Life of Ernest Renan

850 in Italy, and subsequently some months in England, to which apparently his mission was extended. In his report to the Minister of Public Instruction he declared that his Oriental " finds " in the manuscript department of the British Museum far exceeded all those which he had lighted on in Italy. In all probability it was the skill which these reports displayed him to possess in the manipulation and knowledge of Oriental manuscripts, that led to his appointment (in 1851) to a post in the department of Oriental MSS. in the Bibliotheque . Nationale, no longer, of course, du Roi. A private as well as a public object guided Renan in these assiduous and multifarious explorations. For his degree of Doctor of Letters (the " Doctoral es Lettres "), which would complete his academic status, he had to compose two theses, one in Latin, the other in French. The materials for both were diligently accumulated during his foreign mission, and both were published in 1852 with his acquisition of the Doctor's degree. That in Latin was quite a small volume, though full of smelted Oriental learning, De philosophic, peripatetica apud Syros commentatio historica, in which was abundantly proved a favourite theory of Renan's that the knowledge of Aristotle, and indeed of anything else Hellenic, possessed by the mediaeval Arabs, was wholly derived fromSyriac translations. The other and French thesis, the far more elaborate work which first gave Renan a place among the most erudite of Europ...