der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften at Vienna. This point being established it remains to apply the evidence thus obtained to clear up the other disputed facts in William's bibliography. One of these may be cursorily mentioned before we attack more serious difficulties.
In the Philosophia i. 15, quoted z above, there is a reference to glossulis nostris super Platonem, a reference which a Cousin easily discovered in a Paris manuscript of which he gives extracts. Knowing however only the 'Honorius' recension of the Philosophia, which is in its turn referred to as 'nostra Philosophia,' in the glosses in question, Cousin supposed that the latter were by Honorius of Autun, because he failed to observe the identity of the presumed Honorius with that printed as Bede; which latter b he rightly attributed to William of Conches.[1] The glosses themselves are on the Timaeus, and abound in silent allusions to William's other works. Some of the definitions, those, for instance, of c philosophia and ingenium, occur verbally in the d Philosophia or the e Dragmaticon;[2] but I am inclined to think that the quotation from the Dragmaticon is only apparent, and really comes from the Philosophia which f we have seen to be a fragment as we now have it. If this be so the Philosophia and the Timaeus glosses may have been written about the same time and naturally contain cross-references.
To this same early date are evidently also assignable a set of annotations on Boëthius's Consolation of Philosophy,[3] of which extracts have been printed by g Jourdain, and which h the editor claims to be the first real Commentary, as distinguished from formal glosses, with the partial exception of that of Bovo of Corvey, devoted to the favourite author of the middle ages.[4]
- ↑ In his later edition, entitled Fragments philosophiques 2. 355, Cousin still only goes so far as to say that the glosses on the Timaeus 'pourraient bien être de Guillaume de Conches.'
- ↑ See other examples in Hauréau, Singularités, 244.
- ↑ At least they contain a precise declaration of a doctrine which William may be presumed to have withdrawn with his other impeached errors. See the quotation, above, p. 151, n. 11.
- ↑ The manuscript which contains the glosses on the Timaeus includes a fragmentary commentary on Priscian, which M. Hauréau, pp. 244 sq., conjectures is also by William.
