See J. Dacier, Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de Villoison (1806); Chardon de la Rochette, Mélanges de cruique et de philologie, iii. (1812); and especially the article by his friend and pupil E. Quatremère in Nouvelle biographie générale, xiii., based upon private information.

in the library of the brothers Valois (Valesius). On the restora- | generally named, and it is impossible to say whether she had tion of order, having returned to Paris, he accepted the pro- | anything to do with the quarrel. In the second, Catherine fessorship of modern Greek established by the government, de Vaucelles, of whom we hear not a little in the poems, is the and held it until it was transferred to the Collège de France declared cause of a scuffle in which Villon was so severely as the professorship of the ancient and modern Greek languages. beaten that, to escape ridicule, he fled to Angers, where he He died soon after his appointment, on the 25th of April 1805. had an uncle who was a monk. It was before leaving Paris Another work of some importance, Anecdota Graeca (1781), that he composed what is now known as the Petit testament, from the Paris and Venice libraries, contains the Ionia (violet of which we shall speak presently with the rest of his poems, garden) of the empress Eudocia, and several fragments of and which, it should be said, shows little or no such mark of Iamblichus, Porphyry, Procopius of Gaza, Choricius and the profound bitterness and regret for wasted life as does its in Greek grammarians. Materials for an exhaustive work con- every sense greater successor the Grand testament. Indeed, templated by him on ancient and modern Greece are preserved Villon's serious troubles were only beginning, for hitherto he in the royal library of Paris. had been rather injured than guilty. About Christmas-time the chapel of the college of Navarre was broken open, and five hundred gold crowns stolen. The robbery was not discovered till March 1457, and it was not till May that the police came on the track of a gang of student-robbers owing to the indiscretion of one of them, Guy Tabarie. A year more passed, when Tabarie, being arrested, turned king's evidence and accused Villon, who was then absent, of being the ring-leader, and of having gone to Angers, partly at least, to arrange for similar burglaries there. Villon, for this or some other crime, was sentenced to banishment: and he did not attempt to return to Paris. In fact for four years he was a wanderer; and he may have been, as each of his friends Regnier de Montigny and Colin des Cayeux certainly was, a member of a wandering thieves' gang. It is certain that at one time (in 1457), and probable that at more times than one, he was in correspondence with Charles d'Orléans, and it is likely that he resided, at any rate for some period, at that prince's court at Blois. He had also something to do with another prince of the blood, Jean of Bourbon, and traces are found of him in Poitou, in Dauphiné, &c. But at his next certain appearance he is again in trouble. He tells us that he had spent the summer of 1461 in the bishop's prison (bishops were fatal to Villon) of Meung. His crime is not known, but is supposed to have been church-robbing; and his enemy, or at least judge, was Thibault d'Aussigny, who held the see of Orleans. Villon owed his release to a general gaol-delivery at the accession of Louis XI., and became a free man again on the 2nd of October.

VILLON, FRANÇOIS (1431-c. 1463), French poet (whose real surname is a matter of much dispute, so that he is also called De Montcorbier and Des Loges and by other names, though in literature Villon is the sole term used), was born in 1431, and, as it seems, certainly at Paris. The singular poems called Testaments, which form his chief if not his only certain work, are largely autobiographical, though of course not fully trustworthy. But his frequent collisions with the law have left more certain records, which have of late been ransacked with extraordinary care by students, especially by M. Longnon. It appears that he was born of poor folk, that his father died in his youth, but that his mother, for whom he wrote one of his most famous ballades, was alive when her son was thirty years old. The very name Villon was stated, and that by no mean authority, the president Claude Fauchet, to be merely a common and not a proper noun, signifying "cheat" or "rascal"; but this seems to be a mistake. It is, however, certain that Villon was a person of loose life, and that he continued, long after there was any excuse for it in his years, the reckless way of living common among the wilder youth of the university of Paris. He appears to have derived his surname from a friend and benefactor named Guillaume de Villon, chaplain in the collegiate church of Saint-Benoît-leBestourné, and a professor of canon law, who took Villon into his house. The poet became a student in arts, no doubt early, perhaps at about twelve years of age, and took the degree of bachelor in 1449 and that of master in 1452. Between this year and 1455 nothing positive is known of him, except that nothing was known against him. Attempts have been made, in the usual fashion of conjectural biography, to fill up the gap with what a young graduate of Bohemian tendencies would, could, or might have done; but they are mainly futile. On the 5th of June 1455 the first important incident of his life that is known occurred. Being in the company of a priest named Giles and a girl named Isabeau, he met, in the rue Saint-Jacques, a certain Breton, Jean le Hardi, a master of arts, who was with a priest, Philippe Chermoye or Sermoise or Sermaise. A scuffle ensued; daggers were drawn, and Sermaise, who is accused of having threatened and attacked Villon and drawn the first blood, not only received a daggerthrust in return, but a blow from a stone which struck him down. Sermaise died of his wounds. Villon fled, and was sentenced to banishment-a sentence which was remitted in January 1456, the formal pardon being extant, strangely enough, in two different documents, in one of which the culprit is described as "François des Loges, autrement dit Villon," in the other as 'François de Montcorbier " That he is also said to have described himself to the barber-surgeon who dressed his wounds as Michel Mouton is less surprising, and hardly needs an addition to the list of his aliases. It should, however, be said that the documents relative to this affair confirm the date of his birth, by representing him as twentysix years old or thereabouts. By the end of 1456 he was again in trouble. In his first broil "la femme Isabeau" is only

