… quern edidit thomas grecus', and 'aristoteles … in libro de speculo adurente'.
Perhaps I may note an inference which other modern scholars have drawn from Daniel's treatise, but which does not seem to me well grounded. Mr. S. A. Hirsch in his edition of Roger Bacon's Greek Grammar[1] follows Cardinal Gasquet[2] in observing concerning Daniel's preface: 'There can be no clearer testimony than this to the complete oblivion into which Greek had in those days fallen in western Europe, including England.' It may be granted that there was and had been little knowledge of the Greek language and grammar in twelfth-century England, but that is not what Daniel is talking about. Indeed, there seems to be no reason for believing Daniel himself to have been proficient either in Greek grammar or Greek literature. When he calls himself 'the only Greek among Romans', he means the only one interested in Greek philosophy and astronomy and in translations of the same made largely from the Arabic. But earlier in the same century we find Adelard of Bath, William of Conches, and Bernard Silvester interested either in Platonism or Arabic science and finding hearers; we also find the anonymous Sicilian translator of the Almagest from the Greek[3] and before him Burgundio of Pisa and other translators from the Greek. Therefore all that Daniel's doubtless exaggerated remark seems to indicate is that there was less interest in Greek philosophy in England after his return than before he went away.
The Earl of Warwick at Calais in 1460
Though there is no date of the year in the letter here printed, the reference is clearly to events at Calais in June 1460. The incidents described, though not of importance, are novel, and illustrate the vigour with which Warwick was acting. The earl of Warwick, who held the town in the Yorkist interest, had returned thither from Ireland at the beginning of June. The Friday in Whitsun week, on which day his carvels had their fight with the French, was 6 June. Fauconberg crossed over, probably on 21 June, not to London, but to capture Sandwich in preparation for Warwick's own landing five days later. I have not traced
- ↑ Edmund Nolan and S. A. Hirsch, The Greek Grammar of Roger Bacon, Cambridge, 1902, p. xlvii.
- ↑ Gasquet, 'English Scholarship in the Thirteenth Century', and 'English Biblical Criticism in the Thirteenth Century', in The Dublin Review, vol. 123 (1898), pp. 7 and 362.
- ↑ Haskins and Lockwood, 'The Sicilian Translators of the Twelfth Century and the First Latin Versions of Ptolemy's Almagest', in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, xxi. (1910) 75–102.
