he expended 3000, or 30,000 pounds of our present
money, upon his experiments, can now be only matter of
conjecture. Those who are dissatisfied with the meagre
manner in which our early biographers have noticed the
labours of Roger Bacon, and with the _tetragonistical_
story, said by Twyne to be propagated by our philosopher, of
Julius Caesar'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 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 achievements of the Oxonian
Bacons, in their liberal studies, are ascribed to ONE, as
chief of the name." _Church History_, book iii., p. 96.]

[Illustration]

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 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,[258] he was
constantly perusing, and of which so large a share had fallen to his
own lot!

[Footnote 258: 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 Burn