Our author closes this courfe of the Ariftotelic philosophy with a fyftem of politics: not taken from Ariftotle's ge-, nuine treatise on that fubject, but from the first chapter of a fpurious compilation entitled, SECRETUM SECRETORUM ARISTOTELIS, addreffed under the name of Ariftotle to his pupil Alexander the Great, and printed at Bononia in the year 1516. A work, treated as genuine, and explained with a learned glofs, by Roger Bacon': and of the highest reputation in Gower's age, as it was transcribed, and illuftrated with a commentary, for the use of king Edward the third, by his chaplain Walter de Millemete, prebendary of the collegiate church of Glafeney in Cornwall. Under this head, our author takes an opportunity of giving advice to a weak yet amiable prince, his patron king Richard the second, on a fubject of the most difficult and delicate nature, with much freedom and dignity. It might alfo be proved, that Gower, through this detail of the sciences, copied in many other articles the SECRETUM SECRETORUM; which is a fort of an abridgement of the Ariftotelic philofophy, filled with many Arabian innovations and abfurdities, and enriched with an appendix concerning the choice of wines, phlebotomy, justice, public notaries, tournaments, and phyfiognomy, rather than from the Latin tranflations of Ariftotle. It is evident, that he copied from this work the doctrine of the three chemical

stones, mentioned above". That part of our author's aftronomy, in which he fpeaks of the magician Nectabanus instructing Alexander the Great, when a youth, in the knowledge of the fifteen ftars, and their refpective plants and precious ftones, appropriated to the operations of natural magic', feems to be borrowed from Callifthenes, the fabulous writer of the life of Alexander. Yet many wonderful inventions, which occur in this romance of Alexander, are also to be found in the SECRETUM SECRETORUM: particularly the fiction of Alexander's Stentorian horn, mentioned above, which was heard at the distance of fixty miles', and of which Kircher has given a curious representation in his PHOnurgia, copied from an antient picture of this gigantic inftrument, belonging to a manufcript of the SECRETUM SECRETORUM, preferved in the Vatican library".

It is pretended by the myftic writers, that Ariftotle in his old age reviewed his books, and digested his philosophy into one fyftem or body, which he fent, in the form of an epiftle, to Alexander. This is the fuppofititious tract of which I have been fpeaking; and it is thus described by Lydgate, who has tranflated a part of it.

Title of this boke LAPIS PHILOSOPHORUM,
Namyd alfo DE REGIMINE PRINCIPUM,
Of philofophres SECRETUM SECRETORUM.---

There is an Epiftle under the name of
Alexander the Great, De Lapide Philofopho-
rum, among the SCRIPTORES CHEMICI
artis auriferæ, Bafil. 1593. tom. i.
edit. 1610. See below, Notek.

And

h Or from fictitious books attributed to Alexander the Great, De feptem Herbis feptem Planetarum, &c. See Fabric. Bibl. Gr. tom. ii. p. 206. See fupr. vol. i. p. 129. And p. 223. Notes, f. ́ Callifthenes is mentioned twice in this poem, Lib. vii. f. 139. b. col. 2. And vi. f. 139. b. col. 2. See a chapter of Callisthenes and Alexander, in Lydgate's FALL OF PRINCES, B. iv. ch. 1. feq. fol. 99 edit. ut infr. 1 See fupr. vol. i. p. 132.

Pag. 140. See SECRETUM SECRETORUM, Bibl. Bodl. MSS. Bodl. D. i. 5. Cap. penult. lib. 5.

The

The which booke direct to the kyng
Alyfaundre, both in the werre and pees,
Lyke his request and royall commanding,
Fulle accomplishid by Ariftotiles.

Feeble of age.

Then follows a rubric "How Aristotile declareth to kynge Alyfandre of the ftonys "." It was early translated into French profe, and printed in English, "The SECRET OF " ARISTOTYLE, with the Governale of PriNCES and every "maner of estate, with rules for helth of body and foul, very gode to teche children to rede English, newly translated "out of French, and emprented by Robert and William "Copland, 1528." This work will occur again under Occleve and Lidgate. There is also another forgery confecrated with the name of Aristotle, and often quoted by the astrologers, which Gower might have used: it is DE REGIMINIBUS COELESTIBUS, which had been early translated from Arabic into Latin '.

Confidered in a general view, the CONFESSIO AMANTIS may be pronounced to be no unpleasing miscellany of those shorter tales which delighted the readers of the middle age. Most of these are now forgotten, together with the voluminous chronicles in which they were recorded. The book which appears to have accommodated our author with the largest quantity of materials in this article, was probably a chronicle entitled PANTHEON, or MEMORIA SECULORUM,

A Peace. • According to.

MSS. Bibl. Bodl. Laud. B. 24. K. 53. Part of this manufcript is printed by Afhmole, THEATR. CHEMIC. ut fupr. p. 397. See Julius Bartolocc. tom. i. Bibl. Rabbinic. p. 475. And Joann. a Lent, Theol. Judaic. p. 6.