"

It was now that he wrote the Grand testament, the work which has immortalized him. Although he was only thirty at the date (1461) of this composition (which is unmistakable, because given in the book itself), there seems to be no kind of aspiration towards a new life, nor even any hankering after the old. Nothing appears to be left him but regret, his very spirit has been worn out by excesses or sufferings or both. Even his good intentions must have been feeble, for in the autumn of 1462 we find him once more living in the cloisters of Saint-Benoit, and in November he was in the Châtelet for theft. In default of evidence the old charge of the college of Navarre was revived, and even a royal pardon did not bar the demand for restitution. Bail was, however, accepted, but Villon fell promptly into a street quarrel, was arrested, tortured and condemned to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to banishment by the parlement on the 5th of January 1463. The actual event is unknown: but from this time he disappears from history. Rabelais indeed tells two stories about him which have almost necessarily been dated later. One is a countryside anecdote of a trick supposed to have been played by the poet in his old age at Saint Maixent in Poitou, whither he had retired. The other, a coarse but pointed jest at the expense of England, is told as having been addressed by Villon to King Edward V during an exile in that country. Now, even if King Edward V were not evidently out of the question, a passage of the story refers to the well-known scholar and man of science, Thomas Linacre, as court physician to the king, and makes Villon mention him, whereas Linacre was only a young scholar, not merely at the time of Edward V's supposed murder, but at the extreme date (1489) which can be assigned to Villon's life. For in this year the first edition of the poet's work appeared, obviously not published by himself,

88

and with no sign in it of his having lived later than the date |
(1461) of the Grand testament. It would be easy to dismiss
these Rabelaisian mentions of Villon as mere humorous inven-
tions, if it were not that the author of Pantagruel was born
almost soon enough to have actually seen Villon if he had
lived to anything that could be called old age, that he almost
certainly must have known men who had known Villon, and
that the poet undoubtedly spent much time in Rabelais's own
ddy has
country on the banks of the lower Loire. buone
The obscurity, the unhappiness and the evil repute of Villon's
life would not be in themselves a reason for the minute investiga-
tion to which the events of that life have been subjected, and the
result of which has been summed up here. But his poetical work,
scanty as the certainly genuine part of it is, is of such extraordinary
quality, and marks such an epoch in the history of European litera-
ture, that he has been at all times an interesting figure, and, like all
very interesting figures, has been often praised for qualities quite
other than those which he really possessed. Boileau's famous verses,
in which Villon is extolled for having first known how to smooth
out the confused art of the old romancers, are indeed a prodigy of
blundering or ignorance or both. As far as art or the technical
part of poetry goes, Villon made not the slightest advance on his
predecessors, nor stood in any way in front of such contemporaries
as his patron Charles d'Orléans. His two Testaments (so called by
the application to them of a regular class-name of medieval poetry
and consisting of burlesque legacies to his acquaintances) are made
up of eight-line stanzas of eight-syllabled verses, varied in the case
of the Grand testament by the insertion of ballades and rondeaux
of very great beauty and interest, but not formally different in
any way from poems of the same kind for more than a century
past. What really distinguishes Villon is the intenser quality of
his poetical feeling and expression, and what is perhaps arrogantly
called the modern character of his subjects and thought. Medieval
poetry, with rare exceptions, and, with exceptions not quite so
rare, classical poetry, are distinguished by their lack of what is
now called the personal note. In Villon this note sounds, struck
with singular force and skill. Again, the simple joy of living which
distinguishes both periods the medieval, despite a common opinion,
scarcely less than the ancient-has disappeared. Even the riot
and rollicking of his earlier days are mentioned with far less relish
of remembrance than sense of their vanity. This sense of vanity,
indeed, not of the merely religious, but of the purely mundane and
even half-pagan kind, is Villon's most prominent characteristic. It
tinges his narrative, despite its burlesque bequests, all through;
it is the very keynote of his most famous and beautiful piece, the
Ballade des dames du temps jadis, with its refrain," Mais où sont les
neiges d'antan?" as well as of his most daring piece of realism,
the other ballade of La Grosse Margot, with its burden of hopeless
entanglement in shameless vice. It is nowhere more clearly
sounded than in the piece which ranks with these two at the head
of his work, the Regrets de la Belle Heaulmière, in which a woman,
once young and beautiful, now old and withered, laments her
lost charms. So it is almost throughout his poems, including the
grim Ballade des pendus, and hardly excluding the very beautiful
Ballade pour sa mère, with its description of sincere and humble
piety. It is in the profound melancholy which the dominance of
this note has thrown over Villon's work, and in the suitableness
of that melancholy to the temper of all generations since, that his
charm and power have consisted, though it is difficult to conceive
any time at which his poetical merit could be ignored.-

