After his election as head of the Church, Bacon, conceiving that there would be no danger nor impropriety in disobeying his immediate superiors at the command of the pope, wrote to him, stating that he was now ready to send him whatever he wished for. The answer was a repetition of the former request; and Bacon accordingly drew up the Opus Majus,' of which it may be presumed he had the materials ready. It appears that he had mentioned the circumstances in which he stood; for Clement's answer requires him to send the work with haste, any command of his superiors or constitution of his order notwithstanding, and also to point out, with all secrecy, how the danger mentioned by him might be avoided. The book was sent in the year 1267, by the hands of John of London, a pupil of whom he speaks highly, and who has usually obtained some notice from the very great praise which Bacon in one place appears to give him, when he says that he only knows two good mathematicians, one of whom he calls John of London. But from some other circumstances Dr. Jebb concludes, with great probability, that this John was not the pupil above mentioned, but John Peccam, a London Franciscan, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, who was well known as a mathematician, and whose treatise on Optics, ' Perspectivæ communis libri tres,' was printed at least six times between 1542 and 1627, at Nuremberg, Venice, Paris, and Cologne.

Before the Opus Majus,' Bacon, according to his own account, had written nothing except a few slight treatises, "capitula quædam." Before he took the vows he wrote nothing whatever; and afterwards, as he says to Clement, he would have composed many books for his brother and his friends, but when he despaired of ever being able to communicate them, he neglected to write.

With the 'Opus Majus' he sent also two other works, the Opus Minus' and the 'Opus Tertium,' the second a sort of abstract of the first, and the third a supplement to it. These exist in manuscript in the Cottonian Library, but have not been printed. It appears that,

after the death of Clement, which took place in November, 1268 (not 1271, as stated by some; the latter date is that of the election of Clement's successor, the see having been vacant two years and three-quarters), he revised and augmented the second of these works. What reception Clement gave them is not known: some say he was highly gratified, and provided for the bearer; others, that he at least permitted an accusation of heresy against the writer. Both stories are unlikely for Clement could hardly have received the work before he was seized with his last illness.

Till the year 1278 Bacon was allowed to remain free from open persecution; but in that year Jerome of Ascoli, general of the Franciscan order, afterwards pope, under the title of Nicholas IV., being appointed legate to the court of France, this was thought a proper opportunity to commence proceedings. Bacon, then sixty-four years old, was accordingly summoned to Paris (Dr. Jebb implies that he had already removed his residence there, to another convent of his order), where a council of Franciscans, with Jerome at their head, condemned his writings, and committed him to close confinement. According to Bale, or Balæus (cited by Dr. Jebb), the charge of innovation was the pretext, but of what kind was not specified: according to others, the writings of Bacon upon astrology were the particular ground of accusation. We cannot learn that any offer of pardon was made to the accused upon his recantation of the obnoxious opinions, as usual in such cases; which, if we may judge from the Opus Majus,' Bacon would have conceived himself bound to accept, at least if he recognised the legality of the tribunal. A confirmation of the proceeding was immediately obtained from the court of Rome. During ten years, every effort made by him to procure his enlargement was without success. The two succeeding pontiffs had short and busy reigns; but on the accession of Jerome (Nicholas IV.), Bacon once more tried to attract notice. He sent to that pope, it is said, a treatise on the method of retarding the infirmities of old age, the only consequence of which was increased rigour and

closer confinement. But that which was not to be obtained from the justice of the pope, was conceded to private interest, and Bacon was at last restored to liberty by the intercession of some powerful nobles, but who they were is not mentioned. Some say he died in prison; but the best authorities unite in stating that he returned to.Oxford, where he wrote a compendium of theology, and died some months, or perhaps a year and a half, after Nicholas IV. (who died April, 1292). We have adopted 1292 from Anthony-à-Wood, as the most probable year of his death, though foreign works frequently state that he died in 1284. He was buried in the church of the Franciscans at Oxford. The manuscripts which he left behind him were immediately put under lock and key by the magic-fearing survivors of his order, until, not so lucky as those of another wizard, Michael Scott, they are said to have been eaten by insects.

