POPULAR SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.*
ALEXANDER NECICHANI was a man of whom Roger Bacon, a generation later, testifies that " he wrote truely and usefully on many subjects, but yet cannot and ought not to be ranked by any just claim among authorities." His friends took a more liberal view of his merits, and declared in his epitaph that "wisdom suffered an eclipse and the sun was buried" by the decease of a teacher who had none to inherit his powers. The truth seems to be that Neckham, with a vague power of voluminous erudition, had a fatal want of judgment and a general taint of inaccuracy. He represents the popular rather than the scientific knowledge of his times. Perhaps he is all the more worth studying, as we may be sure that Churchmen and gentry generally were not above the level of Alexander Neckham. It is unfortunate that we know so little of his history, and that Mr. Wright's account of him in the present volume is neither full nor accurate. The precise story that he was foster brother to King • Akkaaelri Neckham ds Natures Rerun. Libri Duo, edited by T. Wright. Published for the Record COMMISSialU. London: Longman and Co. Richard, and therefore born in 1157, seems to us inconsistent with the chronology of the other statement accepted from Budceus, that he was a distinguished professor in the University of Paris as early as 1180. Matthew Paris tells us that he was master of Dunstable School in 1184, and then applied to Abbot Warren, of St. Alban's, to be promoted to the mastership of the school iu that town, not, as Mr. Wright puts it, to be admitted to the monas- tery. The abbot's punning answer, "Si bonus es, venias; sin nequanz, nequaquant," "If you are good, come ; but if naught, not," did not, as Mr. Wright supposes, offend Alexander Neck- ham, who answere.1 in the same spirit, and actually governed the school at St. Alban's during several years, resigning it finally to the abbot's nephew. We are inclined to refer his visit to Paris to the time subsequent to his resignation. Anyhow he had established a reputation for learning, and obtained Court preferment, perhaps on the accession of Richard L, when a strong religious impulse induced him to take the cowl. A letter, which Mr. Wright ignores, from -Peter of Blois to his " dear and very dear friend Alexander of St. Alban's," tells us that he began by giving up his income, and apparently by renouncing letters and "the honour of his' mastership." Probably he modified this resolution afterwards. A pasSage in one of his works alludes to the merry youth of Gloucester Abbey, as if Neckham had again plied his old trade of schoolmaster there ; and another passage speaks of the trouble caused him by the Court. This, however, may only have been connected with his election in 1213 as Abbot of Cirencester. Next year his friend Walter de Grey was made Bishop of Worcester, and Neckham is said to have accompanied him to Italy. Mr. Wright thinks the statement dis- proved by some lines in "The Praises of Divine Wisdom," which certainly seem to show both that he had entertained the idea and that he had given it up, chiefly, it would seem, from dread of the journey and a feeling that he was no longer young. He died in 1217. His secular works are a portion only of his writings. He speaks twice of the great importance attached in Paris to a know- ledge of the Scriptures, and as far as he was anything pre- eminently he was a Biblical commentator. It is, perhaps, an additional reasoa for connecting his stay in Paris with the later parts of his life.
