Roger Bacon

“ The powerful delusion of alchymy seized upon a mind still greater than that of Raymond Lulli. Roger Bacon firmly believed in the philosopher’s stone, and spent much of his time in search of it. His example helped to render all the learned men of the time more convinced of its practicability, and more eager in the pursuit. He was born at Ilchester, in the county of Somerset, in the year 1214. He studied for some time in the University of Oxford, and afterwards in that of Paris, in which he received the degree of doctor of divinity. ”

“ Even the world itself could hardly award the meed of unprofitable to the studies of Roger Bacon, a native of Ilchester, born in 1214, who, after studying at Oxford and at Paris, became a member of the Franciscan, or Minorite Friars, and settled again at Oxford, where he pursued his studies under the patronage of Bishop Robert Grostête. He made himself a perfect master of Greek in order to understand Aristotle in the original, and working on by himself he proceeded far beyond any chemist of his time in discoveries in natural philosophy. ”

“ Amongst others who appeared was Roger Bacon, who, condemned 'propter quasdam novitates suspectas,' and prevented from writing to the pope (Gregory X) for defence and aid, passed into a prolonged confinement. Tradition at this point of his career becomes most confused; there exists, however, the manuscript of part of a work in which a date is explicitly recorded. The work is entitled 'Compendium Studii Theologiæ;' the date is 1292. In 1292, then, Bacon was alive, and moreover in freedom. ”

“ Already one victim is sacrificed—our turn will come next! See, here are the mangled limbs of his pupil, Hubert de Dreux! The fiend has claimed his reward, and borne away his soul. Seize on the wicked sorcerer, and take him to a dungeon!"
Roger Bacon sate stupefied by the unexpected blow; he had no power, if he had possessed the will, to offer the slightest resistance to the fury of the enraged Franciscans, who, in the true spirit of ignorance, had ever hated him for his acquirements. ”

“ About 1260 Roger Bacon found him probably at Paris, as a poor boy of fifteen eager to learn, but forced to beg his bread and to serve those who gave him the necessaries of life [1364] .
‘I caused him,’ says Roger [1365] , ‘to be taken care of and instructed for the love of God.’
The boy repaid his master’s care. Wishing to send a fit interpreter of his works to the Pope, Bacon writes [1366] ,
‘I chose a youth whom for five or six years I have had instructed in languages and mathematics and optics, in which is all the difficulty of what I send ”

“ It was high time that a man like Roger Bacon should appear, and teach men to come out of all this jugglery and mere fancy-work both in science and philosophy, and put everything to the test of experiment—a mode of philosophising, however, which made little progress till the appearance, three centuries later, of another Bacon, the great Verulam. For the knowledge of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and chemistry—or rather astrology and alchemy—as taught at that period, we may refer to our notice of Bacon amongst the great men of the era. ”

“ In the same volume of MSS. is the treatise De impugnatione, etc., printed in the Appendix C: Bale and Pits ascribe this to Eccleston, but without sufficient authority.
Roger Bacon is said on the authority of John Rous [1313] to have been born at or near Ilchester in Dorsetshire. He came of a wealthy perhaps noble family; he speaks of one brother as rich, of another as a scholar. He was probably nephew of Robert Bacon the Dominican. Roger’s family espoused the royal cause in the Barons’ war and suffered great losses [1314] . ”

“ It is generally thought that Roger Bacon, the famous monk of the thirteenth century, was a very great man and that he possessed true knowledge, because he was persecuted and condemned to prison by a set of ignoramuses. It is a great prejudice in his favor, I own. But does it not happen every day that quacks gravely condemn other quacks, and that fools make other fools pay the penalty of folly? This, our world, has for a long time resembled the compact edifices in which he who believes in the eternal Father anathematizes him who believes in the Holy Ghost ”

“ Of his learning in this direction Roger Bacon said that, though ‘in many things he wrote what was true and useful, he neither has nor ought to have any title to be reckoned an authority’ (Opera Inedita, p. 457) . Grammar seems to have been his favourite pursuit, and when writing on other subjects he sometimes notes some derivation which now appears strange. He also wrote a kind of vocabulary in the form of a reading book, entitled ‘De Utensilibus,’ of which there are manuscripts in the British Museum (MS. Cotton, Titus D. 20) , and at Caius College and Peterhouse, Cambridge. ”

