an appreciation of the improvements made in the story by the colours added in the version of Marie of France. The influence of French models is indeed very noticeable throughout the poem, not indeed in the vocabulary, which is singu larly archaic, but in the syntax, where the words closely follow the order of the thought, and in the rhythm, which, both in the distribution of the accent and in the number of the syllables in each verse, shows a careful study of the style of Marie. COURTHOPE, W. J., 1895, A History of English Poetry, vol. 1, pp. 131, 132, 135. On the whole, this is the best example of the octosyllabical couplet to be found before the fourteenth century. The poet (who, by the way, quotes "Alfred" repeatedly, and little else) occasionally commits the fault-specially unpleasing to modern English ears, but natural at his early date, and probably connected with the indifference of his French originals to identical rhymes of making the same rhyme do for two successive couplets; but this does not occur often enough to interfere seriously with harmony. His variations from eights to sevens are not more than the genius of the language specially allows. His style is easy and his poetical imagery and apparatus generally, though comparatively simple, well at command, and by no means of a rude or rudimentary order. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 60. Roger Bacon 1214-1292 An English philosopher, one of the greatest mediæval scholars. He was born of good family in Somersetshire, about 1214; died about 1294. He studied at Oxford, taking orders there 1233; proceeded to Paris, returned, and entered the Franciscan Order 1250. His discoveries in chemistry and physics brought upon him accusations of magic, and he was imprisoned at Paris, 1257. At the request of Pope Clement IV. in 1265 he drew up his "Opus Majus." He gained his liberty a little later, but suffered a further imprisonment of ten years under Nicholas II., and was not finally liberated till 1292, two years before his death. He was learned in several languages and wrote elegant Latin. His wide knowledge gained for him the name of Doctor Admirabilis. His chief work, the "Opus Majus," shows great learning and remarkably advanced thinking, considering the age in which he lived. He treats of the unity of the sciences, of the necessity of a true linguistic science for the understanding either of philosophy, science, or the Scriptures; he treats also of mathematics, as "the alphabet of philosophy," and of geography and astronomy as related thereto, of perspective, and of experimental science, foreshadowing the inductive method. The portion relating to geography was read by Columbus, who was strongly influenced by it.-WARNER, CHARLES DUDLEY, ed., 1897, Library of the World's Best Literature, Biographical Dictionary of Authors, vol. XXIX, p. 34. PERSONAL BACON.-Men call me Bacon. VANDERMAST. Lordly thou lookest, as if Thy countenance, as if science held her seat Every ear is filled with the story of Friar Bacon, that made a brazen head to speak these words, time is. Which though there want not the like relations, is surely too literally received, and was but a mystical fable concerning the philosopher's great work, wherein he eminently laboured: implying no more by the copper head, than the vessel wherein it was wrought, and by the words it spake, than the opportunity to be watched, about the tempus ortus, or birth of the mystical child, or philosophical king of Lallius; the rising of the terra foliata of Arnoldus, when the earth, sufficiently impregnated with the water, ascendeth white and splendent.-BROWNE, SIR THOMAS, 1646, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, ed. Wilkin, bk. vii, ch. xvii, p. 275. For mine own part, I behold the name of Bacon in Oxford, not as of an individual man, but corporation of men; no single cord, but a twisted cable of many together. And as all the acts of strong men of that nature are attributed to an Hercules; all the predictions of prophesying women to a Sibyl; so, I conceive, all the achievements of the Oxonian Bacons, in their liberal studies, are ascribed to one, as chief of the name. And this in effect is confessed by the most learned and ingenious orator of that university. Indeed, we find one Robert Bacon who died anno one thousand two hundred fortyeight, a learned doctor; and Trithemius styleth John Baconthorpe, plain Bacon, which addeth to the probability of the former assertion. However, this confounding so many Bacons in one hath caused antichronisms in many relations. For how could this Bacon ever be a Reader of Philosophy in Brasen-nose college, founded more than one hundred years after his death? so that his brasen head, so much spoken of, to speak, must make time past to be again, or else these inconsistencies will not be reconciled.-FULLER, THOMAS, 1655, The Church History of Britain, ed. Nichols, vol. 1, bk. iii, par. 18. Roger Bacon, friar ordinis (S. Francisci)-Memorandum, in Mr. Selden's learned verses before Hopton's Concordance of yeares, he speakes of friar Bacon, and sayes that he was a Dorsetshire gentleman. There are yet of that name in that countie, and some of pretty good estate. I find by (which booke I have) that he understood the making of optique glasses; where he also gives a perfect account of the making of gunpowder, vide pag ejusdem libri. AUBREY, JOHN, 1669-96, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. 