The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860

II. Dumbness sets the brute below the man: Silence elevates the man above the brute.

Every one of those hundred orators is to me a more fearful thought than that of a hundred men gathering samphire. And when we take into account how large a portion of them (if the present mania hold) are likely to be commemorated in stone or some even more durable material, the conception is positively stunning. Let us settle all scores by subscribing to a colossal statue of the late Town-Crier in bell-metal, with the inscription, "VOX ET PRAETEREA NIHIL," as a comprehensive tribute to oratorical powers in general. He, at least, never betrayed his clients. As it is, there is no end to it. We are to set up Horatius Vir in effigy for inventing the Normal Schoolmaster, and by-and-by we shall be called on to do the same ill-turn for Elihu Mulciber for getting uselessly learned (as if any man had ideas enough for twenty languages!) without any schoolmaster at all. We are the victims of a droll antithesis. Daniel would not give in to Nebuchadnezzar's taste in statuary, and we are called on to fall down and worship an image of Daniel which the Assyrian monarch would have gone to grass again sooner than have it in his back-parlor. I do not think lions are agreeable, especially the shaved-poodle variety one is so apt to encounter;–I met one once at an evening party. But I would be thrown into a den of them rather than sleep in the same room with that statue. Posterity will think we cut pretty figures indeed in the monumental line! Perhaps there is a gleam of hope and a symptom of convalescence in the fact that the Prince of Wales, during his late visit, got off without a single speech. The cheerful hospitalities of Mount Auburn were offered to him, as to all distinguished strangers, but nothing more melancholy. In his case I doubt the expediency of the omission. Had we set a score or two of orators on him and his suite, it would have given them a more intimidating notion of the offensive powers of the country than West Point and all the Navy-Yards put together.

In the name of our common humanity, consider, too, what shifts our friends in the sculpin line (as we should call them in Chesumpscot) are put to for originality of design, and what the country has to pay for it. The Clark Mills (that turns out equestrian statues as the Stark Mills do calico-patterns) has pocketed fifty thousand dollars for making a very dead bronze horse stand on his hind-legs. For twenty-five cents I have seen a man at the circus do something more wonderful,–make a very living bay horse dance a redowa round the amphitheatre on his (it occurs to me that hind-legs is indelicate) posterior extremities to the wayward music of an out-of-town (Scotice, out-o'-toon) band. Now, I will make a handsome offer to the public. I propose for twenty-five thousand dollars to suppress my design for an equestrian statue of a distinguished general officer as he would have appeared at the Battle of Buena Vista. This monument is intended as a weathercock to crown the new dome of the Capitol at Washington. By this happy contrivance, the horse will be freed from the degrading necessity of touching the earth at all,–thus distancing Mr. Mills by two feet in the race for originality. The pivot is to be placed so far behind the middle of the horse, that the statue, like its original, will always indicate which way the wind blows by going along with it. The inferior animal I have resolved to model from a spirited saw-horse in my own collection. In this way I shall combine two striking advantages. The advocates of the Ideal in Art cannot fail to be pleased with a charger which embodies, as it were, merely the abstract notion or quality, Horse, and the attention of the spectator will not be distracted from the principal figure. The material to be pure brass. I have also in progress an allegorical group commemorative of Governor Wise. This, like-Wise, represents only a potentiality. I have chosen, as worthy of commemoration, the moment when and the method by which the Governor meant to seize the Treasury at Washington. His Excellency is modelled in the act of making one of his speeches. Before him a despairing reporter kills himself by falling on his own steel pen; a broken telegraph-wire hints at the weight of the thoughts to which it has found itself inadequate; while the Army and Navy of the United States are conjointly typified in a horse-marine who flies headlong with his hands pressed convulsively over his ears. I think I shall be able to have this ready for exhibition by the time Mr. Wise is nominated for the Presidency,–certainly before he is elected. The material to be plaster, made of the shells of those oysters with which Virginia shall have paid her public debt. It may be objected, that plaster is not durable enough for verisimilitude, since bronze itself could hardly be expected to outlast one of the Governor's speeches. But it must be remembered that his mere effigy cannot, like its prototype, have the pleasure of hearing itself talk; so that to the mind of the spectator the oratorical despotism is tempered with some reasonable hope of silence. This design, also, is intended only in terrorem, and will be suppressed for an adequate consideration.

