his smaller works, who contends strenuously that he was born south of the Tweed, advances a theory of his own in explanation of the epithet Scotus, or Scot, which he maintains is merely a corruption of the word Cot, the name' being originally and properly Duns-cot, after some village so called in Northumberland. This writer dedicates his work to a Mr Dunce, a north-county squire, whom he affirms to be of the same family that produced the subtle doctor. We do not know whether any remnant of the race is still to be found in those parts. While upon this subject, too, we may mention that Duns Scotus is supposed by many to have the honour of being the true parent of the common English dunce, the synonyme of dolt or blockhead, the term having been applied to his followers, the Scotists, as an epithet of opprobrium, by their opponents, the Thomists, or disciples of St Thomas Aquinas. Some time after this disputation, Duns took a final leave of Oxford, and settled at Paris, continuing his duties as a professor in the university there, and teaching with undiminished applause. When he had resided, however, in that city only about a year, as he was one day walking, attended by several of his pupils, in a field in the neighbourhood, a letter was put into his hands from the general or principal of the religious order to which he belonged, commanding his presence immediately at Cologne. Without even returning to the city to collect his books, or bid adieu to his friends, he set out on his journey on the instant. It was in his usual mendicant attire, barefooted, and in rags, and with that cord about his waist which, as one of the poets of the

See Life by Colganus, Antwerp, 1655.

'Idiota's, or Duns' Contemplations of Divine Love. Paris, 1662.

day expresses it, was his kingly crown, that this extraordinary genius approached the gates of Cologne, where he was met by a solemn procession of the clergy and the magistrates, attended by an immense concourse of people of all degrees, and, being placed in a triumphal chariot, was welcomed to the city, even, says one of his historians, as Plato of old was welcomed to Syracuse by his royal friend Dionysius. At Cologne, as formerly at Oxford and Paris, pupils crowded around him from all parts; but his brilliant career was now rapidly drawing to a close. One day after he had been exerting himself in teaching, he was suddenly struck with apoplexy, which proved fatal in the course of a few hours; and thus perished, in his forty-second, or, as other accounts say, in his thirty-fourth year, the man who had, even at that early period of life, already attained to be universally reputed, both for genius, learning, and piety, the wonder and chief glory of his age. Wadding has published an edition of the works of Duns Scotus, which extends to twelve thick volumes in folio-an amazing mass of literary labour to have been accomplished in so short a life. His admirers extol his genius as of unrivalled acuteness; and there can be no question that, both for talent and erudition, he was one of the most remarkable of that very remarkable class of men to which he belongs. He lived during the very height and fury of the scholastic mania; and his works, accordingly, present a picture of the disputatious temper of the philosophy which he cultivated in all its extravagance. But still there is the inspiration of an active and penetrating intellect in many of his conceptions, which shows what he might have performed, had he been born in a more fortunate age. As it was, not only his contemporaries, but many succeeding generations, looked upon him as one of the greatest men that had ever appeared. Many of his followers, in the church especially, although he was never canonized, regarded his memory with the veneration usually paid to that of a saint; and Baptista Mantuanus, in one of his epigrams, goes so far as to say of him, that, for his services to the faith, both religion and God himself are debtors to Scotus. A complete copy of the twelve volumes of his works, published by Wadding, is an extremely rare collection.

William Occam.

BORN CIRC. A. D. 1280.-died a. d. 1350.

THE most distinguished of the disciples of Scotus was William Occam, born at Ockham in Surrey about the year 1280. While yet a youth he entered into the order of St Francis, and prosecuted his studies with great vigour and success, first at Oxford, and afterwards at Paris. In both these universities, he enjoyed the opportunity of hearing the scholastic prelections of Scotus, many of whose opinions he retained through life, and amongst others, the position which makes the distinction of right from wrong depend on the will of the supreme Being. But he by no means reposed implicit faith in all the doctrines of his illustrious master. On the contrary, he expressly avowed his determination to reject

Bruckeri Hist. Phil. iii. 846.