COTUS ERIGENA; the most facetious wag of his times, notwithstanding
his sirname of the _Wise_. "While Great Britain (says Bale) was a prey
to intestine wars, our philosopher was travelling quietly abroad
amidst the academic bowers of Greece;"[236] and there I suppose he
acquired, with his knowledge of the Greek language, a taste for
book-collecting and punning.[237] He was in truth a marvellous man; as
we may gather from the eulogy of him by Brucker.[238]

[Footnote 236: Freely translated from his _Script. Brytan.
Illustr._, p. 124.]

[Footnote 237: Scot's celebrated reply to his patron and
admirer, Charles the Bald, was first made a popular story, I
believe, among the "wise speeches" in _Camden's Remaines_,
where it is thus told: "Johannes Erigena, surnamed Scotus, a
man renowned for learning, sitting at the table, in respect
of his learning, with Charles the Bauld, Emperor and King of
France, behaved himselfe as a slovenly scholler, nothing
courtly; whereupon the Emperor asked him merrily, _Quid
interest inter Scotum et Sotum_? (what is there between a
Scot and a Sot?) He merrily, but yet malapertly answered,
'_Mensa_'--(the table): as though the emperor were the Sot
and he the Scot." p. 236. _Roger Hoveden_ is quoted as the
authority; but one would like to know where Hoveden got his
information, if Scotus has not mentioned the anecdote in his
own works? Since Camden's time, this facetious story has
been told by almost every historian and annalist.]

[Footnote 238: _Hist. Philosoph._, tom. 3, 616: as referred
to and quoted by Dr. Henry; whose account of our
book-champion, although less valuable than Mackenzie's, is
exceedingly interesting.]

In his celebrated work upon predestination, he maintained that
"material fire is no part of the torments of the damned;"[239] a very
singular notion in those times of frightful superstition, when the
minds of men were harrowed into despair by descriptions of hell's
torments--and I notice it here merely because I should like to be
informed in what curious book the said John Scotus Erigena acquired
the said notion? Let us now proceed to ALFRED; whose bust, I see,
adorns that department of Lorenzo's library which is devoted to
English History.

[Footnote 239: "He endeavours to prove, in his logical way,
that the torments of the damned are mere privations of t