I find one comfort, however, in the very hideousness of our statues. The fear of what the sculptors will do for them after they are gone may deter those who are careful of their memories from talking themselves into greatness. It is plain that Mr. Caleb Cushing has begun to feel a wholesome dread of this posthumous retribution. I cannot in any other way account for that nightmare of the solitary horseman on the edge of the horizon, in his Hartford Speech. His imagination is infected with the terrible consciousness, that Mr. Mills, as the younger man, will, in the course of Nature, survive him, and will be left loose to seek new victims of his nefarious designs. Formerly the punishment of the wooden horse was a degradation inflicted on private soldiers only; but Mr. Mills (whose genius could make even Pegasus look wooden, in whatever material) flies at higher game, and will be content with nothing short of a general. Mr. Cushing advises extreme measures. He counsels us to sell our real estate and stocks, and to leave a country where no man's reputation with posterity is safe, being merely as clay in the hands of the sculptor. To a mind undisturbed by the terror natural in one whose military reputation insures his cutting and running, (I mean, of course, in marble and bronze,) the question becomes an interesting one,–To whom, in case of a general exodus, shall we sell? The statues will have the land all to themselves,–until the Aztecs, perhaps, repeopling their ancient heritage, shall pay divine honors to these images, whose ugliness will revive the traditions of the classic period of Mexican Art. For my own part, I never look at one of them now without thinking of at least one human sacrifice.

I doubt the feasibility of Mr. Cushing's proposal, and yet something ought to be done. We must put up with what we have already, I suppose, and let Mr. Webster stand threatening to blow us all up with his pistol pointed at the elongated keg of gunpowder on which his left hand rests,–no bad type of the great man's state of mind after the nomination of General Taylor, or of what a country member would call a penal statue. But do we reflect that Vermont is half marble, and that Lake Superior can send us bronze enough for regiments of statues? I go back to my first plan of a prohibitory enactment. I had even gone so far as to make a rough draught of an Act for the Better Observance of the Second Commandment; but it occurred to me that convictions under it would be doubtful, from the difficulty of satisfying a jury that our graven images did really present a likeness to any of the objects enumerated in the divine ordinance. Perhaps a double-barrelled statute might be contrived that would meet both the oratorical and the monumental difficulty. Let a law be passed that all speeches delivered more for the benefit of the orator than that of the audience, and all eulogistic ones of whatever description, be pronounced in the chapel of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and all statues be set up within the grounds of the Institution for the Blind. Let the penalty for infringement in the one case be to read the last President's Message, and in the other to look at the Webster statue one hour a day, for a term not so long as to violate the spirit of the law forbidding cruel and unusual punishments.

Perhaps it is too much to expect of our legislators that they should pass so self-denying an ordinance. They might, perhaps, make all oratory but their own penal, and then (who knows?) the reports of their debates might be read by the few unhappy persons who were demoniacally possessed by a passion for that kind of thing, as girls are sometimes said to be by an appetite for slate-pencils. Vita brevis, lingua longa. I protest that among law-givers I respect Numa, who declared, that, of all the Camenae, Tacita was most worthy of reverence. The ancient Greeks also (though they left too much oratory behind them) had some good notions, especially if we consider that they had not, like modern Europe, the advantage of communication with America. Now the Greeks had a Muse of Beginning, and the wonder is, considering how easy it is to talk and how hard to say anything, that they did not hit upon that other and more excellent Muse of Leaving-off. The Spartans, I suspect, found her out and kept her selfishly to themselves. She were indeed a goddess to be worshipped, a true Sister of Charity among that loquacious sisterhood!

Endlessness is the order of the day. I ask you to compare Plutarch's lives of demigods and heroes with our modern biographies of deminoughts and zeroes. Those will appear but tailors and ninth-parts of men in comparison with these, every one of whom would seem to have had nine lives, like a cat, to justify such prolixity. Yet the evils of print are as dust in the balance to those of speech.

We were doing very well in Chesumpscot, but the Lyceum has ruined all. There are now two debating-clubs, seminaries of multiloquence. A few of us old-fashioned fellows have got up an opposition club and called it "The Jolly Oysters." No member is allowed to open his mouth except at high-tide by the calendar. We have biennial festivals on the evening of election-day, when the constituency avenges itself in some small measure on its Representative elect by sending a baker's dozen of orators to congratulate him.