His certainly genuine poems consist of the two Testaments with
their codicil (the latter containing the Ballade des pendus, or, more
properly Epitaphe en forme de ballade, and some other pieces of a
similarly grim humour), a few miscellaneous poems, chiefly ballades,
and an extraordinary collection (called Le Jargon ou jobelin) of
poems in argot, the greater part of which is now totally unintelligible,
if, which may perhaps be doubted, it ever was otherwise. Besides
these, several poems of no inconsiderable interest are usually
printed with Villon's works, though they are certainly, or almost
certainly, not his. The chief are Les Repues Franches, a curious
series of verse stories of cheating tavern-keepers, &c., having some
common form
resemblance to those told of George Peele, but of a broader and
coarser humour. These, though in many cases
of the broader tale-kind, are not much later than his time, and evi-
dence to reputation if not to fact. Another of these spurious pieces
is the extremely amusing monologue of the Franc Archier de Bag-
nolet, in which one of the newly constituted archers or regularly
trained and paid soldiery, who were extremely unpopular in France,
is made to expose his own poltroonery. The third most important
piece of this kind is the Dialogue de Mallepaye et de Baillevent,
a dramatic conversation between two penniless spendthrifts, which
is not without merit. These poems, however, were never attributed
to Villon or printed with his works till far into the 16th century.
It has been said that the first dated edition of Villon is of 1489,
though some have held one or more than one undated copy to be
still earlier. Between the first, whenever it was, and 1542 there
were very numerous editions, the most famous being that (1533)

of Clément Marot, one of whose most honourable distinctions is
and the classicizing of the grand siècle put Villon rather out of
the care he took of his poetical predecessors. The Pléiade movement
favour, and he was not again reprinted till early in the 18th century,
when he attracted the attention of students of old French like Le
Duchat, Bernard de la Monnoye and Prosper Marchand. The
founded on MSS. (of which there are in Villon's case several, chiefly
first critical edition in the modern sense that is to say, an edition
at Paris and Stockholm) was that of the Abbé J. H. R. Promp
sault in 1832. The next was that of the "Bibliophile Jacob
(P. Lacroix) in the Bibliothèque Elzevirienne (Paris, 1854). The
Auguste Longnon (1892). This contains copies of the documents
standard edition is Euvres complètes de François Villon, by M.
on which the story of Villon's life is based, and a bibliography.
The late M. Marcel Schwob discovered new documents relating to
the poet, but died before he could complete his work, which was
sa vie et ses œuvres (1859); A. Longnon, Étude biographique (1877);
posthumously published in 1905. See also A. Campaux, F. Villon,
merit. A complete translation of Villon was written by Mr John
and especially G. Paris, François Villon (1901), a book of the first
Payne (1878) for the Villon Society. There are also translations
of individual poems in Mr Andrew Lang's Ballads and Lyrics
of Old France (1872) and in the works of D. G. Rossetti and Mr
Swinburne. Among critical studies of Villon may be mentioned
those by Sainte-Beuve in the Causeries du lundi, vol. xiv., by Théo-
phile Gautier in Grotesques, and by R. L. Stevenson in his Familiar
Studies of Men and Books (1882). An unedited ballad by Villon,
(G. SA.)
with another by an unknown poet of the same date, was published
by W. G. C. Bijvanck (1891) as Un poète inconnu. M. Pierre
d'Alheim published (1892) an edition of Le Jargon with a translation
into ordinary French.

