Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 by Various
page 8 of 117 (06%)
page 8 of 117 (06%)
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And read, and read it o'er again,
I am loth to part from thence, Until I trace the poet's sense, And have the _Printer's errors_ found, In which the folios abound." PERIERGUS BIBLIOPHILUS. October. * * * * * Minor Notes. _Chaucer's Damascene._--Warton, in his account of the physicians who formed the Library of the Doctor of Physic, says of John Damascene that he was "Secretary to one of the caliphs, wrote in various sciences before the Arabians had entered Europe, and had seen the Grecian philosophers." (_History of English Poetry_, Price's ed., ii. 204.) Mr. Saunders, in his book entitled _Cabinet Pictures of English Life_, "Chaucer", after repeating the very words of this meagre account, adds, "He was, however, more famous for his religious than his medical writings; and obtained for his eloquence the name of the Golden-flowing" (p 183.) Now Mr. Saunders certainly, whatever Warton did, has confounded Damascenus, the physician, with Johannes Damascenus Chrysorrhoas, "the {323} last of the Greek Fathers," (Gibbon, iv. 472.) a voluminous writer on ecclesiastical subjects, but no physician, and therefore not at all likely to be found among the books of Chaucer's Doctour, "Whose studie was but litel on the Bible." |
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