MEMOIR OP ARISTOTLE. 77 



Derations. In their fierce and scandalous disputes, 

 tie pugilistic doctors proceeded from words to blows, 

 which often terminated in mutilation or death. In 

 the hottest of the fray, the name of Aristotle was 

 continually invoked, and his doctrines appealed to 

 on both sides, though both parties flagrantly violated 

 his authority the Realists embodying their wild fan- 

 cies under the name of substantial forms while the 

 ^Nominalists subtilised all knowledge, even theology 

 itself, into shadowy notions arid unmeaning terms. 



During the prevalence of these gross corruptions 

 in the Schools, and even amid the gloom of Go- 

 thic and Saracenic darkness, a few stars brightened 

 the literary horizon, and voices were raised in favour 

 of genuine philosophy. The calumniated and pffer- 

 secuted Roger Bacon, soaring above the ignorance 

 of his times, maintained that Aristotle, rightly un- 

 derstood, was the fountain of all knowledge ; and he 

 asserted, with equal candour and firmness, that those 

 who had undertaken to translate him were totally 

 unfit for the task. But the beams of this luminary 

 were quenched in the barbarism of the age ; and his 

 Hiperior erudition, instead of enlightening, dazzled 

 the weaker eyes of his contemporaries, who referred 

 his wonderful discoveries to magic and the infernal 

 arts. His illustrious namesake, Lord Verulam, ri- 

 valled his fame, but did not possess his candour in 

 regard to Aristotle, whom he studiously copies, and 

 continually abuses, for errors that belong to his in- 

 terpreters and commentators. It is not a little sifo- 