“ Like every innovator, he experienced the penalties of superior genius,—persecution, contumely, deprivation of liberty. Among the representative scholars of the Middle Ages, he deserves pre-eminent celebrity as a bold and original exponent of experimental philosophy and scientific thought.
Although unappreciated by his contemporaries, Roger Bacon found a host of imitators during the next three centuries. Members of every rank and profession embraced the study of alchemy. ”

“ I was desirous of learning more concerning this youth, but I regret to say Roger Bacon appeared to know very little about his subsequent career; he had heard, he said, that he was a great reader, and was to be constantly seen at the British Museum Library; he was fond of old books, and “Ye Boke of ye Odd Volumes” had much delighted him, also “B. Q., a Biographical and Bibliographical Fragment,” by C. W. H. Wyman, but he could not vouch for these things. “You see,” he added, thoughtfully, “we never meet now; for, alas! I did not take the Elixir when I might have done so.” ”

“ We might not expect to find the great scientist, Roger Bacon, as a Biblical scholar and reviser, but such he was, working with Willermus de Mara, to whom, according to Father Denifle, late the Librarian of the Vatican Library, must be attributed the title given him by Roger Bacon of Sapientissimus Vir. ”

“ His researches were particularly directed to the relation of chemistry to medicine. He is credited with having discovered sulphuric and other acids, and is said to have been the first to distil alcohol or spirit of wine.
Contemporary with these men of learning was our own Roger Bacon, whose love for his art nearly cost him his life, besides many years in prison. The discoverer of gunpowder and the telescope spent most of his life in experimental researches, with the result that he revolutionised the art of war, and gave to astronomers the power of exploring the heavens. ”

“ Brought up to consider philosophy as nearly allied to, if not identical with, heresy itself, many of them might perhaps be honest believers in its magical power; but we can hardly doubt that there were a few [Pg 43] more acute minds, who saw that Roger Bacon was in reality endeavouring to evoke a spirit whose influence would upset the power they had acquired over the thoughts of men, and allow them to read and reflect, without fear of excommunication, or the necessity of inquiring what Council had authorized the book. ”

“ Bacon's end was much after the like sort; for having a greedy desire unto meat, he could cause nothing to enter the stomach—wherefore thus miserably he starved to death." Sign. B. iij. rev. Not having at hand John Dee's book of the defence of Roger Bacon, from the charge of astrology and magic (the want of which one laments as pathetically as did Naudé, in his "Apologie pour tous les grands personnages, &c., faussement soupçonnez de Magic," Haye, 1653, 8vo., p. 488) , I am at a loss to say the fine things, which Dee must have said, in commendation of the extraordinary talents of Roger Bacon ”

“ He never gets two inches higher.
So fares it with those merry blades
That frisk it under Pindus' shades. ↑ The account here given of William Lilly agrees exactly with his Life written by himself. ↑ Clear, that is, empty. ↑ Roger Bacon was a Franciscan friar, who flourished in the thirteenth century, and was commonly regarded as a conjurer or practitioner of the black art, on account of his knowledge of natural science and philosophy. His Opus Majus is one of the most wonderful books of the times in which he lived. ”

“ The result, however, was, that hurt by this letter, she indignantly and somewhat coarsely refused his suit, saying, "that an unruly beast ought to be stinted of his provender." After a month's suspense, it was notified to him that the patent was confided to trustees for the queen's use.
In the storm that now (October, 1600) gathered round Essex, the real state of his mind revealed itself. "When I expected," he said, "a harvest, a tempest has arisen to me; if I be wanting to myself, my friends, and my country, it is long of others, not of myself ”

“ I am yours surer to you than my own life. For, as they speak of the Turquoise stone in a ring, I will break into twenty pieces before you bear the least fall." They were unconsciously prophetic words. But Ellesmere lasted longer than was expected. It was not till a year after this promise that he resigned. On the 7th of March, 1616/17, Bacon received the seals. He expresses his obligations to Villiers, now Lord Buckingham, in the following letter:
"MY DEAREST LORD,—It is both in cares and kindness that small ones float up to the tongue, and great ones sink down into the heart with silence. ”

