no new dogmas are started, no old truths questioned, and the creeds in which we all confide are acknowledged,—if the examination of Coleridge's grounds of belief should appear to any of us unsatisfactory, we have only to originate better for ourselves; or, even in the last extreme, to repose still, in humble confidence and pious trust, on such principles of faith and practice as have hitherto been sufficient to support us, under God, in all the trials and temptations of the present life, and to cheer us with the hope and the promise of a better life to come.

ART. III.-Fratris Rogeri Bacon, Ordinis Minorum, Opus Majus ad Clementem Quartum, Pontificem Romanum. Ex MS. Codice Dubliniensi, cum aliis quibusdam collato, nunc primum edidit S. JEBB, M.D. Londini: Typis Gulielmi Bowyer. 1733.

IT is now six or seven years since the laureate Southey directed our attention to certain passages in the Rev. Charles Forster's Mahometanism Unveiled; adducing parallel extracts from the works of Roger Bacon and of Lord Verulam, in support of the grave charge, that the latter took without acknowledgment the fundamental principles of his philosophy from the unpublished Opus Majus of the former; nay, that even some of the materials were thence derived. In Mr. Forster's opinion, the internal evidence suffices to prove that his lordship had access to the friar's manuscript; but, after examination, we incline to the more charitable decision, that the plagiaries are rather apparent than real: enough besides, after making all deductions, remains to leave Lord Bacon's fame without any material diminution. If we cannot altogether acquit the noble author of disingenuous silence touching his predecessor, we must still confess that his own positive merits place him in the highest rank of mental supremacy. But after conceding this, we are inclined to put in at least equal claims on behalf of the elder sage; and feel some solicitude to attract attention to his too much neglected works, in which the advantages likely to be derived from the inductive method are as clearly laid down as in those of his more fortunate successor, and sometimes nearly in the same words. No greater evidence of the unwarrantable neglect into which Roger Bacon has fallen can be rendered, than the fact that, up to this period, no correct Life of him has ever been compiled; every one that we have examined, from the Biographia Britannica downwards, being a mass of error and confusion; a fact we discovered at the time above mentioned, being then interested in making the investigation. From the gleanings we then made it is probable that we can construct a paper, certainly instructive, and perhaps amusing.

As if in anticipation, and for compensation, of the neglect into which he should afterwards fall, his earliest biographers seem to have been determined to heap upon Roger all the honours of all the Bacons, and to mix up in the events of his life those of every person who had borne the name with any celebrity. But of all these, one Robert Bacon, an eminent English divine, has been the most defrauded-of whom says Fuller, in his Worthies, "I behold this Robert as the senior of all the Bacons, which, like tributary streams, disembogued themselves, with all the credit of their actions, into Roger, who in process of time, hath monopolized the honour of all his sirnamesakes in Oxford." Pitts, Leland, Hearne, Cave, besides others, have confounded this Robert Bacon with the more famous Roger. It is probable, however, that Robert was the uncle of Roger Bacon; and, no doubt, it was he who was familiar with Bishop Grosetéte, to whom credit is given for having been one of Roger's earliest patrons, by Roger's biographers, without any other foundation than the identity of the sirname. Roger Bacon was about thirty-nine years of age when the bishop of Lincoln died; and whether he was intimate with him or not, clear it is that he was at all events animated by his example; for the prelate's reputation is founded no less on Roger Bacon's testimony to his genius and learning, than on the strenuous opposition which he made to the encroachments of the Roman pontiff. This testimony is all the more remarkable, as the friar was parsimonious of praise to his contemporaries; for which, however, he had reason, if Grosetéte was, as he has described him," the only learned man of his age." In his tendency rather to censure than to eulogize, Roger Bacon was only too much the prototype of his noble successor, whose fame, like Aaron's rod, was to swallow up his own, as his had absorbed that of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries. Among those who have thus suffered may be mentioned Bishop Grosetéte himself. For, notwithstanding the verses of Gower,* who now mentions the legend of the Brazen Head in connexion with Bishop Grosetéte? No; it is Friar Bacon's Brazen Head! and his only, notwithstanding the good prelate had previously enjoyed the reputation of its manu

facture; besides Pope Sylvester II. before him. Probably the legend was an allegory of the alchemists, meaning the vessel in which the great philosophical work was wrought; but the critical moment of projection, which should have transmuted the baser metal into gold being neglected, an opportunity was lost of making the strongest defence for England, which the unlimited possession of wealth could have procured. However this be, it is no wonder that we should find similar relations in the lives of Robert Grosetéte and Roger Bacon, as both were similarly circumstanced in many particulars. Both being too enlightened for the age in which they lived and suffered; both having been charged with necromancy, and persecuted for it; and both having become objects of jealousy to the corrupt authorities of the church of Rome.

Protestantism and experimental science are of coeval origin; and both Bacon and Grosetéte contemplated a reformation, not only in the schools, but in the Church. Already, indeed, had Grosetéte declared in a letter to the contemporary pontiff that the papal power was antichrist; and subsequently resisted the clause non-obstante, by means of which the pope had been wont to supersede the rights and liberties of the Church, whenever a benefice was to be disposed of; a mischievous example imitated by Henry III. and some subsequent monarchs, under the name of the dispensing power. Grosetéte, on the occasion alluded to, replied in a strain of such freedom, as to throw Innocent IV. into a violent passion. This pope had commanded the bishop to bestow on his nephew, an infant, a living of much value. Grosetéte retorted, as Brown in his Fasciculus rerum expetendarum observes, "excommunication for excommunication," in an epistle which has immortalized the bishop's memory. The haughty pontiff, in his rage, swore by St. Peter and St. Paul, that he would utterly confound such an old dreaming, impertinent dotard, and make him an example and an astonishment to the whole world. But his cardinals wisely remonstrated with him on the danger of persecuting a prelate so renowned for piety and learning; and the offence was overlooked. "Why," said they very sensibly, "should we raise a tumult in the Church without necessity; and precipitate that, revolt and separation from us, which we know must one day take place?" A noticeable prediction! The authority of the story is Matthew Paris, and he gives the name of the cardinal, Ægidius, a Spaniard, who uttered the prophecy; adding, that various others of the pope's counsellors used the same argument. The bishop, besides, was then seventy-eight years of age; and the pope probably thought that the indulgence of his vengeance, which might be accompanied with such results on an old man, who must be soon beyond its power, would be a poor gratification dearly purchased.

