FRIAR ROGER BACON. 255 



FRIAR ROGER BACON. 



By EDWARD S. HOLDEN, LL.D. 



A RECENT perusal of the published works of Bacon leads me to 

 attempt to set forth, in this place, something of his life and of 

 his times. He is, beyond a doubt, one of the great illustrations 

 of our race. Let us in the first place set down the facts of his 

 checquered life in a story, without seeking too deeply for the causes 

 of his defeats and perils. It will be time enough to examine the 

 reasons when we know the results. He was born of a good and wealthy 

 family, in England, between the years 1210 and 1215. He first 

 appears in history in the 3'ear 1233. King Henry the Third had just 

 listened, at Oxford, to a long sermon and to reprimands from a relative 

 of Bacon's — probably an uncle — who charged the king to dismiss from 

 his council Pierre Des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, who was hated 

 by the English. A young clerk — it was Bacon — dared to address the 

 king with this audacious raillery, says Matthew Paris in his chronicle. 



"Seigneur Roi, savez-vous les dangers qu'on a le plus a redouter quand 

 on navigue au-dela de la mer ? 



"Ceux-la le savent, repartit Henri, qui ont I'habitude de ces voyages. 



"Eh bien, je vais vous le dire, reprit le clerc, ce sont les pierres et les 

 roches — et il voulait designer par la Pierre Des Roches, I'eveque de Winchester. ' 



Bold and reckless speaking regardless of consequences was a life- 

 long characteristic of Bacon, and the first and only anecdote that we 

 have represents him bold with kings, as he afterwards was bold 

 towards popes, cardinals, generals of his order, doctors of the church 

 and the society in which he lived. It may, for a moment, seem to us 

 tc be a merit. In sad fact, it was never so in his life, and it led to his 

 undoing. 



He learned this temerity from a great man wdio was his master at 

 Oxford and afterwards the illustrious Bishop of Lincoln, Robert 

 Grossteste, the first English scholar of his time — he who browbeat 

 the pope and called him 'heretic' and 'anti-Christ.' Robert was 

 Superior of the Franciscans at Oxford and lectured there on optics. 

 Athelard of Bath, the first translator of Euclid, was not forgotten in 

 those schools, which were then marked by great intellectual freedom 

 and by a strong leaning towards science. 



Here Bacon passed years in ardent research. He mastered all the 

 book learning of the schools — philosophy and mathematics; and ex- 