But I am falling into the very vice I condemn,–like Carlyle, who has talked a quarter of a century in praise of holding your tongue. And yet something should be done about it. Even when we get one orator safely under-ground, there are ten to pronounce his eulogy, and twenty to do it over again when the meeting is held about the inevitable statue. I go to listen: we all go: we are under a spell. 'Tis true, I find a casual refuge in sleep; for Drummond of Hawthornden was wrong when he called Sleep the child of Silence. Speech begets her as often. But there is no sure refuge save in Death; and when my life is closed untimely, let there be written on my headstone, with impartial application to these Black Brunswickers mounted on the high horse of oratory and to our equestrian statues,–

Os sublime did it!

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quaedam hactenus inedita. Vol. I, Containing, I. Opus Tertium,–II. Opus Minus,–III. Compendium Philosophiae. Edited by J.S. BREWER, M.A., Professor of English Literature, King's College, London, and Reader at the Rolls. Published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts. 1859. 8vo. pp. c., 573.

Sir John Romilly has shown good judgment in including the unpublished works of Roger Bacon in the series of "Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages," now in course of publication under his direction. They are in a true sense important memorials of the period at which they were written, and, though but incidentally illustrating the events of the time, they are of great value in indicating the condition of thought and learning as well as the modes of mental discipline and acquisition during the thirteenth century.

The memory of Roger Bacon has received but scant justice. Although long since recognized as one of the chief lights of England during the Middle Ages, the clinging mist of popular tradition has obscured his real brightness and distorted its proportions, while even among scholars he has been more known by reputation than by actual acquaintance with his writings. His principal work, his "Opus Majus," was published for the first time in London in 1733, in folio, and afterwards at Venice in 1750, in the same form. Down to the publication of the volume before us, it was the only one of his writings of much importance which had been printed complete, if indeed it is to be called complete,–the Seventh Part having been omitted by the editor, Dr. Jebb, and never having since been published.

The facts known concerning Roger Bacon's life are few, and are so intermingled with tradition that it is difficult wholly to separate them from it. Born of a good family at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, near the beginning of the thirteenth century, he was placed in early youth at Oxford, whence, after completing his studies in grammar and logic, "he proceeded to Paris," says Anthony Wood, "according to the fashion prevalent among English scholars of those times, especially among the members of the University of Oxford." Here, under the famous masters of the day, he devoted himself to study for some years, and made such progress that he received the degree of Doctor in Divinity. Returning to Oxford, he seems soon to have entered into the Franciscan Order, for the sake of securing a freedom from worldly cares, that he might the more exclusively give himself to his favorite pursuits. At various times he lectured at the University. He spent some later years out of England, probably again in Paris. His life was embittered by the suspicions felt in regard to his studies by the brethren of his order, and by their opposition, which proceeded to such lengths that it is said he was cast into prison, where, according to one report, he died wretchedly. However this may have been, his death took place before the beginning of the fourteenth century. The scientific and experimental studies which had brought him into ill-favor with his own order, and had excited the suspicion against him of dealing in magic and forbidden arts, seem to have sown the seed of the popular traditions which at once took root around his name. Friar Bacon soon became, and indeed has remained almost to the present day, a half-mythical character. To the imagination of the common people, he was a great necromancer; he had had dealings with the Evil One, who had revealed many of the secrets of Nature to him; he had made a head of brass that could speak and foretell future events; and to him were attributed other not less wonderful inventions, which seem to have formed a common stock for popular legends of this sort during the Middle Ages, and to have been ascribed indiscriminately to one philosopher or another in various countries and in various times.[9 - See The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon containing the Wonderful Things that he did in his Life, also the Manner of his Death; with the Lives and Deaths of the Conjurors Bungye and Vandermast. Reprinted in Thom's Early English Romances.] The references in our early literature to Friar Bacon, as one who had had familiarity with spirits and been a master in magic arts, are so numerous as to show that the belief in these stories was wide-spread, and that the real character of the learned Friar was quite given over to oblivion. But time slowly brings about its revenges; and the man whom his ignorant and stupid fellows thought fit to hamper and imprison, and whom popular credulity looked upon with that half-horror and half-admiration with which those were regarded who were supposed to have put their souls in pawn for the sake of tasting the forbidden fruit, is now recognized not only as one of the most profound and clearest thinkers of his time, but as the very first among its experimental philosophers, and as a prophet of truths which, then neglected and despised, have since been adopted as axioms in the progress of science. "The precursor of Galileo," says M. Hauréau, in his work on Scholastic Philosophy, "he learned before him how rash it is to offend the prejudices of the multitude, and to desire to give lessons to the ignorant."