On Neckham's scientific pretensions, if he can ever be said to have had any, we need not waste time. He is profoundly imbued with the physical philosophy of his times, and explains everything by elemental qualities—abstract principles which take flesh and form, as it were, in material forms. Every animal and even every mineral has certain distinctive qualities making up its individuality, and by which it assimilates or repels surrounding influences. The serpent having a natural affinity for poison, attracts tainted air to itself, and forms it into a solid secretion. Similarly the cock attracts hot humours, which cause a constant sensual irritation that finds expression in crowing. Neckham, however, is careful within limits, and though he knows that the cock's crest is the solidified fume of a humid brain, he con- fesses himself unable to account for the wattles. Sometimes he lapses into materialism, as in the passage where he opines that serpents' flesh if eaten will inspire wicked thoughts, from the taint of the old serpent's accursed nature. All this may seem very puerile, but it would not be difficult to match Neckham's worst absurdities from the popular sciences of the seventeenth century, and, perhaps, none of his beliefs is as foolish as spirit-rapping or psychometry. Moreover, the school- man is really trying to explain the spiritual rather than the visible order of the world, and his stories constantly end with a typical exposition. The wisdom of the sparrow-hawk in laying up a store of flesh before brooding time ought to teach us to seek out a place of retreat from the world, where we may strip and purify our flesh. The type, it will be seen, is sometimes reached by a rather circuitous route. Most wonderful of all is the lesson taught by the ass, who, being strong in his loins and weak in the chest, teaches us that we ought to "forget those things which are behind and reach forth unto those things which are before." The class of minds that delight in theological conundrums of this sort is so numerous among us even now, that the contempo- raries of Dr. Cumming ought to be easily able to do justice to Neckham. Fortunately, the mediaeval writer has some genuine merits. His stories about the habits of animals are often very curious, apart from their historical interest. His observations about the weasel, perhaps, show that it was still domesticated, as it had been among the ancients, to catch mice and in the place of cats, whom he only notices for their anatomical peculiarities. He speaks of the parrot and ape as favourites often to be found in great houses, though we cannot admit that his mention of one
rich man who kept a number of "noble" beasts and birds proves generally that "the medieval castles and great mansions were like so many menageries." The story of two apes who heaped wood round a chained bear that had devoured their young, and buried it alive, is quite within the limits of possibility, and adds another to the several curious instances in which instinct is scarcely to be distinguished from the power of combination. It is strange that Neckham's notice of the bear itself should be so meagre, as we know from Fitz-Stephen that it was baited, and among the incidents of the critical time between Magna Charts and the Barons' war, was a great tournament, at which the prize of a bear was given by a noble and patriotic lady. Another marvellous and perhaps scarcely a credible narrative is that of the do; which first killed two younger rivals in a fit of jealousy, and then made terms with its master by carrying off his infant child. Besides stories of this kind there are many incidental notices of mediaeval manners and appliances. Unhappily we cannot always tell where lie speaks of Europe generally and where only of England, and until there be some evidence of medieval hot-houve we abso- lutely decline to believe that " pomegranates, lemons, oranges. almonds, dates, and figs," were ever cultivated even in a " noble " English garden. On the other hand, the mention of glass win- dows and mirrors is as likely to be true of England as of France. Gambling in men and adultery in women are denounced as the most prominent vices of the time.
We regret that our praise of the editini of this interesting volume must be largely qualified. Mr. Wright is a gentleman of great reading, great inaccuracy, and with a fatal proneness to hasty conjecture. At pp. 29, 30 he misses the whole point of a story, where a scholar, condemned to death, was allowed to give three orders by saying " we are not told what the third order was." If he will glance at his own text again he will find that the third order was that the youth's accuser should be put to death, a command which effectually silenced all witnesses. Slight as is our reverence for Neckham's Latinity, we do not believe him to have made all the mistakes in sense and quantity which are to be found in the metrical treatise " De Laudibus Divine Sapienlie. " Sine" for " sive," p. 460, line iii.; "nitatur" for "di- tater," p. 416, line xvii. ; and "nephando" for " nefanda," p.408, line xxxiii., are obvious instances. Bat among the most curious ex- amples of hasty inference is a passage in,the preface. Neckham has said that carbo " after burning can be kindled again, and will even burn better the second time, and that as it lasts for ever those- who mark boundaries of land put some under the stones as evi- dence of their use and position. Mr. Wright, though lie sees that one quality ascribed is that of charcoal, translates " coal," adds, out of his own head, that it was put in half burned, and uses it as an argument against the sepulchral character of Druidical stones. The chapter, with the following one on lime, is- really taken from St. Augustine (De Civitale Del, lib. xxi., c. 4,) and refers, of course, to the terminal stones of the Romans, "carbo" meaning charcoal. As far as it proves anything about the significance of buried charcoal, it only shows one use to which it was applied in Roman Africa in the fourth and fifth centuries. Where Mr. Wright is strongest is in illustration, and his two or three pages about the early use of the magnet are much the most valuable part of his book. But his habit of mind is such that we never feel quite certain that his authorities will bear out his as- sertions. On the whole, we think more original work is better suited to him than the minute labours of an editor.
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