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CHAPTER XI.

John of Salisbury; Roger Bacon.

THE persons with whom we have been occupied in the chapters immediately preceding the present have all belonged to what may almost be called our own times; or, at least, their pursuits have been such as indicate an advanced state of literature, philosophy, and civilization generally. It is only within the last two or three centuries that any thing like a spirit of independent speculation has formed a pervading characteristic of the literature of modern Europe. Up to that period the intellect of our fore-fathers may be said, in most of its efforts, to have walked in leadingstrings. The peculiar circumstances in which literature sprung up a second time in western Europe after the subversion of the Roman empire, sufficiently explain why it remained so long in a state of pupilage. But the extended period in modern history called the Dark Ages was only the night of the human mind, and by no means its sleep, as it has sometimes been described. The numbers of those who then dedicated themselves to literary pursuits were very great, and their zeal and industry in many cases such as has never been surpassed. As an evidence of the assiduity with which it was customary for men to apply themselves to the studies then in fashion, we may quote the account which our countryman JOHN OF SALISBURY, who flourished in the twelfth century, gives us of the education he had received. He says,' (we quote the version of the original Latin which Mr Turner has given in his History of England,*) that in the year after Henry I died, he went to the

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Peripatetic School at Paris,* on the Mount of St Genevieve, and there studied logic; he afterwards adhered to Master Alberic, as opinatissimus dialectus (a dialectician in the highest repute,) and an acerrimus impugnator (most keen impugner) of the nominal sect. He was two years with him and Robert Metridensis, an Englishman, both men acuti ingenii and studii pervicacis (of acute genius and resolute studiousness.) He then for three years transferred himself to William de Conchin, to imbibe his grammatical knowledge. After this he followed Richard called the Bishop, retracing with him all he had learned from others, and the Quadrivium;† and also heard the German Harduin. He re-studied rhetoric, which he had learned from Master Theodoric, and more completely from Father Helias. Being poor, he supported himself by teaching the children of the noble, and contracted an intimate acquaintance with Master Adam, an Englishman, and a stout Aristotelian. He prosecuted afterwards the study of logic with William of Soissons. Returning at the end of three years, he heard Master Gilbert on logic and on divine subjects; then Robert Pullen, and also Simon Periacensis, a faithful reader, but a heavy disputer. These two last were his only teachers in theology. Thus, he adds, I passed twelve years, occupied by these various studies."

One of the most extraordinary individuals that appeared during the dark ages was our countryman

* So translated by Mr Turner; but the phrase in the original is Ad peripateticum Palatinum, which means to the Peripatetic of Palais,' the common name by which the celebrated Abelard was known in that age, from his place of birth, Palais, in Bretagne.

In the middle ages all the branches of elementary education were considered as comprehended in the two great divisions called the Trivium and the Quadrivium; the former of which embraced grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the latter arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music.

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ROGER BACON; and his history affords us so admirable an example of the successful pursuit of knowledge in the midst of all sorts of difficulties and discouragements, that we shall devote a few pages to present it with some fullness of detail. Bacon was born at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, in the year 1214. After remaining for some years at the University of Oxford, he went to finish his education at that of Paris, then the most distinguished seat of learning in Europe. Here he received his doctor's degree; after which he returned to his own country, and, entering himself a brother of the Franciscan order, again took up his residence at Oxford. At this time all the four orders of mendicant friars had establishments both at Oxford and Cambridge; and their members were, in truth, especially the Franciscans, the great support and ornaments of both Universities. At the period, however, when Bacon commenced his career, the Aristotelian metaphysics and logic, although they had already begun to be studied, had not acquired in this country that extraordinary ascendancy of which we find them only a few years after in possession. He, at all events, applied himself from the first chiefly to the mathematical and natural sciences, the principal of which, as cultivated at this time, may be enumerated under the heads of chemistry or alchemy, astronomy or astrology, medicine, and mechanics. To these may be added, as having engaged a considerable share of Bacon's attention, the minor departments of geography, music, and optics; which last especially was one of his favourite studies, and that in which he displayed, more perhaps than in any other, his brilliant and inventive genius. Nearly all these sciences were as yet mixed up with the wildest errors and follies, which were, however, universally looked upon as their most fundamental and unques

tionable principles, and were accordingly steadily kept in view by all who taught or studied either the theory or the practical applications of any of them. The grand object of chemistry, at the time to which we refer, was the discovery of the philosopher's stone, or the secret of manufacturing gold; but the experiments which were constantly making with a view to this end had incidentally given birth to some real discoveries, especially in regard to the fusibility, malleability, and other properties of the different metals. Of these we may just state, that lead and copper were the two which the most persevering efforts were made to convert into gold, the former exciting the hope of a favourable result by its great weight, and the latter by its colour; no bad example of the purely imaginary grounds which formed the whole theory and foundation of this art. Medicine was in much the same condition with chemistry, being studied, also, chiefly in the writings of the Arabian doctors, who had taken a particular pleasure in mystifying this science with all manner of occult speculation, and bedizening it with their frivolous fancies and inventions. Its natural alliance with chemistry, in the first place, subjected it to be corrupted by all the absurdities of the Hermetic philosophy.* But as these had originated chiefly in one of men's strongest passions, the love of wealth, so another passion still stronger, the fear of disease and death, operated in the case of medicine to give birth to a variety of other delusions, which retained

*The science occupied with the pursuit of the philosopher's stone was so called in memory of the Egyptian philosopher Hermes, styled also Trismegistus, or the thrice-great (supposed by some to be the same personage with the heathen god Mercury), who, it was pretended, had first cultivated it about two thousand years before the birth of Christ, and to whom several existing works upon the subject were ascribed, although, it is almost needless to say, without any foundation.

their hold upon the public credulity with even yet more invincible obstinacy. In the unphilosophical times to which we now refer it was little more than a heap of quackeries and superstitions; or at least the truths which it taught were so mixed up with the merest dreams and imaginations, and these latter were held to be so much the more important and essential part of it, that, if not the very vainest and falsest of all the sciences of the period, there certainly was no other, even as then studied, which was disfigured upon the whole by more frivolity and nonsense. As the chemists thought of nothing but their elixir, or universal solvent, of the metals, so the phy sicians had their elixir vitæ, or universal medicine, which was to cure all diseases, and, if not altogther to put an end to the custom of dying, at least to protract life to more than antediluvian longevity. Then, the Arabian writers, in whose works the science was principally studied, had introduced into it a cloud of mystical and metaphysical notions from those other departments of inquiry to which they were almost all of them attached. One of the greatest of the Arabian physicians, Avicenna, was one of the most devoted admirers that ever lived of the metaphysical works of Aristotle; which, however, he ingenuously confesses he had perused no fewer than forty times before he understood them. Another of these doctors, Averroes, had written so many commentaries on the Greek philosopher, that he obtained the name of the most Peripatetic* of the Arabians. Another of them, called Alcendi, or Alchindus, had a strange theory with regard to the virtues of medicines, maintaining that they could only be properly mixed ac cording to the principles of music -a notion which

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* The philosophy of Aristotle was called the Peripatetic, from a Greek word signifying to walk about, because its founder was wont to walk about while he conversed with and

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