VILNA, or WILNO, a Lithuanian government of West Russia, having the Polish government of Suwalki on the W., Kovno and Vitebsk on the N., and Minsk and Grodno on the E. and S. Area, 16,176 sq. m.; pop. (1906 estimate) 1,806,300. Vilna lies on the broad marshy swelling, dotted with lakes, which separates Poland from the province of East Prussia and stretches E.N.E. towards the Valdai Plateau.

Its highest parts are a little more than 1000 ft. above sea-level. On its western and eastern boundaries it is deeply trenched by the valleys of the Niemen and the S. Dvina. It is chiefly built up of Lower Tertiary deposits, but in the north Devonian sandstones appear on the surface. The Tertiary deposits consist of Eocene are partly of marine and partly of terrene origin. The whole is clay, slates, sandstones, limestones and chalk, with gypsum, and overlain with thick layers of Glacial boulder clay and post-Glacial deposits, containing remains of the mammoth and other extinct mammals. Interesting discoveries of Neolithic implements, especially of polished stone, and of implements belonging to the Bronze Age and the early years of the Christian epoch, have been made. Numerous lakes and marshes, partly covered with forests, and scarcely passable except when frozen, as well as wet meadowland, occupy a large area in the centre of the government. The Niemen, which flows along the southern and western borders for more than 200 m., is the chief artery of trade, and its importance in this respect is enhanced by its tributary the Viliya, which flows west for more than 200 m. through the central parts of Vilna, receiving many affluents on its course. Among the tributaries Napoleon's retreat in 1812; it flows in a marshy valley in the of the Niemen is the Berezina, which acquired renown during south-east. The S. Dvina for 50 m. of its course separates Vilna from Vitebsk. The climate of the government is only slightly tempered by its proximity to the Baltic Sea (January, 21°-8; July, 64° 5); the average temperature at the town of Vilna is only 43 5. But in winter the thermometer descends very low, a minimum of -30° F having been observed. The flora and fauna are interThe government is divided into seven districts, the chief towns mediate between those of Poland and middle Russia. of which are Vilna, Vileiki, Disna, Lida, Oshmyany, Zventsyany and Troki.

VILNA, or WILNO, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, 436 m. S.S.W. of St Petersburg, at the intersection of the railways from St Petersburg to Warsaw and from. Libau to the mouth of the Don. Pop. (1883) 93,760; (1900) 162,633. With its suburbs Antokol, Lukishki, Pogulyanka and Sarechye, it stands on and around a knot of hills (2450 ft.) at the confluence of the Vileika with the Viliya. Its streets are in part narrow and not very clean; but Vilna is an and the cathedral of St Stanislaus (1387, restored 1801), conold town, rich in historical associations. Its imperial palace, taining the silver sarcophagus of St Casimir and the tomb of Prince Vitoft, are fine buildings. There is a second cathedral, that of St Nicholas, built in 1596-1604; also several churches dating

from the 14th to the 16th centuries. The Ostra Brama chapel | was originally flanked by nine towers, which were cut down to contains an image of the Virgin greatly venerated by Orthodox its level between 1808 and 1811, and now serve as bastions. Greeks and Roman Catholics alike. The museum of antiquities has valuable historical collections. The ancient castle of the Jagellones is now a mass of ruins. The old university, founded in 1578, was restored (1803) by Alexander I., but has been closed since 1832 for political reasons; the only departments which remain in activity are the astronomical observatory and a medical academy. Vilna is an archiepiscopal see of the Orthodox Greek Church and an episcopal see of the Roman Catholic Church, and the headquarters of the governor-general of the Lithuanian provinces and of the III. army corps. The city possesses a botanical garden and a public library, and is adorned with statues to Catherine II. (1903), the poet Pushkin and Count M. Muraviev (1898). It is an important centre for trade in timber and grain, which are exported; and has theological seminaries, both Orthodox Greek and Roman Catholic, a military school, a normal school for teachers and professional schools. It is the seat of many scientific societies (geographical, medical and archaeological), and has a good antiquarian museum and a public library.