“ Bacon was now past thirty, Essex a few years younger. In spite of Bacon's apparent advantage and interest at Court, in spite of abilities, which, though his genius was not yet known, his contemporaries clearly recognised, he was still a struggling and unsuccessful man: ambitious to rise, for no unworthy reasons, but needy, in weak health, with careless and expensive habits, and embarrassed with debt. He had hoped to rise by the favour of the Queen and for the sake of his father. ”

“ He has been picturing himself as he was when a young man. He turns to his glass and sees himself beated and chopt with tanned antiquity; forty summers have passed over his brow. [48]
Francis Bacon at forty years of age, or thereabouts, unmarried, childless, sits down to his table, Hilliard's portrait before him, with pen in hand, full of self-love, full of admiration for that beautiful youth on whose counterfeit presentment he is gazing. His intellectual triumphs pass in review before him, most of them known only to himself and that youth—his companion through life. ”

“ Often there seems little to distinguish him from the ordinary place-hunters, obsequious and selfish, of every age; little to distinguish him from the servile and insincere flatterers, of whom he himself complains, who crowded the antechambers of the great Queen, content to submit with smiling face and thankful words to the insolence of her waywardness and temper, in the hope, more often disappointed than not, of hitting her taste on some lucky occasion, and being rewarded for the accident by a place of gain or honour. Bacon's history, as read in his letters, is not an agreeable one ”

“ Sir Toby Matthew describes Francis Bacon as
"A friend unalterable to his friends;
A man most sweet in his conversation and ways";
and adds:
"It is not his greatness that I admire, but his virtue."
Thomas Bushel, his servant, in a letter to Mr. John Eliot, printed in 1628, in a volume called "The First Part of Youth's Errors," says:
"Yet lest the calumnious tongues of men might extenuate the good opinion you had of his worth and merit, I must ingenuously confess that my selfe and others of his servants were the occasion of exhaling his vertues into a darke exlipse ”

“ Bacon was undoubtedly an impoverished man, and straitened in his means; but this must be understood as in relation to the rank and position which he still held, and the work which he wanted done for the Instauratio. His will, dated a few months before his death, shows that it would be a mistake to suppose that he was in penury. He no doubt often wanted ready money, and might be vexed by creditors. But he kept a large household, and was able to live in comfort at Gray's Inn or at Gorhambury. ”

“ Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, died, aged 66. At the age of 13 he entered the university, where he made the most astonishing progress in all the sciences then taught, and at the age of 16 attacked the Aristotlean philosophy. He succeeded rapidly in office under government, and in 1619 was appointed lord high chancellor of England and baron of Verulam. Here, unfortunately, he sullied his name, and was fined, imprisoned and degraded, for bribery and corruption. This extraordinary man is justly entitled to the appellation of "the father of experimental philosophy." ”

“ In Italy, in Germany, in England there were laborious and successful workers, who had long felt that to be in touch with nature was the only way to know. But no one had yet come before the world to proclaim this on the house-tops, as the key of the only certain path to the secrets of nature, the watchword of a revolution in the methods of interpreting her; and this Bacon did with an imposing authority and power which enforced attention. He spoke the thoughts of patient toilers like Harvey with a largeness and richness which they could not command, and which they perhaps smiled at. ”

“ He fell upon hard times, first the courtier of a princess whose thirst of praise and requisition of humility was unbounded, then the courtier and servant of a king who all but believed himself to be a god. The most marvellous fact of Bacon’s character is, that he who knew men so well, and whose insight into their feelings and motives was so clear, should have been so blind as to remain totally ignorant, as is apparent from all his letters and writings, of that youthful spirit of freedom which in the subsequent reign sprung into such vigorous manhood. ”

“ Bacon was thoroughly interested in the preacher, and was studying him carefully. He was tall,36 straight, and superbly proportioned; broad-shouldered, wide-lunged, and thewed like a Greek racer. His rather small steel-blue eyes twinkled, and his shrewd face and small head, set well back, completed a remarkable figure. He wore his reddish beard in the usual way of Western clergymen, with mustache chopped close.
Bacon spoke slowly:
"You look like a good, husky man to pitch in the barnyard; you've too much muscle f'r preachun'." ”