Lis. And yet I'll lay a vellum Aldus that Henry the second presented his fair Rosamond with some choice Heures de Notre Dame! But proceed. I beg pardon for this interruption.

Lysand. Nay, there is nothing to solicit pardon for! We have each a right, around this hospitable table, to indulge our book whims: and mine may be as fantastical as any.

Loren. Pray proceed, Lysander, in your book-collecting history! unless you will permit me to make a pause or interruption of two minutes—by proposing as a sentiment—"Success to the Bibliomania!"

Phil. 'Tis well observed: and as every loyal subject at our great taverns drinks the health of his Sovereign "with three times three up-standing," even so let us hail this sentiment of Lorenzo!

Lis. Philemon has cheated me of an eloquent speech. But let us receive the sentiment as he proposes it.

Loren. Now the uproar of Bacchus has subsided, the instructive conversation of Minerva may follow. Go on, Lysander.

Lysand. Having endeavoured to do justice to Girald Barri, I know of no other particularly distinguished bibliomaniac till we approach the æra of the incomparable Roger, or Friar, Bacon. I say incomparable, Lorenzo; because he was, in truth, a constellation of the very first splendour and magnitude in the dark times in which he lived; and notwithstanding a sagacious writer (if my memory be not treacherous) of the name of Coxe, chooses to tell us that he was "miserably starved to death, because he could not introduce a piece of roast beef into his stomach, on account of having made a league with Satan to eat only cheese;"[257]—yet I suspect that the end of Bacon was hastened by other means more disgraceful to the age and equally painful to himself.

[257] "A short treatise declaringe the detestable wickednesse of magicall sciences, as necromancie, coniuration of spirites, curiouse astrologie, and suche lyke, made by Francis Coxe." Printed by Allde, 12mo., without date (14 leaves). From this curious little volume, which is superficially noticed by Herbert (vol. ii., p. 889), the reader is presented with the following extract, appertaining to the above subject: "I myself (says the author) knew a priest not far from a town called Bridgewater, which, as it is well known in the country, was a great magician in all his life time. After he once began these practices, he would never eat bread, but, instead thereof, did always eat cheese: which thing, as he confessed divers times, he did because it was so concluded betwixt him and the spirit which served him," &c. sign. A viii. rect. "(R.) Bacon's end was much after the like sort; for having a greedy desire unto meat, he could cause nothing to enter the stomach—wherefore thus miserably he starved to death." Sign. B. iij. rev. Not having at hand John Dee's book of the defence of Roger Bacon, from the charge of astrology and magic (the want of which one laments as pathetically as did Naudé, in his "Apologie pour tous les grands personnages, &c., faussement soupçonnez de Magic," Haye, 1653, 8vo., p. 488), I am at a loss to say the fine things, which Dee must have said, in commendation of the extraordinary talents of Roger Bacon; who was miserably matched in the age in which he lived; but who, together with his great patron Grosteste, will shine forth as beacons to futurity. Dr. Friend in his History of Physic has enumerated what he conceived to be Bacon's leading works; while Gower in his Confessio Amantis (Caxton's edit., fol. 70), has mentioned the brazen head—

for to telle
Of such thyngs as befelle:

which was the joint manufactory of the patron and his èleve. As lately as the year 1666, Bacon's life formed the subject of a "famous history," from which Walter Scott has given us a facetious anecdote in the seventh volume (p. 10) of Dryden's Works. But the curious investigator of ancient times, and the genuine lover of British biography, will seize upon the more prominent features in the life of this renowned philosopher; will reckon up his great discoveries in optics and physics; and will fancy, upon looking at the above picture of his study, that an explosion from gun-powder (of which our philosopher has been thought the inventor) has protruded the palings which are leaning against its sides. Bacon's "Opus Majus," which happened to meet the eyes of Pope Clement IV., and which now would have encircled the neck of its author with an hundred golden chains, and procured for him a diploma from every learned society in Europe—just served to liberate him from his first long imprisonment. This was succeeded by a subsequent confinement of twelve years; from which he was released only time enough to breathe his last in the pure air of heaven. Whether 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 Cæsar'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.