FRIAR BACON
Roger Bacon was born at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, in 1214, and died
about 1294. If the dedication be authentic, his _Epistola de Secretis
Operibus Artis et Naturæ et de Nullitate Magiæ_, the work with which we
are chiefly concerned here, was written before 1249.[334]
Bacon attacks Magic in this book on the ground that science and art can
exhibit far greater wonders than the alleged wonders of the Black Art,
and to prove his point he enumerates, in the first eight chapters, a
number of wonders which (he believed) art could produce and magic could
not. Everything is sufficiently clear until we reach the ninth, tenth,
and eleventh chapters, and they are unintelligible as they stand.
Now, it is past belief that a man of commanding genius should have
deliberately stooped to write page after page of nonsense. The three
chapters, therefore, must have _some_ meaning, hidden from us though it
be.[335]
It is unquestionable that Bacon believed he possessed secrets of
vast importance. At the close of Chapter VIII. he tells us by way of
warning that he may resort (in the following chapters) to certain
cryptic methods, “on account of the magnitude of his secrets” (_propter
secretorum magnitudinem_); and, fearing that ordinary cryptic methods
might be too transparent, he wraps up his secrets in an anagram in