The range of Roger Bacon's studies was encyclopedic, comprehending all the branches of learning then open to scholars. Brucker, in speaking of him in his History of Philosophy, has no words strong enough to express his admiration for his abilities and learning. "Seculi sui indolem multum superavit," "vir summus, tantaque occultioris philosophiae cognitione et experientia nobilis, ut merito Doctoris Mirabilis titulum reportaverit."[10 - Historia Crit. Phil. Period. II. Pars II. Liber II. Cap. iii. Section 23.] The logical and metaphysical studies, in the intricate subtilties of which most of the schoolmen of his time involved themselves, presented less attraction to Bacon than the pursuits of physical science and the investigation of Nature. His genius, displaying the practical bent of his English mind, turning with weariness from the endless verbal discussions of the Nominalists and Realists, and recognizing the impossibility of solving the questions which divided the schools of Europe into two hostile camps, led him to the study of branches of knowledge that were held in little repute. He recognized the place of mathematics as the basis of exact science, and proceeded to the investigation of the facts and laws of optics, mechanics, chemistry, and astronomy. But he did not limit himself to positive science; he was at the same time a student of languages and of language, of grammar and of music. He was versed not less in the arts of the Trivium than in the sciences of the Quadrivium.[11 - A barbarous distich gives the relations of these two famous divisions of knowledge in the Middle Ages:–"Gramm loquitur, Dia verba docet, Rhet verba colorat, Mus canit, Ar numerat, Geo ponderat, Ast colit astra."]

But in rejecting the method of study then in vogue, and in opposing the study of facts to that of questions which by their abstruseness fatigued the intellect, which were of more worth in sharpening the wit than in extending the limits of knowledge, and which led rather to vain contentions than to settled conclusions,–in thus turning from the investigation of abstract metaphysics to the study of Nature, Roger Bacon went so far before his age as to condemn himself to solitude, to misappreciation, and to posthumous neglect. Unlike men of far narrower minds, but more conformed to the spirit of the times, he founded no school, and left no disciples to carry out the system which he had advanced, and which was one day to have its triumph. At the end of the thirteenth century the scholastic method was far from having run its career. The minds of men were occupied with problems which it alone seemed to be able to resolve, and they would not abandon it at the will of the first innovator. The questions in dispute were embittered by personal feeling and party animosities. Franciscans and Dominicans were divided by points of logic not less than by the rules of their orders.[12 - See Hauréau, De la Philosophie Scolastique, II. 284-5.] Ignorance and passion alike gave ardor to discussion, and it was vain to attempt to convince the heated partisans on one side or the other, that the truths they sought were beyond the reach of human faculties, and that their dialectics and metaphysics served to bewilder more than to enlighten the intellect. The disciples of subtile speculatists like Aquinas, or of fervent mystics like Bonaventura, were not likely to recognize the worth and importance of the slow processes of experimental philosophy.

The qualities of natural things, the limits of intellectual powers, the relations of man to the universe, the conditions of matter and spirit, the laws of thought, were too imperfectly understood for any man to attain to a comprehensive and correct view of the sources and methods of study and discovery of the truth. Bacon shared in what may he called, without a sneer, the childishnesses of his time, childishnesses often combined with mature powers and profound thought. No age is fully conscious of its own intellectual disproportions; and what now seem mere puerilities in the works of the thinkers of the Middle Ages were perhaps frequently the result of as laborious effort and as patient study as what we still prize in them for its manly vigor and permanent worth. In a later age, the Centuries of the "Sylva Sylvarum" afford a curious comment on the Aphorisms of the "Novum Organum."

The "Opus Majus" of Bacon was undertaken in answer to a demand of Pope Clement IV. in 1266, and was intended to contain a review of the whole range of science, as then understood, with the exception of logic. Clement had apparently become personally acquainted with Bacon, at the time when, as legate of the preceding Pope, he had been sent to England on an ineffectual mission to compose the differences between Henry III. and his barons, and he appears to have formed a just opinion of the genius and learning of the philosopher.

