ANECDOTES OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS. BRITISH. EDWARD THE FIRST. ROGER BACON. THIS acute and learned Francifcan Monk was, according to Mr. Selden, of a gentleman's family in Dorsetshire, and was born in 1214. He began his studies very early at Oxford, and then went to Paris, where he pursued mathematics and phyfic; and, as Mr. Selden relates, was made Profeffor of Divinity in the University of that city. He returned to Oxford foon afterwards, and applied himself to the learned languages, VOL. I. B guages*, in which he made fo rapid a progress, that he wrote a Latin, a Greek, and an Italian Grammar. He makes great complaints of the ignorance of his times, and fays, that the Regular Priests studied chiefly scholastic divinity, and that the Secular Priests applied themselves to the study of the Roman law, but never turned their thoughts to philofophy. The learned Dr. Freind, in his Hiftory of Phyfic, very justly calls this extraordinary man "the "miracle of the age in which he lived;" and fays, that he was the greatest mechanical genius that had appeared fince the days of Archimedes. Roger Bacon, in a Treatise upon Optical Glaffes, describes the Camera Obfcura, with all forts of glaffes that magnify or diminish any object, bring it nearer to the eye, or remove it farther; and Dr. Freind fays, that the telescope was evidently known to him. "Some of these, and "his other mathematical inftruments," adds that learned Writer," coft 200l. or 300l." * How much the ftudy of the learned languages was neglected in his time, Roger Bacon himself informs us; for in a letter to his patron Clement the Fourth, he tells him, that there were not four among the Italians who understood the grammatical rudiments of Greek, Latin, and Italian; and he adds, that even the Latin tongue, for the beauty and correctnefs of it, was scarcely known to any one. He fays, that the Scholars, as they were then called, were fitter for the cradle than for the chair. and and Bacon fays himself, that in twenty years he spent 2000l. in books and in tools; a prodigious fum for fuch kinds of expences in his day! Bacon was almost the only Aftronomer of his age; for he took notice of an error in the Calendar with refpect to the aberration of the folar year; and propofed to his patron, Clement the Fourth, a plan for correcting it in 1267, which was adopted three hundred years afterwards by Gregory XIII. Bacon was a chymift alfo, and wrote upon medicine. There is ftill in print a work of his, on retarding the advances of old age, and on preferving the faculties clear and entire to the remotest period of life; but, with a littleness unworthy of fo great a mind as his was, he says, "that he does not choose to exprefs himself fo "clearly as he might have done respecting diet " and medicines, left what he writes fhould fall "into the hands of the Infidels." Gunpowder, or at least a powder that had the fame effect, feems to have been known to him, if he were not the inventor of it; for, in a letter to John Parifienfis, he says, 66 "In omnem diftantiam quam volumus, poffumus artificialiter componere ignem comburentem, ex B 2 "fale |