Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/324

306 extracts which Cousin gives represent with trivial variants the identical text of the corresponding passages in the Dragmaticon, and the order of the thirty-five chapters is exactly the same. The two copies end with the same words.

The Tertia Philosophia contains ten chapters of which Cousin has printed the first. This is simply a set of extracts from the Dragmaticon. I take the sentences as they follow. Mundum... extra quem nihil est will be found in the Dragmaticon, ii. p. 41; Nota quod tempore Martii... moritur, in lib. iv. pp. 123 sq.; Nota: dicit Constantinus... pessima, in lib. iv. pp. 127 sq.; Verbi gratia... iudica, in lib. iv. p. 128; Nota: in autumno... periclitantur homines, on the same page. Chapters ii.–ix. from their headings correspond to passages in the fourth and fifth books of the Dragmaticon; chapter x. to something near the beginning of the sixth. The extracts speak for themselves: the Tertia Philosophia is nothing more than a note-book of selections from the Dragmaticon.

Such are the m 'valuable fragments' from which later scholars have drawn. Beyond insignificant various readings they add nothing to what was already printed in a complete form in 1567. William's original works therefore (excluding his glosses) are now reduced to two: the early Philosophia and the corrected edition of the same, the Dragmaticon. Is there a third to be added?

9. The literary historians speak of a Magna de Naturis Philosophia by William of Conches as having been printed