Mém. de Litt. tom. xvii. p. 737.4-to. Octavo. A work called Ariftotle's FoLITIQUES, OF DISCOURSES OF GOVERN MENT, from the French of Louis le Roy,

compiled in Latin, partly in profe and partly in verse, by Godfrey of Viterbo, a chaplain and notary to three German emperours, who died in the year 1190. It commences, according to the established practice of the hiftorians of this age, with the creation of the world, and is brought down to the year 1186. It was first printed at Bafil, in the year 1569". The learned Muratori has not fcrupled to infert the five laft fections of this universal history in the seventh tome of his writers on Italy". The subject of this work, to use the laborious compiler's own expreffions, is the whole Old and New Testament; and all the emperours and kings, which have existed from the beginning of the world to his own times of whom the origin, end, names, and atchievements, are commemorated. The authors which our chronicler profeffes to have confulted for the gentile story, are only Jofephus, Dion Caffius, Strabo, Orofius, Hegefippus ', Suetonius, Solinus, and Julius Africanus: among which, not one of the purer Roman hiftorians occurs. Gower also seems to have used another chronicle written by the fame Godfrey, never printed, called SPECULUM REGUM, or the MIRROUR OF KINGS, which is almost as multifarious as the laft; containing a genealogy of all the potentates, Trojan and German, from Noah's flood to the reign of the emperour Henry the fixth, according to the chronicles of the venerable Bede, Eufebius, and Ambrofius.

See fup. vol. i. p. 351. Notes, h. And Jacob. Quetif. i. p. 740.

" In folio. Again, among Scriptor. de Reb. Germanicis, by Piftorius. Francof. fol. 1584. And Hanov. 1613. Laftly in a new edit. of Piftorius's collection by Struvius, Ratisbon. 1726. fol. There is a chronicle, I believe fometimes confounded with Godfrey's PANTHEON, called the PANTALEONE, from the creation to the year 1162, about which time it was compiled by the Benedictine monks of Saint

There are befides, two ancient

Pantaleon at Cologn, printed by Eccard,
with a German translation, in the first vo-
lume of SCRIPTORES MEDII Ævi, p.
683. 945. It was continued to the year
1237, by Godfridus, a Pantaleonist monk.
This continuation, which has confiderable
merit as a history, is extant in Freherus,
Rer. Germanicar. tom. i. edit. Struvian.
P. 335.

w P. 346. x In proem.
y See fupr. vol. 1. p. 217.
z See Lambecc. ii. p. 274-

collectors

collectors of marvellous and delectable occurrences to which our author is indebted, Caffiodorus and Ifidorus. These are mentioned as two of the chroniclers which Caxton used in compiling his CRONICLES OF ENGLAND'. Caffiodorus' wrote, at the command of the Gothic king Theodoric, a work named CHRONICON BREVE, commencing with our first parents, and deduced to the year 519, chiefly deduced from Eufebius's ecclefiaftic history, the chronicles of Profper and Jerom, and Aurelius Victor's Origin of the Roman nation. An Italian translation by Lodovico Dolce was printed in 1561". Ifidorus, called Hifpalenfis, cited by Davie and Chaucer, in the seventh century, framed from the fame author a CRONICON, from Adam to the time of the emperor Heraclius, first printed in the year 1477, and tranflated into Italian under the title of CRONICA D' ISIDORO, fo foon after as the year 1480'.

These comprehenfive fyftems of all facred and profane events, which in the middle ages multiplied to an exceffive degree, superfeded the use of the claffics and other established authors, whose materials they gave in a commodious abridgement, and in whose place, by selecting those stories only which fuited the taste of the times, they fubftituted a more agreeable kind of reading: nor was it by these means only, that they greatly contributed to retard the acquisition of those orna

Bale, apud Lewis's CAXTON, p. xvii. poft pref. And in the prologue to the FRUCTUS TEMPORUM, printed at St. Alban's in 1483, one of the authors is "Caffiodorus of the actys of emperours and "bifshoppys."

b See CONFES. AMANT. lib. vii. f. 156. b. col. 1. And our author to king Henry, Urry's Ch. p. 542. v. 330.

It has often been printed. See OPERA Caffiodori, duobus tomis, Rothomag. 1679. fol.

d Compendio di Sefto Ruffo, con la CRONICA DI CASSIODORO, de Fatti de Romani, &c. In Venezia, per il Giolto, 1561. 4-to.

See fupr. vol. i. p. 230, Notes, u.

f Stampata nel Friuli. It is fometimes called Chronica DE SEX MUNDI ÆTATIBUS, IMAGO MUNDI, and ABBREVIATIO TEMPORUM. It was continued by Ifidorus Pacenfis from 610 to 754. This continuation was printed in 1634, fol. Pampelon. Under the title "Epitome Imperatorum "vel Arabum Ephemeridos una cum Hif"paniæ Chronico."

Ifidore has likewife left a history or chronicle of the Goths, copied alfo by our author, from the year 176, to the death of king Sifebut in the year 628. It was early printed. See it in Grotius's COLLECTIO RERUM GOTHICARUM, pag. 707. Amst. 1655. 8-vo.