SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading us colic. such Books of Ike 'reek as have not inn reserved for review in other forms.] The Scientific Knowledge of Dante. By D. Lloyd Roberts. (Manchester University Press : for Private Circulation.)— Dante was steeped in the learning of his age, when it was still possible for a man to take all knowledge for his province. In this lecture, delivered before the Manchester Dante Society, Dr. Lloyd Roberts reviews the poet's scientific attainments. Perhaps he is a little inclined to exaggerate these : we can hardly agree that Dante " adumbrated . . . Harvey's wondrous discovery of the circulation of the blood" on the ground that he spoke of fear as continuing "in the lake of the heart," or that he was "one of the forerunners of the art of aeronautics" because he described the sensation of the wind in his face when he and Virgil were executing a spiral vol plaid on Geryon's back. Dante, as we know, enrolled himself in the Guild of Apothecaries at Florence, and Dr. Lloyd Roberts is convinced "that if the poet had devoted himself wholly to medical science his name would have come down to us as one of its greatest exponents." It is better for the world that he remained a mere poet.
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