The task to which Bacon had been set by the Papal mandate was rapidly accomplished, in spite of difficulties which might have overcome a less resolute spirit; but the work extended to such great length in his hands, that he seems to have felt a not unnatural fear that Clement, burdened with the innumerable cares of the Pontificate, would not find leisure for its perusal, much less for the study which some part of it demanded. With this fear, fearful also that portions of his work might be deficient in clearness, and dreading lest it might be lost on its way to Rome, he proceeded to compose a second treatise, called the "Opus Minus," to serve as an abstract and specimen of his greater work, and to embrace some additions to its matter. Unfortunately, but a fragment of this second work has been preserved, and this fragment is for the first time published in the volume just issued under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. But the "Opus Minus" was scarcely completed before he undertook a third work, to serve as an introduction and preamble to both the preceding. This has been handed down to us complete, and this, too, is for the first time printed in the volume before us. We take the account of it given by Professor Brewer, the editor, in his introduction.

"Inferior to its predecessors in the importance
of its scientific details and the illustration
it supplies of Bacon's philosophy, it is
more interesting than either, for the insight
it affords of his labors, and of the numerous
obstacles he had to contend with in the execution
of his work. The first twenty chapters
detail various anecdotes of Bacon's personal
history, his opinions on the state of
education, the impediments thrown in his
way by the ignorance, the prejudices, the
contempt, the carelessness, the indifference
of his contemporaries. From the twentieth
chapter to the close of the volume he pursues
the thread of the Opus Majus, supplying what
he had there omitted, correcting and explaining
what had been less clearly or correctly
expressed in that or in the Opus Minus. In
Chapter LII. he apologizes for diverging from
the strict line he had originally marked out,
by inserting in the ten preceding chapters his
opinions on three abstruse subjects, Vacuum,
Motion, and Space, mainly in regard to their
spiritual significance. 'As these questions,'
he says,' are very perplexing and difficult, I
thought I would record what I had to say
about them in some one of my works. In the
Opus Majus and Opus Minus I had not studied
them sufficiently to prevail on myself to
commit my thoughts about them to writing;
and I was glad to omit them, owing to the
length of those works, and because I was
much hurried in their composition.' From the
fifty-second chapter to the close of the volume
he adheres to his subject without further digression,
but with so much vigor of thought
and freshness of observations, that, like the
Opus Minus, the Opus Tertium may be fairly
considered an independent work."–pp.
xliv-xlv.[13 - Mr. Brewer has in most respects performed his work as editor in a satisfactory manner. The many difficulties attending the deciphering of the text of ill-written manuscripts and the correction of the mistakes of ignorant scribes have been in great part overcome by his patience and skill. Some passages of the text, however, require further revision. The Introduction is valuable for its account of existing manuscripts, but its analysis of Bacon's opinions is unsatisfactory. Nor are the translations given in it always so accurate as they should be. The analyses of the chapters in side-notes to the text are sometimes imperfect, and do not sufficiently represent the current of Bacon's thought; and the volume stands in great need of a thorough Index. This omission is hardly to be excused, and ought at once to be supplied in a separate publication.]

The details which Bacon gives of his personal history are of special interest as throwing light upon the habits of life of a scholar in the thirteenth century. Their autobiographic charm is increased by their novelty, for they give a view of ways of life of which but few particulars have been handed down.

Excusing himself for the delay which had occurred, after the reception of the Pope's letter, before the transmission of the writings he had desired, Bacon says that he was strictly prohibited by a rule of his Order from communicating to others any writing made by one of its members, under penalty of loss of the book, and a diet for many days of bread and water. Moreover, a fair copy could not be made, supposing that he succeeded in writing, except by scribes outside of the Order; and they might transcribe either for themselves or others, and through their dishonesty it very often happened that books were divulged at Paris.

"Then other far greater causes of delay occurred, on account of which I was often ready to despair; and a hundred times I thought to give up the work I had undertaken; and, had it not been for reverence for the Vicar of the only Saviour, and [regard to] the profit to the world to be secured through him alone, I would not have proceeded, against these hindrances, with this affair, for all those who are in the Church of Christ, however much they might have prayed and urged me. The first hindrance was from those who were set over me, to whom you had written nothing in my favor, and who, since I could not reveal your secret [commission] to them, being bound not to do so by your command of secrecy, urged me with unutterable violence, and with other means, to obey their will. But I resisted, on account of the bond of your precept, which obliged me to your work, in spite of every mandate of my superiors....