The system of the schoolmen was peculiarly the growth of such a church as that of Rome; yet, perhaps, it has been more calumniated than it deserves. A somewhat close investigation of the subject has disinclined us to subscribe too implicitly to the verdict of Vives, that what appeared to him the enigmatical subtleties of the scholastic theologians, "are only to be ranked among the trifling amusements of children;"-though we readily allow with him that "they are not always the produce of an understanding exercised and improved by erudition, but spring up in an unoccupied mind, from our ignorance of better things, like useless weeds in an uncultivated soil." Studies of this nature, however, are useful to prepare the way for other kinds of learning, by sharpening the ingenuity of the student. They who are brought to apprehend these subtle questions, will the more easily acquire a knowledge of less difficult subjects. In the education of the individual this course of trial is beneficial; in the education of the race it will be found to have been equally The individual is a type of the species; and the progress of one represents, in a narrow compass, what that of the whole is upon the larger scale.

so.

The work that we have placed at the head of this article is Bacon's celebrated performance, the Opus Majus, bearing the form of an epistle to Pope Clement IV.; and is generally considered a digest of his former writings. It is a correct and beautiful folio edition, edited by Dr. Jebb, from various collated manuscripts. That a translation of it ought to be promptly made, and the book republished in English, none can doubt, when the importance of its contents is considered. How much Roger Bacon anticipated the ground after occupied by Lord Bacon, would then generally appear.

It is certainly remarkable that both authors should assign the same, and the same number of qualities, as impediments to the acquisition of true and useful knowledge. As did Lord Bacon after, Roger Bacon accuses mankind of depending too confidently on authority-of permitting the undue domination of custom-of fearing to offend vulgar prejudice---and of being solicitous, by specious pretensions to knowledge, to conceal the real amount of their ignorance. Two or three sentences of the first chapter of the Opus Majus will make this clear.

Qua propter sufficit nobis in inquisitione veritatis proprii intellectus imbecillitas, ut quantum possumus causas et occasiones erroris extraneas longius a debilitate sensus nostri relegemus. Quatuor vero sunt maxima comprehendendæ veritatis offendicula, quæ omnem quemcunque sapientem impediunt, et vix aliquem permittunt ad verum titulum sapientiæ pervenire, viz. :-fragilis et indigna auctoritatis exemplum, consuetudinis diuturnitas, vulgi sensus imperiti et propriæ ignorantiæ occultatio cum ostentatione sapientiæ apparentis," &c.

According to Roger Bacon, authority, experience, and reason should each have their due influence; and the two last should not be superseded by the decisions of the first. Nor does he neglect to employ authority against itself; for he quotes not only the classic writers, but the fathers of the primitive church, in favour of the free exercise of our experimental and ratiocinative functions. In exposing the danger of learned pride, and the folly of attempting to hide instead of removing ignorance, he laments the disuse into which the study of languages and mathematics had fallen. Among the reasons why some of the fathers had authorized the neglect of philosophy by their example, he states that, even in their time, the books of Aristotle had not been translated into Latin, and that some of the early Christians preferred the writings of Plato. He concludes the first part of his work with suggesting to Clement IV. the propriety of his commencing, in all these particulars, a plan of reformation.

It must be confessed that the course of procedure here is very like that of the novum organon; and it is therefore with surprise that we read in Mr. Martin's character of Lord Bacon, that, before his time, no attempt had been made to detect and enumerate the prejudices and biases of the mind of man; which, as the great Verulam truly observes, "is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered or reduced."

The great protestant principle, since worked out so admirably by Chillingworth, is, in the second part of the Opus Majus, insisted on, at length, by Roger Bacon. In the Bible, the philosopher recognises the perfection of wisdom and the source of truth.

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Relegatis," he says, "igitur quatuor causis totius ignorantiæ humanæ generalibus, volo in hac secunda distinctione unam sapientiam esse perfectam ostendere, et hanc in sacris literis contineri; de cujus radicibus omnis veritas eruitur. Dico igitur, quod est una scientia dominatrix aliarum, ut theologia, cui reliquæ penitus sunt necessariæ, et sine quibus ad effectum pervenire non potest; virtutem in suum jus vindicat, ad cujus nutum et imperium cæteræ jacent; una tamen est sapientia perfecta, quæ in sacra scriptura totaliter continetur, per jus canonicum et philosophiam explicanda, et expositio veritatis divinæ per illas scientias habetur. Nam ipsa cum eis velut in palmam explicatur, et tamen totam sapientiam in pugnum colligit per seipsum. Quoniam ab uno Deo data est tota sapientia, et uni mundi, et propter unum finem. Quapropter hæc sapientia ex sua triplici comparatione unitatem sortietur. Cæterum via salutis una, licet gradus multi; sed sapientia est via in salutem. Omnis enim consideratio hominis, quæ non est salutaris, est plena cæcitate, et ad finalem inferni deducit cali