The works of Brewer and Charles educed a number of minor essays and studies in the following decades. Two unsigned articles on “The life and writings of Roger Bacon” and “The philosophy of Roger Bacon” which appeared in The Westminster Review in 1864, are worth noting as combining a tendency towards a sane and critical estimate of what Bacon had actually said and accomplished, with the inclination to regard him as a voice crying in the wilderness of medieval scholasticism and theology. The writer admitted that the merit of the Opus Maius “lies rather in the spirit in which it was written than in the facts it records or in any merit which it may have as a scientific whole.” He further asserted that “it can easily be shown that of the things which Bacon is asserted to have invented, several were perfectly well known before his time, and the rest are nowhere described in his works.” The writer also cited some of Roger’s absurd experiments, and said, “Notwithstanding his forcible language about the prerogatives of experimental science and his bitter invective against frail authority, we find him occasionally resting on authority with childlike faith, and treating his favorite science as if its only prerogative was to provoke a smile.” Yet he still maintained that “Bacon preached a philosophy of which not half-a-dozen men in Europe saw the value, and of which the majority of really good men feared the results,” and that “when Roger Bacon was laid in his grave, the real philosophy was buried with him.”[2272] Many of the articles which appeared in the years following were of slight value, causing G. Delorme to say in 1910, “Monographs or studies concerning Bacon are numerous, perhaps too numerous.”[2273] As he proceeded to explain, in many of them Bacon was misunderstood and misinterpreted, so that they must be read with the greatest caution. On the other hand, in 1891 had appeared Abbé Feret’s valuable criticism of the legends regarding Bacon’s imprisonments.
Recent editions of Bacon’s works.
Next came solid progress in additions to the catalogue of Roger’s works and fragments by recent discoveries in the manuscripts, and in new or first editions of a number of his previously known writings. In 1897 J. H. Bridges’ fuller, handier, and more correctly arranged two volume edition of the Opus Maius replaced Jebb’s now extremely rare edition. Unfortunately, while supplied with a helpful introduction, analytical table of contents, and footnotes, this new version was so full of misreadings of the manuscripts and other mistakes in the text due to an imperfect knowledge of Latin, that in 1900 a third and supplementary volume of corrections was added to it. In 1897 Cardinal (then Father) Gasquet discovered and published a new fragment, which he regarded as an introduction to the Opus Maius, but which seems to me evidently the first part of the Opus Minus, as Mr. Little has already suggested.[2274] Passages in this fragment serve to render even more untenable the story of Roger’s persecution before 1267. In 1902 Nolan and Hirsch edited Bacon’s Greek Grammar. Then in 1909 Professor Duhem gave to the world a newly discovered fragment of the Opus Tertium; while in 1911 the British Society of Franciscan Studies printed the Compendium Studii Theologiae, edited by Canon (now Dean) Hastings Rashdall, and in 1912 more of the Opus Tertium, edited by Mr. A. G. Little. Meanwhile Robert Steele, who in 1905 had edited a fragment of Bacon’s Metaphysics, began in 1912 to produce the Communia Naturalium in sections. Other scholars had announced new or first editions of other treatises, mathematical, medical or alchemistic, as in preparation, and the discovery of a complete copy of the Metaphysics in the Vatican Library had just been announced when the world war broke out and temporarily stayed their publication.[2275] Recently, however, Mr. Steele has published another volume containing Bacon’s introduction to and version of The Secret of Secrets, in the preface of which he says: “Medieval students will be glad to learn that the publication of the whole of Bacon’s work now seems assured.”
Continued over-estimate of Bacon.
As Bacon’s works thus became more generally known and as standards of historical criticism grew more strict, not only the facts of his life, but his doctrines, point of view, and personal equation were more carefully examined and analyzed, and previous exaggerated estimates of him were questioned or toned down, although still repeated in some quarters. Indeed, the very writer who rejects some one legend may hold fast to the old view of Bacon in other respects. Especially hard to down has been the notion that Roger Bacon stood almost alone in the middle ages in his advocacy of natural science. Such was still the impression given by otherwise excellent recent estimates of Bacon, such as those in the Catholic Encyclopedia and in Henry Osborn Taylor’s The Medieval Mind,[2276] and such was still the frame of mind in which preparations were made at more than one great university to celebrate in 1914 the seventh centennial of his birth—preparations which resulted at Oxford in the publication of an important volume of commemoration essays by fourteen scholars from various lands and fields of learning, five of whom were editors of Bacon’s writings, while others had previously published books or articles concerning him, and still others were authors of general histories of the department of learning to which they were now to estimate Bacon’s contributions or relation.
Beginnings of adverse criticism.
Already, however, before the appearance of this volume Roger Bacon’s pre-eminence and superiority to his times had been questioned from more than one quarter. Father Mandonnet in his work on Siger de Brabant and Latin Averroism affirmed that Bacon’s importance had been over-estimated in many ways. While Charles had held that, if Bacon’s scientific worth had been exaggerated, his value as a school-man had been lost sight of, Mandonnet declared that as a philosopher and theologian he was behind rather than in the forefront of his age.[2277] Rashdall had asserted in 1911 that “Bacon was more the child of his age than he imagined himself to be.”[2278] W. H. V. Reade in the English Historical Review for October, 1912,[2279] hoped “that it is not an article of faith with the Society of Franciscan Studies to accept all of Roger Bacon’s statements. As regards the state of knowledge among his contemporaries, his assertions are often of no greater value than the similar assertions of his distinguished namesake in a later age.” The next year Mr. Reade spoke in the same periodical of “the usual Baconian atmosphere, in which science and superstition are happily or unhappily compounded.”[2280] In May, 1914, in my paper on “Roger Bacon and Experimental Method in the Middle Ages,”[2281] I discussed what his “experimental science” really amounted to, and showed that it was representative of the science of his time rather than in revolt against it.
The Commemoration Essays.
When the Oxford Roger Bacon Essays appeared, many of them were marked by a sane and critical attitude, were restrained and scientific in tone, and did not indulge in glowing but unsubstantiated eulogies of the noted friar. Professor David Eugene Smith gave warning that “one is liable to be led away by enthusiasm, when writing upon the occasion of the seven hundredth anniversary of any great leader, to read into his works what is not there, and to ascribe to him abilities which he never possessed.”[2282] But this tendency both he and most of his fellow essayists successfully resisted, and the main achievement of the volume was to point out Roger’s indebtedness to others for some of the ideas upon which his fame has rested and to note his mistakes and superstitions, rather than to bring to light anything new to his credit.[2283] It became evident that a careful examination of those treatises by Bacon which had been recently edited or were in preparation for publication, and of those which have recently been brought to light in manuscript form or are still difficult of access in old editions, was unlikely to add much to his stock of ideas as found in the now well-known Opus Maius, Opus Minus and Opus Tertium.
[2257] See Little’s lists of Bacon’s writings in the Appendix to the Roger Bacon Essays.