"But I met also with another hindrance, which was enough to put a stop to the whole matter, and this was the want of [means to meet] the expense. For I was obliged to pay out in this business more than sixty livres of Paris,[14 - This sum was a large one. It appears that the necessaries of life were cheap and luxuries dear at Paris during the thirteenth century. Thus, we are told, in the year 1226, a house sold for forty-six livres; another with a garden, near St. Eustache, sold for two hundred livres. This sum was thought large, being estimated as equal to 16,400 francs at present. Sixty livres were then about five thousand francs, or a thousand dollars. Lodgings at this period varied from 5 to 17 livres the year. An ox was worth 1 livre 10 sols; a sheep, 6 sols 3 deniers. Bacon must at some period of his life have possessed money, for we find him speaking of having expended two thousand livres in the pursuit of learning. If the comparative value assumed be correct, this sum represented between $30,000 and $40,000 of our currency.] the account and reckoning of which I will set forth in their place hereafter. I do not wonder, indeed, that you did not think of these expenses, because, sitting at the top of the world, you have to think of so great and so many things that no one can estimate the cares of your mind. But the messengers who carried your letters were careless in not making mention to you of these expenses; and they were unwilling to expend a single penny, even though I told them that I would write to you an account of the expenses, and that to every one of them should be returned what was his. I truly have no money, as you know, nor can I have it, nor consequently can I borrow, since I have nothing wherewith to repay. I sent then to my rich brother, in my country, who, belonging to the party of the king, was exiled with my mother and my brothers and the whole family, and oftentimes being taken by the enemy redeemed himself with money, so that thus being ruined and impoverished, he could not assist me, nor even to this day have I had an answer from him.

"Considering, then, the reverence due to you, and the nature of your command, I solicited many and great people, the faces of some of whom you know well, but not their minds; and I told them that a certain affair of yours must he attended to by me in France, (but I did not disclose to them what it was,) the performance of which required a large sum of money. But how often I was deemed a cheat, how often repulsed, how often put off with empty hope, how often confused in myself, I cannot express. Even my friends did not believe me, because I could not explain to them the affair; and hence I could not advance by this way. In distress, therefore, beyond what can be imagined, I compelled serving-men and poor to expend all that they had, to sell many things, and to pawn others, often at usury; and I promised them that I would write to you every part of the expenses, and would in good faith obtain from you payment in full. And yet, on account of the poverty of these persons, I many times gave up the work, and many times despaired and neglected to proceed; and indeed, if I had known that you would not attend to the settling of these accounts, I would not for the whole world have gone on,–nay, rather, I would have gone to prison. Nor could I send special messengers to you for the needed sum, because I had no means. And I preferred to spend whatever I could procure in advancing the business rather than in despatching a messenger to you. And also, on account of the reverence due to you, I determined to make no report of expenses before sending to you something which might please you, and by ocular proof should give witness to its cost. On account, then, of all these things, so great a delay has occurred in this matter."[15 - Opus Tertium. Cap. iii. pp. 15-17.]

There is a touching simplicity in this account of the trials by which he was beset, and it rises to dignity in connection with a sentence which immediately follows, in which he says, the thought of "the advantage of the world excited me, and the revival of knowledge, which now for many ages has lain dead, vehemently urged me forward." Motives such as these were truly needed to enable him to make head against such difficulties.