Of the asserted works of Bacon there is a very large catalogue, cited mostly from Bale and Pits, in the preface to Dr. Jebb's edition of the 'Opus Majus.' They amount to five on grammar, six on pure mathematics, seventeen on mechanics and general physics, ten on optics, six on geography, seven on astronomy, one on chronology, nine on chemistry and alchemy, five on magic, eight on logic and metaphysics, nine on medicine, six on theology, twelve miscellaneous; a hundred and one in all. But it is most likely that the greater part of these were extracts from the Opus Majus,' &c., with separate titles, that some are not genuine, and that others are more properly attributable to the two other Bacons already mentioned. The principal manuscripts of the Opus Majus' are, one in Trinity College Library, DubIm, discovered by Dr. Jebb, which forms the text of his edition, two in the Cottonian Library, one in the Harleian, one in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, one in that of Magdalen College, two in the King's Library, all containing various parts of the work. These are independent of the 'Opus Minus' and 'Opus Tertium' in the Cottonian Library, already mentioned, of some in Lambeth Palace, in the Bodleian

Library at Oxford, and a host of others at home and abroad which we cannot specify. The Dublin manuscript is the only entire one with which Dr. Jebb was acquainted. It is a folio of 249 leaves, beautifully written on thick paper, with a good margin, and in double columns. It is not dated, but from the character of the writing it is judged to be of the reign of Henry VIII., or perhaps the early part of that of Elizabeth. The geometrical figures are neatly drawn in the margin. Pope Clement's letters are in the Vatican Library.

It only remains for us to take a general view of the character of Roger Bacon's writings, and of the contents of the Opus Majus.' It is surprising how little is known of this work, the only one in print to which we can appeal, if we would show that philosophy was successfully cultivated in an English university during the thirteenth century. It is of course in Latin, but in Latin of so simple a character, that we know of none in the middle ages more easy to read: and it forms a brilliant exception to the stiff and barbarous style of that and succeeding times. We think we see the thoughts of the author untranslated, though the idiom is often that of an Anglo-Norman; by which we mean that we frequently find Latin words used in their modern English sense, as, for instance, intendere for in animo habere, meaning the same as our word to intend; præsumere for sibi arrogare in the sense of to presume. We should perhaps rather say that the English words receive their meaning from the corrupted Latin, and not vice versa, in which case the work of Roger Bacon may become useful in tracing the change, and the more so on account of the great simplicity of the style.

The charge of heresy appears to be by no means so well founded as a Protestant would wish. Throughout the whole of his writings Bacon is a strict Roman Catholic, that is, he expressly submits matters of opinion to the authority of the Church, saying (Cott. MSS. cited by Jebb) that if the respect due to the vicar of the Saviour, "vicarius Salvatoris," alone, and the benefit of the world, could be consulted in any other way than by

the progress of philosophy, he would not, under such impediments as lay in his way, proceed with his undertaking for the whole church of God, however much it might entreat or insist. His zeal for Christianity, in its Latin or Western form, breaks out in every page; and all science is considered with direct reference to theology, and not otherwise. But at the same time, to the credit of his principles, considering the book-burning, heretichunting age in which he lived, there is not a word of any other force except that of persuasion. He takes care to have both authority and reason for every proposition that he advances: perhaps, indeed, he might have experienced forbearance at the hand of those who were his persecutors, had he not so clearly made out prophets, apostles, and fathers to have been partakers of his opinions. "But let not your Serenity imagine," he says, "that I intend to excite the clemency of your Holiness, in order that the papal majesty should employ force against weak authors and the multitude, or that my unworthy self should raise any stumbling-block to study." Indeed the whole scope of the first part of the work is to prove, from authority and from reason, that philosophy and Christianity cannot disagree; a sentiment altogether of his own revival, in an age in which all philosophers, and mathematicians in particular, were considered as at best of dubious orthodoxy.

The reasoning of Bacon is generally directly dependent upon his premises, which, though often wrong, seldom lead him to the prevailing extreme of absurdity. Even his astrology and alchemy, those two great blots upon his character, as they are usually called, are, when considered by the side of a later age, harmless modifications, irrational only because unproved, and neither impossible nor unworthy of the investigation of a philosopher, in the absence of preceding experiments. His astrology is physical. "With regard to human affairs, true mathematicians do not presume to make certain, but consider how the body is altered by the heavens, and the body being altered, the mind is excited to public and private acts, free will existing all the same.'

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