DANIEL, a still more celebrated troubadour than the preceding, flourished about the same period. He was born of a noble but poor family of Ribeirac in Perigord. When at the court of Richard I., an English jongleur challenged him to a trial of skill, and ten days were allotted for preparation. Arnaud, who was disinclined for the task, contrived by listening at the door of his rival to commit to memory the whole of the poem which the other had prepared and was learning to recite. When the day of trial was arrived, Arnaud requested permission to take the precedence, and gave forth the poem he had so cunningly appropriated. The jongleur was stupified with amazement, but Arnaud confessed the trick, the wager was withdrawn, and the king made rich presents to them both. Arnaud is extolled by Dante, Varchi, and Petrarch. Many of his amatory poems have been preserved, and some of them published by Raynouard. This name was likewise borne by several other troubadours.

ARNAUD DE RONSIL, GEORGE, son of an eminent surgeon at Paris, and some time professor of surgery in the college of St. Cosme. On account of an accident that occurred while he was practising midwifery, he removed from Paris to London, where he acquired great repute by his operations, and his writings on surgical subjects. Before his time the treatment of hernia had been but imperfectly understood; and the surgeons of this country are indebted to the observations of Arnaud for many of those improvements which have since rendered their practice so successful in this branch of the art. He died in 1774.

or ARNOLDUS, DE VILLA NOVA, a famous physician and alchemist, who lived about the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century. He studied at Paris and Montpelier, and improved himself by visiting the schools of Italy and Spain. He was well acquainted with languages, particularly with the Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic. His desire after the acquisition of knowledge was ardent, but it carried him too far in his researches. He put unlimited faith in astrology, and published a prediction that the consummation of the world would take place in the year 1335. He practised physic at Paris for some time; but having advanced some new doctrines, he drew upon himself the resentment of the university; and his friends, fearing he might be arrested, persuaded him to retire from that city. He went to Sicily, where he was received by king Frederic of Aragon with the greatest marks of kindness and esteem. Some time afterwards this prince sent him to France to attend Pope Clement in an illness; and in this voyage he perished by shipwreck on the coast of Genoa about the year 1313.

Arnaud has been called the discoverer of the sulphuric, the muriatic, and the nitric acids, as well as of the essential oil of turpentine; and is said to have been the first to give regular scientific details of the process of distillation; but Dr Hoefer (Histoire de la Chimie, tom. i., p. 385) has shown that all these discoveries were made long before the time of Arnaud. His works, with a life prefixed, were first printed at Lyons in 1504, in one volume folio, and again in 1520 with the notes of Nicholas Tolerus; and at Basil in 1515 and 1585.