Letter 4: To my beloved son Braulio, bishop, greetings.

To my beloved son Braulio, bishop, greetings. The copying is underway. I have set three scribes to the task and we are making progress, though not as quickly as I would wish — there is always more business demanding my attention than the day can hold, and a bishop who wishes to be a scholar must steal his hours from sleep and from what others would call leisure. I am sending along with this letter three volumes that I thought might be of use to you: a copy of my De Natura Rerum, which you may already have; the Differentiae, which I revised again last year and which I think is now in better shape than the version you may have seen; and a small tract on biblical geography that I have not formally published but which I hope you will find useful. The Etymologiae itself — I expect to have a complete copy ready before the summer is out. It runs to twenty books now, and I am not entirely certain I have not made it worse by adding to it, but there it is. The section on medicine has been particularly troubling; I know more about theology than I do about the humors, and any physician who reads it closely will find cause for complaint. Write when the books arrive safely. Isidore