Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/325

in folio, without place or date, about the year 1474. * This is a statement which has grown up by several stages. Josias Simler in his Epitome of Gesner's Bibliotheca, published at Zurich in 1574, says on p. 254^a that William

scripsit philosophiam universalem lib. i. De naturis inferiorum, seu philosophiam primam lib. i. De superiorum naturis, seu philosophiam secundam lib. i. Sunt autem duo magna volumina, ante multos annos impressa.

Then ⁿ Possevinus spoke of a work by William super Opere sex Dierum, of which he had seen only the volume beginning with book xix. His description leaves no doubt that the work he mentions is the second volume of Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum naturale in the edition, s. l. aut a., presumed to have been printed at Strasburg in 1468^[1] or 1473 (not in that of Nuremberg, assigned to the year 1483, and also in folio). The first page of this volume begins book xix. (after the table of contents) with an extract from William of Conches, headed conspicuously: De opere sexte diei. Et primo de animalibus. Guillerinus de conchis. This is the very title which has been constantly repeated as William's by the ^o bibliographers, and which even M. Hauréau ^p once sought to restore to the catalogue of William's writings.^[2] In 1722 ^q Casimir Oudin connected the description given by Possevinus with the statement in the Epitome of Gesner.

Scripsit igitur Guillelmus de Conchis Magnam de naturis Philosophiam, desumptam ferme verbotenus ex Operibus veterum Ecclesiae Patrum.

1. It is attributed to Mentelin's press under this date by Robert Proctor, Index to early printed Books, No. 255; 1898 quarto. Both volumes are in the Bodleian library, Auct. Q sub fen. 4, 5.
2. In correcting this mistake (which is repeated by cardinal Pitra, Spicileg. Solesm. 2. 188, Paris 1855 quarto), M. Hauréau has fallen into a new one, in speaking, Singularités 236 sq., of the original as the Speculum historiale, in which what little is said about the sixth day of creation occurs in bk. ii. (misnumbered i.) ch. 38, and bk. xix. (opening with the history of Honorius) does not begin a volume.