1, p. 84. THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.-Oxford was a seat of learning in the days of Friar Bacon. But the Friar is gone, and his learning with him. Nothing of him is left but the immortal nose, which, when his brazen head had tumbled to pieces, crying "Time's Past," was the only palpable fragment among its minutely pulverised atoms, and which is still resplendent over the portals of its cognominal college. That nose, sir, is the only thing to which I shall take off my hat in all this Babylon of buried literature. -PEACOCK, THOMAS LOVE, 1831, Crotchet Castle, ch. ix. It is impossible to avoid thinking, that if Roger, instead of becoming a Franciscan monk, had made the attempt to reach as secularis in the Paris University, his lot would have been more favourable, and he would have worked with better results and with greater contentment.-ERDMANN, JOHANN EDUARD, 1865-76, A History of Philosophy, ed. Hough, vol. 1, p. 484. Oh, could I once but touch, or faintly see, Or clearly dream of things I feel must be, The secret might be gained of Nature's mastery. But in monastic walls of flesh confined, Our sun hath burst not yet all buds of mind, Which bloom in hope alone, not knowing what's designed. I would be far-be first, in man's advance; Parhelion* smote to earth the fool of -HORNE, R. H., 1882, Soliloquium Fra- That Bacon's imprisonment for twentyfour years, because he loved science, was really the act of the whole Church, is shown by the unwillingness of contemporary and later authors, for instance Dante, to mention his name, by the mutilated condition of his writings, said to have been nailed down to the shelves by his brother-monks, and by the failure to publish them until after the Reformation. HOLLAND, FREDERIC MAY, 1884, The Rise of Intellectual Liberty, p. 183. The "Old Hodge Bacon" of Hudibras, and the hero of "the honourable History of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay," is the person who acquired his skill by promising himself to the devil when he died, whether he died in the church or out of it, and who at last cheated the devil cleverly by dying in a hole in the churchwall. Four centuries before the day of small philosophy, when such stories were credited, an anxious simple-minded man, in the grey habit of the lowliest of the religious orders-one who had spent a handsome patrimony for the love of knowledge, and who waited on the outcast leper for the love of God-walked barefoot in the streets of Oxford. His home was in no stately monastery, but in the poorhouse in the suburbs, in the parish of St. Ebbe's, which had been given to the Franciscans by a citizen. In the wretched chamber that was the appointed *The Pope, or mock sun (Nicholas III.), who ordered Friar Bacon's imprisonment. dwelling of a Minorite while still the doctrine of St. Francis was in force among his followers, Roger Bacon made lament sometimes for want of ink, and sometimes was by the Superior of his order confined as a prisoner on bread and water, because he had plunged rebelliously into the luxury of books, or made his knowledge known too freely to others. Beyond these punishments for breach of discipline it does not appear that Friar Roger Bacon suffered, as many accounts of him would have us to believe, chains and persecution from the Church. Neither did he occupy any such middle place between the Church and the world as might be represented by the hole in the church wall, wherein tradition tells us that he died. Within the church he lived and died, and all the labour of his life, in science and philosophy, as in the daily ministering to the sorrows of the poor, was worship.-MORLEY, HENRY, 1888, English Writers, vol. II, p. 315. He was persecuted and imprisoned, not for the commonplace and natural reason that he frightened the Church, but merely because he was eccentric in his habits and knew too much.-- LODGE, OLIVER, 1892, Pioneers of Science, p. 9. If the account of his imprisonment be true (of which there is no contemporary evidence) our own celebrated English philosopher, Roger Bacon, is one of the earliest scientific authors whose works proved fatal to them.-DITCHFIELD, P. H., 1894, Books Fatal to Their Authors, p. 78. GENERAL Roger Bacon treated more especially of physics, but remained without influence. -HEGEL, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH, 1816?, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, tr. Haldane and Simson, vol. III, p. 92. The marvellous Friar. SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1821, A Vision of Judgment, IX. One of the extraordinary men of the thirteenth century, who stood forth to resist the ruling authorities of their times, was the Englishman Roger Bacon, a man of a free spirit beyond all others, full of great ideas of reform; ideas that contained the germs of new creations, reaching farther in their consequences and results than he himself, firmly rooted as, with all his aspirations, he still was in the times in which he lived, either understood or intended. NEANDER, AUGUSTUS, 1825-52, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, tr. Torrey, vol. VIII, p. 97. Not a good writer. Some have deemed him overrated by the nationality of the English; but, if we may have sometimes given him credit for discoveries to which he has only borne testimony, there can be no doubt of the originality of his genius.