203.)]

[Footnote 64: Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 438. The original
relates a pleasant tale of an ignorant, but harmless, practitioner.]

[Footnote 65: In the year 956, Sancho the Fat, king of Leon, was cured
by the physicians of Cordova, (Mariana, l. viii. c. 7, tom. i. p. 318.)]

[Footnote 66: The school of Salerno, and the introduction of the
Arabian sciences into Italy, are discussed with learning and judgment
by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. iii. p. 932-940) and
Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. p. 119-127.)]

[Footnote 67: See a good view of the progress of anatomy in Wotton,
(Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 208-256.) His reputation
has been unworthily depreciated by the wits in the controversy of Boyle
and Bentley.]

[Footnote 68: Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 275. Al Beithar, of
Malaga, their greatest botanist, had travelled into Africa, Persia, and
India.]

[Footnote 69: Dr. Watson, (Elements of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 17, &c.)
allows the original merit of the Arabians. Yet he quotes the modest
confession of the famous Geber of the ixth century, (D'Herbelot, p.
387,) that he had drawn most of his science, perhaps the transmutation
of metals, from the ancient sages. Whatever might be the origin or
extent of their knowledge, the arts of chemistry and alchemy appear to
have been known in Egypt at least three hundred years before Mahomet,
(Wotton's Reflections, p. 121-133. Pauw, Recherches sur les Egyptiens
et les Chinois, tom. i. p. 376-429.) * Note: Mr. Whewell (Hist. of
Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p. 336) rejects the claim of the Arabians as
inventors of the science of chemistry. "The formation and realization
of the notions of analysis and affinity were important steps in chemical
science; which, as I shall hereafter endeavor to show it remained for
the chemists of Europe to make at a much later period."--M.]

But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal benefits of a
familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the knowledge of antiquity,
the purity of taste, and the freedom of thought. Confident in the riches
of their native tongue, the Arabians disdained the study of any
foreign idiom. The Greek interpreters were chosen among their Christian
subjects; they formed their translations, sometimes on the original
text, more frequently perhaps on a Syriac version; and in the crowd of
astronomers and physicians, there is no example of a poet, an o