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. III, 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, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. i, ch. i, par. 87, ch. ii, par. 33.

That Bacon'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 Pope 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. II, 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 ignorance 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 who 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.

I am very sensible that the obsoleteness of the language will deter many from reading this very useful historian; but to such as shall be pleased to make themselves 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 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

heathen mythology into the works of the early classics.-ELLIS, GEORGE, 17901845, Specimens of the Early English Poets, vol. I, p. 79.

After observing some traits of humour and sentiment, moderate as they may be, in compositions as old as the middle of the thirteenth century, we might naturally expect to find in Robert of Gloucester not indeed a decidedly poetical manner, but some approach to the animation of poetry. But the Chronicle of this English Ennius, as he has been called, whatever progress in the state of the language it may display, comes in reality nothing nearer the character of a work of imagination than Layamon's version of Wace, which preceded it by a hundred years. One would not imagine, from Robert of Gloucester's style, that he belonged to a period when a single effusion of sentiment, or a trait of humour and vivacity, had appeared in the language. On the contrary, he seems to take us back to the nonage of poetry, when verse is employed not to harmonize and beautify expression, but merely to assist the memory.

As a relater of events, he is tolerably succinct and perspicuous; and wherever the fact is of any importance, he shows a watchful attention to keep the reader's memory distinct with regard to chronology, by making the date of the year rhyme to something prominent in the narration of the fact.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS 1819, An Essay on English Poetry.

The MS. from which Hearne published his edition was, I suspect, a very corrupt copy of the original; but, with all its faults, it tells our national story with a simplicity, and occasionally with a dramatic power, that have been much undervalued. In sketching the character of our kings this chronicler is sometimes singularly happy.-GUEST, EDWIN, 1838, A History of English Rhythms, vol. II, p.

412.

The poems for such we must call them if all rhymed compositions are poetryof Robert of Gloucester, who flourished about the year 1300, are of considerable philological importance, and of some value as contributions to our knowledge of the history of England, though their literary merit is of a humble order.MARSH, GEORGE P., 1862, The Origin and History of the English Language, etc., p. 231.

Robert as poet was much less gifted than Layamon, but had in him more of the scholar. Archæology, topography, ethnology, and topics of political economy aroused his interest. He was everywhere tempted to compare the past with the present. His erudition was not especially great, nor his field of vision broad, nor his insight very keen; but he was a man of warm feelings, and was clear-sighted within his sphere. He was fain to discern the finger of God in historical events; his moral standard of measurement was strict, but not illiberal. Although devoted to the interests of the church, he was a good Englishman. Party considerations and prejudices clouded his judgment less than they obscure that of many a prominent historian. It was always his aim to distribute praise or blame according to merit.-TEN BRINK, BERNHARD, 1877-83, History of English Literature (To Wielif), tr. Kennedy, p. 275.

It was in long lines of seven accents, and occasionally six, and was the first complete history of his country, from the earliest times to his own day, written in popular rhymes by an Englishman. The language is very free from Norman admixture, and represents West Midland Transitional English of the end of the thirteenth century. -- MORLEY AND TYLER, 1879, A Manual of English Literature, p. 64.

Robert of Gloucester wrote for "simple Englishmen," and his verse has all the interest of unadorned style, while the language in which he writes is a valuable illustration of the change through which our tongue was then passing. As a historian he is of considerable importance. -HUTTON, WILLIAM HOLDEN, 1888, Simon of Montfort and His Cause, p. 180.

Besides the industry he shows in consulting the best authorities, he takes a real interest in his subject on its moral side, and his reflections have often great significance, as showing the feelings of the native English towards the Norman conquerors. COURTHOPE, W. J., 1895, A History of English Poetry, vol. 1, p. 146.

Robert of Gloucester is a very interesting person, and a much better poet than it has been the fashion to represent him, though his first object was not poetry, and though, had it been so, he was but illequipped.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 63.