Even had we not been able to make such an appeal to the use and wont of the times in vindication of Scot’s method of work, might not a little consideration of what was natural and inevitable in such a task have served to explain what Bacon found so objectionable? The scholars from distant lands who came to Toledo could not, as a rule, afford to spend much time there, and were anxious to use every moment of their stay to the best advantage. They naturally therefore secured on their arrival the services of a Jew or Moor for the purpose of learning Arabic. Needing a knowledge of that tongue not so much in its colloquial as its literary dialect, they must have been engaged from the first in the study of a text rather than in conversing with their teachers. What then could have been more suitable than that these scholars should begin by attacking the very books of which they desired to furnish a Latin version? This method had the merit of gaining two objects at once. The students learned to read Arabic, following the text as it was translated to them by the interpreter. Writing in Latin from his vernacular, and polishing as they wrote, they engaged from the day of their arrival in the very work of translation which had brought them to Spain. It is plain too that any modification of this method which the case of Michael Scot might demand would depend on the knowledge of Arabic he already possessed. It must therefore have been such as left him more and not less credit in the result of his labours than that which commonly belonged to the Christian translators in Toledo.