The work which he accomplished, remarkable as it is from its intrinsic qualities, is also surprising from the rapidity with which it was performed, in spite of the distractions and obstacles that attended it. It would seem that in less than two years from the date of Clement's letter, the three works composed in compliance with its demand were despatched to the Pope. Bacon's diligence must have been as great as his learning. In speaking, in another part of the "Opus Tertium," of the insufficiency of the common modes of instruction, he gives incidentally an account of his own devotion to study. "I have labored much," he says, "on the sciences and languages; it is now forty years since I first learned the alphabet, and I have always been studious; except two years of these forty, I have been always engaged in study; and I have expended much, [in learning,] as others generally do; but yet I am sure that within a quarter of a year, or half a year, I could teach orally, to a man eager and confident to learn, all that I know of the powers of the sciences and languages; provided only that I had previously composed a written compend. And yet it is known that no one else has worked so hard or on so many sciences and tongues; for men used to wonder formerly that I kept my life on account of my excessive labor, and ever since I have been as studious as I was then, but I have not worked so hard, because, through my practice in knowledge, it was not needful."[16 - Opus Tertium. Cap. xx. p. 65.] Again he says, that in the twenty years in which he had specially labored in the study of wisdom, neglecting the notions of the crowd, he had spent more than two thousand pounds [livres] in the acquisition of secret books, and for various experiments, instruments, tables, and other things, as well as in seeking the friendship of learned men, and in instructing assistants in languages, figures, the use of instruments and tables, and many other things. But yet, though he had examined everything that was necessary for the construction of a preliminary work to serve as a guide to the wisdom of philosophy, though he knew how it was to be done, with what aids, and what were the hindrances to it, still he could not proceed with it, owing to the want of means. The cost of employing proper persons in the work, the rarity and costliness of books, the expense of instruments and of experiments, the need of infinite parchment and many scribes for rough copies, all put it beyond his power to accomplish. This was his excuse for the imperfection of the treatise which he had sent to the Pope, and this was a work worthy to be sustained by Papal aid.[17 - Opus Tertium. Capp. xvi., xvii. Roger Bacon's urgency to the Pope to promote the works for the advancement of knowledge which were too great for private efforts bears a striking resemblance to the words addressed for the same end by his great successor, Lord Bacon, to James I. "Et ideo patet," says the Bacon of the thirteenth century, "quod scripta, principalia de sapientia philosophiae non possunt fieri ab uno homine, nec a pluribus, nisi manus praelatorum et principum juvent sapientes cum magna virtute." "Horum quos enumeravimus omnium defectuum remedia," says the Bacon of the seventeenth century, " …opera sunt vere basilica; erga quae privati alicujus conatus et industria fere sic se habent ut Mercurius in bivio, qui digito potest in viam intendere, pedem inferre non potest."–De Aug. Scient. Lib. II. Ad Regem Suum.A still more remarkable parallelism is to be found in the following passages. "Nam facile est dicere, fiant scripture completae de scientiis, sed nunquam fuerunt apud Latinos aliquae condignae, nec fient, nisi aliud consilium habeatur. Et nullus sufficeret ad hoc, nisi dominus papa, vel imperator, aut aliquis rex magnificus, sicut est dominus rex Franciae. Aristoteles quidem, auctoritate et auxiliis regum, et maxime Alexandri, fecit in Graeco quae voluit, et multis millibus hominum usus est in experientia scientiarum, et expensis copiosis, sicut historiae narrant." (Opus Tertium, Cap. viii.) Compare with this the following passage from the part of the De Augmentis already cited:–"Et exploratoribus ac speculatoribus Naturae satisfaciendum de expensis suis; alias de quamplurimis scitu dignissimis nunquam fiemus certiores. Si enim Alexander magnam vim pecuniae suppeditavit Aristoteli, qua conduceret venatores, aucupes, piscatores et alios, quo instructior accederet ad conscribendam historiam animalium; certe majus quiddam debetur iis, qui non in saltibus naturae pererrant, sed in labyrinthis artium viam sibi aperiunt."Other similar parallelisms of expression on this topic are to be found in these two authors, but need not be here quoted. Many resemblances in the words and in the spirit of the philosophy of the two Bacons have been pointed out, and it has even been supposed that the later of these two great philosophers borrowed his famous doctrine of "Idols" from the classification of the four chief hindrances to knowledge by his predecessor. But the supposition wants foundation, and there is no reason to suppose that Lord Bacon was acquainted with the works of the Friar. The Rev. Charles Forster, in his Mahometanism Unveiled, a work of some learning, but more extravagance, after speaking of Roger Bacon as "strictly and properly an experimentalist of the Saracenic school," goes indeed so far as to assert that he "was the undoubted, though unowned, original when his great namesake drew the materials of his famous experimental system." (Vol. II. pp. 312-317.) But the resemblances in their systems, although striking in some particulars, are on the whole not too great to be regarded simply as the results of corresponding genius, and of a common sense of the insufficiency of the prevalent methods of scholastic philosophy for the discovery of truth and the advancement of knowledge. "The same sanguine and sometimes rash confidence in the effect of physical discoveries, the same fondness for experiment, the same preference of inductive to abstract reasoning pervade both works," the Opus Majus and the Novum Organum.–Hallam, Europe during the Middle Ages, III. 431. See also Hallam, Literature of Europe, I. 113; and Mr. Ellis's Preface to the Novum Organum, p. 90, in the first volume of the admirable edition of the Works of Lord Bacon now in course of publication.]

The enumeration by Bacon of the trials and difficulties of a scholar's life at a time when the means of communicating knowledge were difficult, when books were rare and to be obtained only at great cost, when the knowledge of the ancient languages was most imperfect, and many of the most precious works of ancient philosophy were not to be obtained or were to be found only in imperfect and erroneous translations, depicts a condition of things in vivid contrast to the present facilities for the communication and acquisition of learning, and enables us in some degree to estimate the drawbacks under which scholars prosecuted their studies before the invention of printing. That with such impediments they were able to effect so much is wonderful; and their claim on the gratitude and respect of their successors is heightened by the arduous nature of the difficulties with which they were forced to contend. The value of their work receives a high estimate, when we consider the scanty means with which it was performed.

