228 History of Alrhymy. 



admiration, than the Opus Majus of Roger Bacon ; he stands 

 alone like a beacon upon a waste ; his expressions are perspicuous 

 and comprehensive, such as betoken a rare and unclouded in- 

 tellect ; and they are full of anticipations of the advantages 

 likely to be derived from that mode of investigation insisted 

 upon by his great successor, Chancellor Bacou. This resem- 

 blance between Roger Bacon and his illustrious namesake, 

 has scarcely been noticed by the historians of his period ; it has, 

 however, not escaped Mr. Hallam's observation, who adverts to 

 it in his " History of the Middle Ages." Whether Lord Bacon 

 he says, '' ever read the Opus Majus I know not, but it is sin- 

 gular, that his favourite quaint expression, prcerogativcE scienti- 

 arum, should be found in that work ; and whoever reads the 

 sixth part of the Opus Majus, upon experimental science, must 

 be struck by it as the prototype in spirit of the Novum Organum. 

 The same sanguine, and sometimes rash confidence in the effect 

 of physical discoveries ; the same fondness for experiment ; 

 the same preference of inductive to abstract reasoning pervade 

 both works. 



The alchymical work of Roger Bacon, that has been most 

 prized, is the Mirror of Alchyrny, but there is little either of 

 interest or entertainment to be extracted from it. 



Roger Bacon has by some been spoken of as a benefactor to 

 mankind, by others as an enemy to the human race, inasmuch 

 as he is plausibly considered to have invented gunpowder, an 

 invention by which the personal barbarity of warfare has cer- 

 tainly been diminished, " but which considered as an instrument 

 of human destruction, by far more powerful than any that skill 

 had devised, or accident presented before ; acquiring, as ex- 

 perience shews us, a more sanguinary dominion in every suc- 

 ceeding age, and borrowing all the progressive resources of 

 science and civilization for the extermination of mankind, 

 appals us," says a modern writer, " at the future prospects of 

 the species, and makes us feel perhaps more than in any other 

 instance, a difficulty in reconciling the mysterious dispensation 

 with the benevolent order of Providence." 



This discovery has sometimes been given to Bartholomew 



