itself required the use of a microscope. The astronomical observations recorded required the use of a telescope magnifying seventy-five times. Bacon practised dissection, and made a microscopic examination of the reproductive system. Glancing over the range of Bacon's accomplishment, we may well concur in Professor Manly's conclusion that "in 1300 scientific thinking had advanced practically as far as it had three hundred years later, and that Roger Bacon was one of the most learned, clearest, and most remarkable thinkers of that remarkable epoch."

Nor was Bacon alone. He gives us a winning description of his fellow-scientist, Peter de Maricourt. This less distinguished but no less learned contemporary not only knew what the professors and the books had to say about medicine and alchemy, but he was even ashamed if any old woman or soldier or clodhopper knew something about the country which he did not know. He had learned metal-working, the arts of warfare, of hunting, and of agriculture, witchcraft and magic, illusions and the tricks of all conjurers. If he had wished to dwell with kings and princes, he could have easily found a patron. But rather than be hampered from the experiments in which lay his chief delight, he neglected all honor and riches.

Now what if Bacon and Peter de Maricourt had been left unmolested to carry on their work and to publish freely their findings and to form a group of enthusiasts in the study of natural science? In 1266 Pope Clement IV, asking Bacon to send him copies of his works, commands him to disregard the prohibition of any prelate or any constitution of his order, refers to matters fraught with great peril, and charges him in conclusion to carry out the instructions as secretly as possible. Obviously Bacon was already subjected to strict and powerful censorship as early as 1266. Is there any question that if he had been left unmuzzled and free, he and his associates would have shaken the whole intellectual fabric? That elaborate and ingenious cosmos built up largely by citations from authority would have shivered

and cracked, and great fragments of lath and plaster would have come flopping down. Most serious of all, the central prop, the principle of authority itself would have been weakened. By the time that Dante wrote the Divine Comedy fifty years later, the revolution in thought would have begun. Though the effect upon the poem could hardly have been as great as that of a pervasive Franciscan charity, yet it must have influenced considerably Dante's alert mind. Would not the celestial discourses have turned upon more permanent issues? Would the poet have accepted with such docility the dictum of Thomas Aquinas as the ultimate authority? Dante would scarcely have reached such heretical lengths as two thirteenth century sovereigns, Frederick II, who was credited with saying that the Virgin Birth was a superstition, and Alfonso the Wise, who boasted that if he had been of God's council when he made the world, he could have advised him better. But that Dante would have spoken a more intelligible philosophic language and dealt vitally with some vital issues, seems highly probable.

But as we have seen, the scientific movement was strangled at birth. Bacon, first censored, then imprisoned, contrived nevertheless to leave to the twentieth century an account of his discoveries. But for his own generation this official suppression was effective. It served notice upon any who might have been tempted to explore the arcana of Nature that they would not get far without falling into a man-trap. The result was that intellectually the world stood pat for two centuries. The fervid enthusiasm of the thirteenth century died. And the thought of a supreme poetic genius was sterilized.

It was not then the poor old anchorite pope, Celestine V, who made the great refusal, but the church of the thirteenth century. We yet may shudder in sympathy with Dante as he descends into "the woeful abyss that gathers in thunder of infinite wailings," and may thrill with him as in the Earthly Paradise he sees through a cloud of flowers the vision of Beatrice and turns to Virgil crying: "Less than a

drachm of blood remains in me that does not tremble; I recognize the signals of the ancient flame." Yet as a result of the church's great refusal, we shall forever miss in canto after canto what a modern essayist has called "that admiring pity which is the only emotion that can permanently endure under the eye of a questioning star."

HOMERIC REMINDERS OF THE BIBLE

BY DANIEL A. PENICK

My first impressions about Homeric reminders of the Bible were gained largely from the use of the prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey done by Lang, Leaf, and Myers for the former, and Butcher and Lang for the latter, and were concerned almost wholly with subject matter. As the number of reminding characters and incidents increased, a similarity of principles demanded attention. The thought of any dependence of either upon the other having been dismissed, because I had been taught from my research infancy that such dependence was impossible and unscholarly, I paid little attention to a serious examination of the reminders. Repeated readings, however, of these two translations for a course known as "Greek Poetry in English Translation" would not allow me to forget the earlier impressions. I was almost persuaded that I had discovered something, when a cursory examination of Homeric literature disclosed the sad but comforting fact that others had been as unscientific as I,-comforting because I was not the only pipe dreamer, sad because they had done it first. I must, however, insist that my discoveries were my own, even if I cannot be allowed to claim sufficient priority to enable me to present my material for a doctor's dissertation.

No attempt is made at this time to treat the basis of analogy, if analogy be established. Likewise is it impossible in this brief paper to do more than indicate something of the scope of the suggested resemblances. By way of illustration, one or two classes of reminders are discussed in more or less detail. Whether the resemblances are real or only imaginary, they are interesting, and in this fact alone lies the excuse for this article.

Seymour's Introduction to Life in the Homeric Age has the following paragraph: "The reader of the present work

should not be surprised at the large number of illustrations drawn from the Old Testament. In spite of all its marked differences, no other book depicts a civilization which has so much in common with that of the Homeric Greeks in both small and important matters. The relation of Abraham and Lot to their followers, though they were leading a nomadic life, was much like that of Odysseus and Menelaus to their men. The challenge of Goliath of Gath is a fair parallel to those of the Trojans, Paris and Hector. The women ground at the mill and pounded grain with the pestle alike in Greece and in the land of Canaan. Even in the matter of religious ceremonies, particularly in their burnt sacrifices and drink-offerings, the two peoples had much in common. The Homeric Greeks, like their contemporaries in Palestine in the time of the judges or under David and Solomon, had much noble poetry, many lofty sentiments, considerable wealth and splendour, together with many customs and principles which appear to us rude and crude.'1

The fact that Seymour's analogies are incidental does not make them any less numerous or less real or less interesting. He mentions more than seventy-five specific topics in regard to which he finds Homer and the Bible suggestive of each other and in most cases there are numerous references to either Homer or the Bible or to both. There are no fewer than one hundred and seventy-four Homeric references, and the Biblical references are almost if not quite as numerous.

In Fleckeisen's Jahrbücher für Philologie M. Krenkel has approximately three hundred Bible parallels to Homer. He has one hundred and seventy-five references, more or less, to Homer. These cross references cover about one hundred subjects, many of which correspond to those of Seymour. Krenkel refers to a work by Friedrich Burchard Köster3 as Erlauterungender h. Schrift alten und neuen Testaments aus

1p. 43.

2137 (1888), pp. 15-44. Kiel, 1833.