Complaining of the want of books, Bacon says,–"The books on philosophy by Aristotle and Avicenna, by Seneca and Tully and others, cannot be had except at great cost, both because the chief of them are not translated into Latin, and because of others not a copy is to be found in public schools of learning or elsewhere. For instance, the most excellent books of Tully De Republica are nowhere to be found, so far as I can hear, and I have been eager in the search for them in various parts of the world and with various agents. It is the same with many other of his books. The books of Seneca also, the flowers of which I have copied out for your Beatitude, I was never able to find till about the time of your mandate, although I had been diligent in seeking for them for twenty years and more."[18 - Opus Tertium. Cap. xv. pp. 55, 56.] Again, speaking of the corruption of translations, so that they are often unintelligible, as is especially the case with the books of Aristotle, he says that "there are not four Latins [that is, Western scholars] who know the grammar of the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Arabians; for I am well acquainted with them, and have made diligent inquiry both here and beyond the sea, and have labored much in these things. There are many, indeed, who can speak Greek and Arabic and Hebrew, but scarcely any who know the principles of the grammar so as to teach it, for I have tried very many."[19 - Id. Cap. x. p. 33.]

In his treatise entitled "Compendium Studii Philosophiae," which is printed in this volume for the first time, he adds in relation to this subject,–"Teachers are not wanting, because there are Jews everywhere, and their tongue is the same in substance with the Arabic and the Chaldean, though they differ in mode.... Nor would it be much, for the sake of the great advantage of learning Greek, to go to Italy, where the clergy and the people in many places are purely Greek; moreover, bishops and archbishops and rich men and elders might send thither for books, and for one or for more persons who know Greek, as Lord Robert, the sainted Bishop of Lincoln,[20 - The famous Grostête,–who died in 1253. "Vir in Latino et Graeco peritissimus," says Matthew Paris.] did indeed do,–and some of those [whom he brought over] still survive in England."[21 - Comp. Studii Phil. Cap. vi.] The ignorance of the most noted clerks and lecturers of his day is over and over again the subject of Bacon's indignant remonstrance. They were utterly unable to correct the mistakes with which the translations of ancient works were full. "The text is in great part horribly corrupt in the copy of the Vulgate at Paris, …and as many readers as there are, so many correctors, or rather corruptors, …for every reader changes the text according to his fancy."[22 - Opus Minus, p. 330.] Even those who professed to translate new works of ancient learning were generally wholly unfit for the task. Hermann the German knew nothing of science, and little of Arabic, from which he professed to translate; but when he was in Spain, he kept Saracens with him who did the main part of the translations that he claimed. In like manner, Michael Scot asserted that he had made many translations; but the truth was, that a certain Jew named Andrew worked more than he upon them.[23 - This was Michael Scot the Wizard, who would seem to have deserved the place that Dante assigned to him in the Inferno, if not from his practice of forbidden arts, at least from his corruption of ancient learning in his so-called translations. Strange that he, of all the Schoolmen, should have been honored by being commemorated by the greatest poet of Italy and the greatest of his own land! In the Notes to the Lay of the Last Minstrel, his kinsman quotes the following lines concerning him from Satchell's poem on The Right Honorable Name of Scott:–"His writing pen did seem to me to beOf hardened metal like steel or acumie;The volume of [his book] did seem so large to meAs the Book of Martyrs and Turks Historie."] William Fleming was, however, the most ignorant and most presuming of all.[24 - Comp. Studii Phil. Cap. viii. p. 472.] "Certain I am that it were better for the Latins that the wisdom of Aristotle had not been translated, than to have it thus perverted and obscured, …so that the more men study it the less they know, as I have experienced with all who have stuck to these books. Wherefore my Lord Robert of blessed memory altogether neglected them, and proceeded by his own experiments, and with other means, until he knew the things concerning which Aristotle treats a hundred thousand times better than he could ever have learned them from those perverse translations. And if I had power over these translations of Aristotle, I would have every copy of them burned; for to study them is only a loss of time and a cause of error and a multiplication of ignorance beyond telling. And since the labors of Aristotle are the foundation of all knowledge, no one can estimate the injury done by means of these bad translations."[25 - Comp. Studii Phil. Cap. viii. p. 469.]