October.
* * * * *
Minor Notes.
_Chaucer's Damascene._--Warton, in his account of the physicians who formed
the Library of the Doctor of Physic, says of John Damascene that he was
"Secretary to one of the caliphs, wrote in various sciences before the
Arabians had entered Europe, and had seen the Grecian philosophers."
(_History of English Poetry_, Price's ed., ii. 204.) Mr. Saunders, in his
book entitled _Cabinet Pictures of English Life_, "Chaucer", after
repeating the very words of this meagre account, adds, "He was, however,
more famous for his religious than his medical writings; and obtained for
his eloquence the name of the Golden-flowing" (p 183.) Now Mr. Saunders
certainly, whatever Warton did, has confounded Damascenus, the physician,
with Johannes Damascenus Chrysorrhoas, "the {323} last of the Greek
Fathers," (Gibbon, iv. 472.) a voluminous writer on ecclesiastical
subjects, but no physician, and therefore not at all likely to be found
among the books of Chaucer's Doctour,
"Whose studie was but litel on the Bible."
Chaucer's _Damascene_ is the author of _Aphorismorum Liber_, and of
_Medicinæ Therapeuticæ_, libri vii. Some suppose him to have lived in the
ninth, others in the eleventh century, A.D.; and this is about all that is
known about him. (See _Biographie Universelle_, s.v.)