Roger Bacon, of whom extraordinary stories of magic have been told,
and who was about twenty years younger than Albertus, was one of the
rarest geniuses that have existed on earth. He was a Franciscan friar.
He wrote grammars of the Latin, Greek and Hebrew languages. He was
profound in the science of optics. He explained the nature of
burning-glasses, and of glasses which magnify and diminish, the
microscope and the telescope. He discovered the composition of
gunpowder. He ascertained the true length of the solar year; and his
theory was afterwards brought into general use, but upon a narrow
scale, by Pope Gregory XIII, nearly three hundred years after his
death. [170]
But for all these discoveries he underwent a series of the most bitter
persecutions. It was imputed to him by the superiors of his order that
the improvements he suggested in natural philosophy were the effects
of magic, and were suggested to him through an intercourse with
infernal spirits. They forbade him to communicate any of his
speculations. They wasted his frame with rigorous fasting, often
restricting him to a diet of bread and water, and prohibited all
strangers to have access to him. Yet he went on indefatigably in
pursuit of the secrets of nature. [171] At length Clement IV, to whom
he appealed, procured him a considerable degree of liberty. But, after
the death of that pontiff, he was again put under confinement, and
continued in that state for a further period of ten years. He was
liberated but a short time before his death.
Freind says, [172] that, among other ingenious contrivances, he put
statues in motion, and drew articulate sounds from a brazen head, not
however by magic, but by an artificial application of the principles
of natural philosophy. This probably furnished a foundation for the
tale of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungy, which was one of the earliest
productions to which the art of printing was applied in England. These
two persons are said to have entertained the project of inclosing
England with a wall, so as to render it inaccessible to any invader.
They accordingly raised the devil, as the person best able to inform
them how this was to be done. The devil advised them to make a brazen
head, with all the internal structure and organs of a human head. The
construction would cost them much time; and they must then wait with
patience till the faculty of speech descended upon it. It would
finally however become an oracle, and, if the question were propounded
to it, would teach them the solution of their problem. The friars
spent seven years in bringing the structure to perfection, and then
waited day after day, in expectation that it would utter articulate
sounds. At length nature became exhausted in them, and they lay down
to sleep, having first given it strictly in charge to a servant of
theirs, clownish in nature, but of strict fidelity, that he should
awaken them the moment the image began to speak. That period arrived.
The head uttered sounds, but such as the clown judged unworthy of
notice. "Time is!" it said. No notice was taken; and a long pause
ensued. "Time was!" A similar pause, and no notice. "Time is passed!"
And the moment these words were uttered, a tremendous storm ensued,
with thunder and lightning, and the head was shivered into a thousand
pieces. Thus the experiment of friar Bacon and friar Bungy came to
nothing.