by proposing as a sentiment- SUCCESS TO THE BIBLIOMANIA! ?'

PHIL. 'Tis well observed: and as 'every loyal subject at our great taverns drinks the health of his Sovereign with three times three up-standing,' even so let us hail this sentiment of Lorenzo !

LIS. Philemon has cheated me of an eloquent speech. But let us receive the sentiment as he proposes it.

LOREN. Now the uproar of Bacchus has subsided, the instructive conversation of Minerva may follow. Go on, Lysander.

I

LYSAND. Having endeavored to do justice to Girald Barri, I know of no other particularly distinguished bibliomaniac till we approach the æra of the incomparable ROGER, or FRIAR BACON. say incomparable, Lorenzo; because he was, in truth, a constellation of the very first splendor and magnitude in the dark times in which he lived; and notwithstanding a sagacious writer (if my memory be not treacherous) of the name of Coxe, chuses to tell us that he was miserably starved to death, because he could not introduce a piece of roast beef into his stomach, on account of having made a league with Satan to eat only cheese;'

* • A short treatise declaringe the detestable wickednesse of magicall sciences, as necromancie, coniuration of spirites, curiouse astrologie, and suche lyke, made by FRANCIS COXE. Printed by Allde, 12mo, without date (14 leaves). From this curious little volume, which is superficially noticed by Herbert, (vol. ii. p. 889.) the reader is presented with the following extract, appertaining to the above subject: 'I myself (says the author) knew a .priest not far from a town called Bridgewater, which, as it is well known

yet I suspect that the end of Bacon was hastened by other means more disgraceful to the age, and equally painful to himself.

in the country, was a great magician in all his life time. After he once began these practices, he would never eat bread, but, instead thereof, did eat always cheese; which thing, as he confessed divers times, he did, because it was so concluded betwixt him and the spirit which served him,' &c. sign. A viii. rect.

[R.] Bacon's end was much after the like sort: for having a greedy desire unto meat, he could cause nothing to enter the stomach-wherefore thus miserably he starved to death.' Sign. B. iij. rev.

Not having at hand John Dee's book of the defence of Roger Bacon, from the charge of astrology and magic, [the want of which one laments as pathetically as did Naudé, in his Apologie pour tous les grands personnages &c. faussement soupçonnez de Magie, Haye, 1653, 8vo, p. 488.] I am at a loss to say the fine things, which Dee must have said, in commendation of the extraordinary talents of ROGER BACON: who was miserably matched in the age in which he lived; but who, together with his great patron GROSTESTE, will shine forth as beacons to futurity. Dr. Friend in his History of Physic has enumerated, what he conceived to be, Bacon's leading works: while Gower in his Confessio Amantis, [Caxton's edit. fol. 70] has mentioned the brazen head

for to telle

Of such thongs as befelle,

which was the joint manufactory of the patron and his èleve. As lately as the year 1666, Bacon's life formed the subject of a famous history,' from which Mr. Walter Scott has given us a facetious anecdote in the seventh volume, (p. 10) of Dryden's Works. But the curious investigator of ancient times, and the genuine lover of British biography, will seize upon the more prominent features in the life of this renowned philosopher; will reckon up his great discoveries in optics and physics; and will fancy, upon looking at the above picture of his study, that an explosion from gun-powder (of which our philosopher has been thought the inventor) has protruded the palings which are leaning against its sides. Bacon's 'Opus Majus,' which happened to meet the eyes of Pope Clement IV. and which now would have encircled the neck of its author with an hundred golden chains, and procured for him a diploma from every learned society in Europe-just served to liberate him from his first long imprisonment. This was succeeded by a subsequent confinement of twelve years; from which he was released only time enough to breathe his last in the

Only let us imagine we see this sharp-eyed philosopher at work in his study, of which yonder print is generally received as a representation! How

ture.