the governor, he was subjected to excruciating tortures and thrown into prison, where angels visited him, lighting his dungeon with celestial light and relieving his sufferings. His warders, having seen these wonders through the chinks of the wall, forthwith became Christians. He was afterwards brought out and laid upon a soft mattress in order that he might regain sufficient strength for new torments; but, while Dacianus was meditating punishment, the saint gently breathed his last. The tyrant exposed his body to wild beasts, but a raven miraculously descended and protected it. It was then thrown into the sea, but was cast up on the shore, recovered by a pious woman and buried outside Valencia. Prudentius devoted one of his hymns (Peristeph. v.) to St Vincent, and St Augustine attests that in his lifetime the festival of the saint was celebrated throughout the Christian world (Serm. 276, n. 4).

See T. Ruinart, Acta martyrum sincera (Amsterdam, 1713), pp. 364-66; Le Nain de Tillemont, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique (Paris, 1701, seq.), v. 215-225, 673-675- (H. DE.) VINCENT OF BEAUVAIS, or VINCENTIUS BELLOVACENSIS (c. 1190-c. 1264), the encyclopaedist of the middle ages, was probably a native of Beauvais. The exact dates of his birth and death are unknown. A tolerably old tradition, preserved by Louis a Valleoleti (c. 1413), gives the latter as 1264;2 but Tholomaeus de Luca, Vincent's younger contemporary (d. 1321), seems to reckon him as living during the pontificate of Gregory X. (1271-76). If we assume 1264 as the year of his death, the immense volume of his works forbids us to think he could have been born much later than 1190. Very little is known of his career. A plausible conjecture makes him enter the house of the Dominicans at Paris between 1215 and 1220, from which place a second conjecture carries him to the Dominican monastery founded at Beauvais in 1228-29. There is no evidence to show that the Vincent who was sub-prior of this foundation in 1246 is the encyclopaedist; nor indeed is it likely that a man of such abnormally studious habits could have found time to attend to the daily business routine of a monastic establishment. It is certain, however, that he at one time held the post of "reader " at the monastery of Royaumont (Mons Regalis), not far from Paris, on the Oise, founded by St Louis between 1228 and 1235. St Louis read the books that he compiled, and supplied the funds for procuring copies of such authors as he required for his compilations. Queen Margaret, her son Philip and her son-in-law, Theobald V. of Champagne and Navarre, are also named among those who urged him to the composition of his "little works," especially the De Institutione Principum. Though Vincent may well have been summoned to Royaumont even before 1240, there is no actual proof that he lived there before the return of Louis IX. and his wife from the Holy Land, early in the summer of 1254. But it is evident that he must have written his work De Eruditione Filiorum Regalium (where he styles himself as "Vincentius Belvacensis, de ordine praedicatorum, qualiscumque lector in monasterio de Regali Monte ") after this date and yet before January 1260, the approximate date of his Tractatus Consolatorius. When he wrote the latter work he must have left Royaumont, as he speaks of returning from the funeral of Prince Louis (15th January 1260) "ad nostram domum," a phrase which can hardly be explained otherwise than as referring to his own Dominican house, whether at Beauvais or elsewhere. The Speculum Majus, the great compendium of all the knowledge of the middle ages, as it left the pen of Vincent, seems to have consisted of three parts only, viz. the Speculum Naturale, Doctrinale and Historiale. Such, at least, is Echard's conclusion, derived from an examination of the carliest extant MSS. All the printed editions, however, consist of four parts, the additional one being entitled Speculum Morale. This has been clearly shown to be the production of a later hand, and is ascribed by Echard to the period between 1310 and 1325. In arrangement and style it is quite different from He is sometimes styled Vincentius Burgundus; but, according to M. Daunou, this appellation cannot be traced back further than the first half of the 15th century.

2

Apparently confirmed by the few enigmatical lines preserved by
Echard from his epitaph-

"Pertulit iste necem post annos mille ducentos,
Sexaginta decem sex habe, sex mihi retentos.'

