326 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



Greece, and the remark that " all these made up at 

 their pleasure feigned accounts (or " plots ") of worlds, 

 as of fables, and recited, published these fables of 

 theirs some more consistent certainly and probable, 

 others harder of belief," he adds that among the 

 moderns, through the instruction of schools and 

 colleges, the imagination is kept within stricter bounds, 

 yet men have not ceased imagining. " Patrizzi, 

 Talesio, Bruno^ Severin of Denmark, Gilbert of 

 England, Campanella, have tried the stage, acted new 

 plays which were neither marked by applauding favour 

 of the public, nor by brilliancy of plot." The names 

 are those of men with whom it is no shame for Bruno 

 to stand side by side ; and one and all are instances of 

 Bacon's incapacity for grasping the true direction in 

 which the thought of his time was flowing ; but the 

 mere mention of Bruno in such a context implies that 

 his works were still read, and that they were estimated 

 at a high value by the lovers of " philosophy." There 

 are, however, many points of contact between Bacon 

 and Bruno, suggesting an influence, indirect if not 

 direct, of the latter upon the former. Bacon was 

 perfectly at home in Italian literature, and it is unlikely 

 that he omitted to read Bruno's dialogues. Two 

 casual but significant proofs that he did so are, the 

 legend related of Mount Athos and of Olympus, that 

 men had written in the ashes of the sacrifices offered 

 upon their summits, and had returned the following 

 year to find the ashes and the writing undisturbed, 

 the inference being that the summits of these mountains 

 were in a region of perpetual calm ; l and the suggestion 



1 His tor ia Ventorum, Ellis and Spedding, ii. p. 51 j cf. Nov. Org. ii. 12. The 

 source of the Mount Athos legend is certainly Aristotle's Problemata (xxvi. 39), 

 while that for Olympus ia either Solinus, or more probably Bruno, in the Cena de le 