- HALLAM, HENKY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. i, ch. i, par. 87, ch. ii, par. 33. That Pacon's fame was not evanescent, we have good proof in the numerous MS. copies of his works, or parts of them, which occupy places in the various university and national libraries at home and abroad, and from the careful way in which his correspondence with Fope Clement, and the holy Father's replies, are preserved in the Vatican library.- NEIL, SAMUEL, 1865, Epoch Men, p. 116. The most remarkable man in the most remarkable century of the Middle Ages. -PLUMPTRE, E. H., 1866, Roger Bacon, Contemporary Review, vol. 11, p. 364. Koger Bacon, having been a monk, is frequently spoken of as a creature of Catholic teaching. But there never was a more striking instance of the force of a great genius in resisting the tendencies of his age. At a time when physical science was continually neglected, discouraged, or condemned, at a time when all the great prizes of the world were open to men who pursued a very different course, Bacon applied himself with transcendent genius to the study of nature. Fourteen years of his life were spent in prison, and when he died his name was blasted as a magician.--LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE, 1869, History of European Morals, ch iv. The chief theoretical interest of Bacon lies in the knowledge of nature, in the discovery of her mechanical secrets, the consequent dispelling of the rude ignor ance of which he complains as universal, and the improvement of man's present estate. . It is reported that it was a passage stolen from Roger Bacon by some author known to Columbus that, arresting the attention of the latter, led him to the formation of his world-discovering plans. By his appreciation of mathematics, and the solidity of his own scientific work (e. g. in optics), Roger Bacon certainly is superior to his successor, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam.. MORRIS, GEORGE S., 1880, British Thought and Thinkers, pp. 40, 42. Bacon's works possess much historical value, for his vigorous thinking and pronounced scientific inclinations are not to be regarded as abnormal and isolated phenomena He represents one current of thought and work in the middle ages which must have run strongly though obscurely, and without a thorough comprehension of his position our conceptions of an important century are incomplete and erroneous.-ADAMSON, R., 1885, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. II, p. 378. To There was hardly any department of knowledge this great Franciscan had not investigated. He was learned in theology and philosophy, in grammar, language and music. His researches in mathematics and the natural sciences were aided by the writings of the Arabian philosophers. From these sources he enlarged his knowledge of geometry and astronomy. these same observers he was possibly indebted for his profound acquaintance with optics, and the laws of refraction and perspective. In the extent of his chemical knowledge he had no equals in Europe, even if he did not surpass the most learned of the Arabian and Jewish philosophers. He anticipated many of the discoveries of after ages. His suggestions as to what might be accomplished in mechanics show a deep acquaintance with the forces of natural agents, whilst in experimental philosophy in general he foreshadowed, even if he did not directly suggest, the system of his great namesake, Francis Bacon. He was unfortunate in the days which succeeded those in which he lived. The torch he lighted was almost quenched in the times of confusion and darkness following on the death of Edward I. It was reserved to a later age, and to the father of inductive philosophy, to recall the memory of Roger Bacon, and to add to it fresh lustre.-DENTON, REV. W., 1888, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 59. Nor does he fail to reproduce some of the characteristic superstitions of the Middle Ages. He, too, has a faith in alchemy, he accepts the influence of the stars, he even anticipates the modern magic of mesmerism. He, too, will try to find the philosopher's stone and the secret of a life which exceeds the normal measure of man. What he had done in science seems but an earnest of what science can do; and there is at once scientific faith and childish credulity in his anticipations of the future.-COURTNEY, W. L., 1889, Roger Bacon, Fortnightly Review, N. s. vol. 46, p. 262. Roger Bacon is more rarely than Francis led astray by verbal ambiguities, and his etymologies are generally more correct. NICHOL, JOHN, 1889, Francis Bacon, His Life and Philosophy, pt. ii, p. 53. He is worthy to be kept in mind as the Englishman who above all others living in that turbid thirteenth century, saw through the husks of things to their very core. MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1889, English Lands, Letters, and Kings, From Celt to Tudor, p. 81. His three works, Opus majus, Opus minus, and Opus tertium, the fruit of twenty years' investigation, to which he devoted his entire fortune, constitute the most remarkable scientific monument of the Middle Ages. Not only does he call attention to the barrenness of the scholastic logomachies, the necessity of observing nature and of studying the languages, but he recognizes, even more clearly than his namesake of the sixteenth century, the capital importance of mathematical deduction as an auxiliary to the experimental method. Nay, more than that; he enriches science, and especially optics, with new and fruitful theories.