1 48 HEROES OE INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



three men in a whole nation were tolerably acquainted with 

 those studies, and when all the pretenders to knowledge affected 

 to cover their own ignorance by throwing the most scandalous 

 aspersions on those branches of science which they either 

 wanted genius to understand, or which demanded greater 

 application to acquire than they were willing to bestow. They 

 gave out, therefore, that mathematical studies were in some 

 measure allied to those magical arts which the Church had 

 condemned, and thereby brought suspicion upon men of 

 superior learning. It was owing to this suspicion that Bacon 

 was restrained from reading lectures to the young students in 

 the university, and at length closely confined and almost starved, 

 the monks being afraid lest his writings should extend beyond 

 the limits of his convent, and be seen by any besides them- 

 selves and the Pope. But there is great reason to believe that 

 though his application to the occult sciences was their pretence, 

 the true cause of his ill-usage was, the freedom with which he 

 had treated the clergy in his writings, in which he spared 

 neither their ignorance nor their want of morals. 



Notwithstanding this harsh treatment, his reputation con- 

 tinued to spread over the whole Christian world, and even 

 Pope Clement IV. wrote him a letter desiring that he would 

 send him all his works. This was in 1266, when our author 

 was in the flower of his age ; and to gratify his Holiness, he 

 collected together, greatly enlarged, and arranged in some 

 order, the several pieces he had written before that time, and 

 sent them the next year by his favourite disciple John ol 

 London, or rather of Paris, to the Pope. This collection, 

 which is the same as he entitled " Opus Magnus," or his great 

 work, is yet extant, and was published by Dr. Jebb in 1773. 



It is said that this learned book procured Roger Bacon the 