Those who are dissatisfied with the meagre manner in which our earlier biographers have noticed the labors of Roger Bacon, and with the tetragonistical story, said by Twyne to be propagated by our philosopher, of Julius Cæsar's seeing the whole of the British coast and encampment upon the Gallic shore, maximorum ope speculorum,' (Antiquit. Acad. Oxon. Apolog. 1608, 4to, p. 353.) may be pleased with the facetious story

R

heedlessly did he hear the murmuring of the stream beneath, and of the winds without-immersed in the vellum and parchment rolls of theological, astrological, and mathematical lore, which, upon the dispersion of the libraries of the Jews,* he was constantly perusing, and of which so large a share had fallen to his own lot!

Unfortunately, my friends, little is known with certainty, though much is vaguely conjectured, of the labors of this great man. Some of the first scholars and authors of our own, and of other countries, have been proud to celebrate his praises;

story told of him by Wood (Annals of Oxford, vol. i. 216, Gutch's edit.) and yet more by the minute catalogue of his works noticed by Bishop Tanner [Bibl. Brit. Hibern. p. 62.]: while the following eulogy of old Tom Fuller cannot fail to find a passage to every heart: For mine own part (says this delightful and original writer) I behold the name of Bacon in Oxford, not as of an individual man, but corporation of men; no single cord, but a twisted cable of many together. And as all the acts of strong men of that nature are attributed to an Hercules; all the predictions of prophecying women to a Sibyll; so I conceive all the atchievements of the Oxonian Bacons, in their liberal studies, are ascribed to ONE, as chief of the name,' Church History, book iii. p. 96. * Warton, in his second Dissertation, says that 'great multitudes of their [the Jews] books fell into the hands of Roger Bacon;' and refers to Wood's Hist. et Antiquit. Univ. Oxon. vol. i. 77: 132-where I find rather a slight notification of it—but, in the genuine edition of this latter work, published by Mr. Gutch, vol. i. p. 329, it is said: 'At their [the Jews] expulsion, divers of their tenements that were forfeited to the king, came into the hands of William Burnell, Provost of Wells; and their books (for many of them were learned) to divers of our scholars; among whom, as is verily supposed, ROGER BACON was one: and that he furnished himself with such Hebrew rarities, that he could not elsewhere find. Also that, when he died, he left them to the Franciscan library at Oxon, which, being not well understood in after-times, were condemned to moths and dust!' Weep, weep, kind hearted bibliomaniac, when thou thinkest upon the fate of these poor Hebrew MSS. !

nor would it be considered a disgrace by the most eminent of modern experimental philosophers-of him, who has been described as unlocking the hidden treasures of nature, and explaining the various systems by which air, and earth, and fire, and water, counteract and sustain each other'*to fix the laureate crown round the brows of our venerable Bacon !

We have now reached the close of the thirteenth century and the reign of EDWARD THE FIRST; when the principal thing that strikes us, connected with the history of libraries, is, this monarch's insatiable lust of strengthening his title to the kingdom of Scotland by purchasing the libraries of all the monasteries't for the securing of any record which might corroborate the same. What he gave for this tremendous book-purchase, or of what nature were the volumes purchased, or what was their subsequent destination, is a knot yet remaining to be untied.

Of the bibliomaniacal propensity of Edward's

• See a periodical paper, entitled The Director; vol. ii. p. 294. † ' King Edward the first caused and committed divers copies of the records, and much concerning the realm of Scotland, unto divers abbies for the preservance thereof; which for the most part are now perished, or rare to be had; and which privilie by the dissolution of monasteries is detained. The same king caused the libraries of all monasteries, and other places of the realm, to be purchased, for the further and manifest declaration of his title, as chief Lord of Scotland: and the record thereof now extant, doth alledge divers leger books of abbeys for the confirmation thereof:' Petition [to Q. Elizabeth] for an academy of Antiquities and History. Hearne's Curious Discourses written by eminent Antiquaries; vol. ii. 326, edit. 1775.