Note 106 — ARABIAN NIGHTS’ (continued 29)

From such a story as this was probably borrowed the strange knight’s ‘Mirror of Glass,’ mentioned by Chaucer in the Squire’s Tale, brought with the Indian with the wonderful horse. The virtues of that mirror were, that men might see when any adversity befell the kingdom or the king, and who is a friend, or foe; and any lady might see if the object of her love were false. This mirror was carried up into the principal tower, and there fixed for use. Such an one Gower ascribes to Virgil, who set it upon a marble pillar at Rome for similar purposes; and with this corresponds Merlin’s Glassie Mirror, in Spenser, F. Q. ii. 24, and the globe shown to de Gama in the Lusiad. Warton’s History of English Poetry, i. 406, 407. Such a mirror is said by the oriental writers to have been possessed by Giamschid, one of their kings, by which he and his people knew natural and supernatural things. (Herbelot in voce.) Our great countryman, Roger Bacon, in his ‘Opus Majus,’ a work entirely founded on the Aristotelian and Arabian Philosophy, describes a variety of specula, and explains their construction and uses. This is the most curious and extraordinary part of Bacon’s book, written about 1270. His Optic Tube, in which he pretended to see future events, was famous in his time, and long afterwards, and chiefly contributed to give him the name of a magician. He asserts that ‘all things are known by perspective.’ A mirror in the head of a monstrous fowl showed the Mexicans their future invaders the Spaniards; and C. Agrippa, in such a mirror, showed the earl of Surrey, Geraldine sick on a couch. Warton, ib.