[57] Among the MSS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, are letters of Innocent IV. to the Archdeacon of Canterbury (and others), “Ut (Episc. Linc.) nepotem suum Fredericum (of Lavagna) in canonicatum in ecclesia Lincolniensi, proximè vacaturum, inducat, et Resp. Episc. Linc. in quâ probat talem provisionem esse contra voluntatem et cultus Dei; ideoque negat se concessurum.” I see that the authenticity of some of these letters has been called in question by M. Charles Jourdain, but in any case they are contemporary, and consonant with Robert’s acts and character. Moreover, two years before, Innocent had suspended the bishop for refusing to induct an Italian, ignorant of English, to a rich benefice in his diocese. I find that Dr Luard, in 1880, had no doubts of the authenticity of these letters (Encycl. Brit. XI. 211). Mons. Charles Jourdain’s collected essays, in which he discusses their authenticity, were published posthumously in 1888; but his Editor makes the slovenly omission of the dates and places of the first publications of the several essays. [58] There were three ways of access to the Greek texts of Aristotle: by the Arab-latin translations; by translations into Latin direct from the Greek; and by the use of the Greek text itself. These means were modified again by the chances of access to particular authors, and, as in the case of Aristotle for example, to particular treatises. To ascertain the dates of access to these new sources I have made some search; and herein I have found great help in the “Recherches critiques” of Amable Jourdain. We must remember that though the source of Western culture is not Latin, but Greek, yet its meagre channels in medieval Europe were Latin; its best tradition lay in Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Virgil. The ill-starred Boetius was the last of the Grecians. Greek was driven East and West: West into Ireland, where in the ninth century a few Greek MSS. survived, and were read in the original by Erigena and his disciples; but this Irish Greek tradition was soon lost, and there were no teachers of Greek. Yet it seems certain that, in Oxford, Robert of Lincoln and Adam Marsh had at any rate learned assistance in the production of some Greco-latin translations of Aristotle, of the Ethics for example. Dr Jackson has pointed out to me a passage in Aquinas’ Commentary on the Ethics, where “the presentation of the right reading misspelt, and of a ludicrous etymology side by side with one which is very nearly right, seem to show that, whilst Aquinas had about him people who knew Greek, he himself had no substantial knowledge of it.” Grosseteste himself may have had some efficient knowledge of Greek; “vir in latino et in greco peritissimus,” says Matthew Paris. Dr Jackson (in a private letter) feels assured that “Roger Bacon was plainly a competent Greek scholar. Of this there is proof in the _Opera inedita_, edited by