terature
has long existed. He has only to turn to the end of Frith's book, and
he will find an alphabetical list of books, articles, and criticisms
on Bruno, filling no less than ten pages of small type. He might also
enlighten his ridiculous darkness by reading the fine chapter in
Lewes's _History of Philosophy_, Mr. Swinburne's two noble sonnets, and
Professor Tyndall's glowing eulogy of Bruno's scientific prescience in
the famous Belfast address. Perhaps Hallam, Schwegler, Hegel, Bunsen
and Cousin are too recondite for the Scotch libeller's perusal; but
he might, at any rate, look up Lewes, Swinburne and Tyndall, who are
probably accessible in his local Free Library.

What on earth, too, does he mean by Bruno's "great obscurity" when
he returned to Italy and fell into the jaws of the Inquisition? Every
scholar in that age was more or less obscure, for the multitude
was illiterate, and sovereigns and soldiers monopolised the public
attention. But as notoriety then went, Bruno was a famous figure. Proof
of this will be given presently. Meanwhile we may notice the cheap sneer
at Bruno as "a social and literary failure." Shelley was a literary
failure in his lifetime, but he is hardly so now; and if Bruno was poor
and unappreciated, Time has adjusted the balance, for after the lapse of
three centuries he is loved and hated by the rival parties of progress
and reaction.

Now let us disprove the Scotch libeller's statements as to "the
extreme obscurity in which Giordano Bruno lived and died." Bruno was so
"obscure" that he fled from Naples, and doffed his priest's raiment,
at the age of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, because his superiors were
proceeding against him for heresy, through an act of accusation
which comprised no less than one hundred and thirty counts. He was
so "obscure" that the rest of his life was a prolonged flight from
persecution. He was so "obscure" that the Calvinists hunted him out of
Geneva, whence he narrowly escaped with his life; the documents relating
to the proceedings against him being still preserved in the Genevan
archives. He was so "obscure" that he took a professorship at Toulouse,
and publicly lectured there to large audiences for more than a year. He
was so "obscure" that King Henry III. made him professor extraordinary
at Paris, and excused him from attending Mass. He was so "obscure" that
the learned doctors of the Sorbonne waxed wroth with him, and made
it obvious that his continued