familiarity with the phenomenon of which Dr. Rose
charitably supposed him to be ignorant. It was difficult
to believe that a man could describe at length a treatise
which he knew to be textually identical with another work
printed under a different name, and purporting to belong
to a different century, without a word of allusion to the
latter.[1] Dr. von Prantl added that he proposed to prove
from further evidence that William of Conches had used
the work of William of Hirschau. [In his second edition
Dr. von Prantl suppressed the pages about William of
Hirschau, and transplanted something from them into his
account of William of Conches, pp. 127 sq.]
The blunder, however, has survived, and Dr. von Prantl s theory was treated seriously by professor Wagenmann in the & Goeltinqischen qelehren Anzeiqen for 1865 and by Dr.
VI. Excursus on the Writings of William of Conches.
1. The number and attribution of the works of William of Conches have always been a standing puzzle in medieval bibliography. It has already been stated that the book which forms the subject of the preceding excursus, and which has been confused among the editions of the vener able Bede, William of Hirschau, and Honorius of Autun, is now generally ascribed to William of Conches. But it will be best to assume nothing about it until we have gathered sufficient evidence to warrant a certain conclu sion. All William s productions hang so closely together that the proof that one of them is his involves all the rest : and if the following investigation goes over a good deal of ground which has already been covered by previous bibliographers, it does not in all points arrive at the same results as they have done.
2. The book that may serve as a foundation for our inquiry is the Dialogus de Subslantiis physicis ante annos ducentos conjedus a Wilhelmo aneponymo philosopho, pub
- ↑ The work is described under William of Hirschau, Gesch. der Logik 2. 83-85; and under William of Conches, 2. 127 sq.