"

contemporary writers.

the other three parts, and indeed it is mainly a compilation from Thomas Aquinas, Stephen de Bourbon, and two or three other The Speculum Naturale fills a bulky folio volume of 848 closely printed double-columned pages. It is divided into thirty-two books and 3718 chapters. It is a vast summary of all the natural history known to western Europe towards the middle of the 13th century. It is, as it were, the great temple of medieval science, whose floor and walls are inlaid with an enormous mosaic of skilfully arranged passages from Latin, Greek, Arabic, and even Hebrew authors. To each quotation, as he borrows it, Vincent prefixes the name of the book and author from whom it is taken, distinguishing, however, his own remarks by the word "actor." The Speculum Naturale is so constructed that the various subjects are dealt with according to the order of their creation; it is in fact a gigantic commentary on Genesis i. Thus book i. opens with an account of the Trinity and its relation to creation; then follows a similar series of chapters about angels, their attributes, powers, orders, &c., down to such minute points as their methods of communicating thought, on which matter the author decides, in his own person, that they have a kind of intelligible speech, and that with angels to think and to speak are not the same process. The whole book, in fact, deals with such things as were with God "in the beginning." Book ii. treats of our own world, of light, colour, the four elements, Lucifer and his fallen angels, thus corresponding in the main with the sensible world and the work of the first day. Books iii. and iv. deal with the phenomena of the heavens and of time, which is measured by the motions of the heavenly bodies, with the sky and all its wonders, fire, rain, thunder, dew, winds, &c. Books v.-xiv. treat of the sea and the dry land: they discourse of the seas, the ocean and the great rivers, agricultural operations, metals, precious stones, plants, herbs, with their seeds, grains and juices, trees wild and cultivated, their fruits and their saps. Under each species, where possible, Vincent gives a chapter on its use in medicine, and he adopts for the most part an alphabetical arrangement. In book vi. c. 7 he incidentally discusses what would become of a stone if it were dropped down a hole, pierced right through the earth, and, deals with astronomy-the moon, stars, and the zodiac, the sun, curiously enough, decides that it would stay in the centre. Book xv. the planets, the seasons and the calendar. Books xvi. and xvii. treat of fowls and fishes, mainly in alphabetical order and with reference to their medical qualities. Books xviii.-xxii. deal in a similar way with domesticated and wild animals, including the dog, serpents, bees and insects; they also include a general treatise on animal physiology spread over books xxi.-xxii. Books xxiii.-xxviii. discuss the psychology, physiology and anatomy of man, the five senses and their organs, sleep, dreams, ecstasy, memory, reason, &c. (xxxii.) is a summary of geography and history down to the year The remaining four books seem more or less supplementary; the last1250, when the book seems to have been given to the world, perhaps along with the Speculum Historiale and possibly an earlier form of the Speculum Doctrinale.

The Speculum Doctrinale, in seventeen books and 2374 chapters, is a summary of all the scholastic knowledge of the age and does not confine itself to natural history. It is intended to be a practical manual for the student and the official alike; and, to fulfil this object, it treats of the mechanic arts of life as well as the subtleties of the scholar, the duties of the prince and the tactics of the general. The first book, after defining philosophy, &c., gives a long Latin vocabulary of some 6000 or 7000 words. Grammar, logic, rhetoric and poetry are discussed in books ii. and iii., the latter including several well-known fables, such as the lion and the mouse. Book iv. treats of the virtues, each of which has two chapters of quotations allotted to it, one in prose and the other in verse. Book v. is of a somewhat similar nature. With book vi. we enter on the practical part of the work; it deals with the ars oeconomica, and gives directions for building, gardening, sowing, reaping, rearing cattle and tending vineyards; it includes also a kind of agricul tural almanac for each month in the year. Books vii.-ix. have reference to the ars politica: they contain rules for the education of a prince and a summary of the forms, terms and statutes of canonical, civil and criminal law. Book xi. is devoted to the artes mechanicae, viz. those of weavers, smiths, armourers, merchants, hunters, and even the general and the sailor. Books xii.-xiv. deal with medicine both in practice and in theory: they contain practical rules for the preservation of health according to the four seasons of the year, and treat of various diseases from fever to gout. Book xv. deals with physics and may be regarded as a summary of the Speculum Naturale. Book xvi. is given up to mathematics, under which head are included music, geometry, astronomy, astrology, weights and measures, and metaphysics. It is noteworthy that in this book Vincent shows a knowledge of the Arabic numerals, though he does not call them by this name. With him the unit is termed digitus "; when multiplied by ten it becomes the "articulus "; while the combination of the articulus and the digitus is the numerus compositus." In this chapter (xvi. 9), which is superscribed "actor," he clearly explains how the value of a number increases tenfold with every place it is moved to the left. He is even acquainted with the later invention of the "cifra " or cipher.