Note 23 — REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

This was Michael Scot the Wizard, who would seem to have deserved the place that Dante assigned to him in the Inferno, if not from his practice of forbidden arts, at least from his corruption of ancient learning in his so-called translations. Strange that he, of all the Schoolmen, should have been honored by being commemorated by the greatest poet of Italy and the greatest of his own land! In the Notes to the Lay of the Last Minstrel, his kinsman quotes the following lines concerning him from Satchell's poem on The Right Honorable Name of Scott:-- "His writing pen did seem to me to be Of hardened metal like steel or acumie; The volume of [his book] did seem so large to me As the Book of Martyrs and Turks Historie."