-WEBER, ALFRED, 1892-96, History of Philosophy, tr. Thilly, p. 258. The coincidence that Roger Bacon bore, in a time before surnames had come into general use, the same surname that was to be carried to fame four centuries later by "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind," has cast into deeper eclipse the reputation of one of the most penetrating thinkers who have from time to time revolted against false teaching and unsound systems of science. Hardly for every hundred persons who have a general idea of the life and works of Francis Bacon of Verulam shall one be found why could give an outline of those of Roger Bacon the Franciscan. Yet with the fruit of four additional centuries of learning and civilisation at his command, the secret of the later Bacon's philosophy was none other than the earlier Bacon had imparted to ears that would not hear-that the road to knowledge lay, not through scholastic argument and self-confident routine, but by way of cautious induction and patient experiment.-MAXWELL, HERBERT, 1894, Roger Bacon, Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 156, p. 610. Roger Bacon, it needs not be said, stands quite by himself not by any means because he limited himself to the physical studies by which in modern times he is renowned, but because, having learned all that could be learned of the current philosophy, scholarship, science, and literature of his day, knowing Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, and having advanced in some directions far beyond the limit of performance then deemed possible, he was able to judge the existing state of knowledge, and apportion its excellences and its defects from a point of view immeasurably more independent than any other man. He is not merely the original investigator and discoverer of physical truths, but the wisest critic of the learning of his age. - POOLE, R. L., 1894, Social England, vol. 1, p. 438. A man who saw the danger of reliance upon authority, and proclaimed the methods of criticism and observation, and pointed out the way in which investigation should go, and the use which should be made of the new materials which had been gained, in a spirit almost modern and with such a clearness of insight as should have led to the revival of learning as one of the immediate results of the thirteenth century. But he could get no one to hear him. The scholastic methods and the scholastic ideals had become so firmly seated in their empire over men, under the influence of the great minds of that century, that no others seemed possible. His works passed out of the world's knowledge with no discoverable trace of influence until the Renaissance was fully under way, and then only the very slightest. ADAMS, GEORGE BURTON, 1894, Civilization During the Middle Ages, p. 369. The greatest name in Oxford science. -WELLS, J., 1897, Oxford and its Colleges, p. 12. Robert of Gloucester Fl. 1260-1300 Beyond the fact that the name of the writer of a portion of the "Chronicle" was Robert, and that from the dialect in which he wrote he was probably a Gloucestershire monk, there is nothing whatever known about him.-WRIGHT, WILLIAM ALDIS, 1887, ed. Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, Parts I and II. I am very sensible that the obsoleteness of the language will deter many from reading this very useful historian; but to sech as shall be pleased to make themgelves acquainted with him, . . . he will appear very pleasant, entertaining and diverting, and they will value him the more as he comes out in his primitive dress. HEARNE, THOMAS, 1724, ed. Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, vol. 1, Preface, lxxxv. This rhyming chronicle is totally destitute of art or imagination. The author has clothed the fables of Geoffrey of Monmouth in rhyme, which have often a more poetical air in Geoffrey's prose.-WARTON, THOMAS, 1774-81, History of English Poetry, sec. ii. Robert of Gloucester, though cold and prosaic, is not quite deficient in the valuable talent of arresting the attention; and the orations, with which he occasionally diversifies the thread of his story, are, in general, appropriate and dramatic, and not only prove his good sense, but exhibit no unfavourable specimens of his eloquence. In his description of the first crusade he seems to change his usual character, and becomes not only entertaining, but even animated; and the vision, in which a "holy man" is ordered to reproach the Christians with their departure from their duty, and, at the same time, to promise them the divine intervention, to extricate them from a situation in which the exertions of human valour were apparently fruitless, would not, perhaps, to contemporary readers. appear less poetical, nor less sublime and impressive, than the introduction of the |