t not the greatest, of many interests.

(1) The story, of course, is entirely fictitious. For further
particulars see Sir J. E. SANDYS' essay on "Roger Bacon in English
Literature," in _Roger Bacon Essays_ (1914), referred to below.

Ilchester, in Somerset, claims the honour of being the place of ROGER
BACON'S birth, which interesting and important event occurred, probably,
in 1214. Young BACON studied theology, philosophy, and what then passed
under the name of "science," first at Oxford, then the centre of liberal
thought, and afterwards at Paris, in the rigid orthodoxy of whose
professors he found more to criticise than to admire. Whilst at Oxford
he joined the Franciscan Order, and at Paris he is said, though this
is probably an error, to have graduated as Doctor of Theology. During
1250-1256 we find him back in England, no doubt engaged in study and
teaching. About the latter year, however, he is said to have been
banished--on a charge of holding heterodox views and indulging in
magical practices--to Paris, where he was kept in close confinement and
forbidden to write. Mr LITTLE,(1) however, believes this to be an error,
based on a misreading of a passage in one of BACON'S works, and that
ROGER was not imprisoned, but stricken with sickness. At any rate it is
not improbable that some restrictions as to his writing were placed on
him by his superiors of the Franciscan Order. In 1266 BACON received a
letter from Pope CLEMENT asking him to send His Holiness his works in
writing without delay. This letter came as a most pleasant surprise to
BACON; but he had nothing of importance written, and in great haste
and excitement, therefore, he composed three works explicating his
philosophy, the _Opus Majus_, the _Opus Minus_, and the _Opus Tertium_,
which were completed and dispatched to the Pope by the end of the
following year. This, as Mr ROWBOTTOM remarks, is "surely one of the
literary feats of history, perhaps only surpassed by Swedenborg when he
wrote six theological and philosophical treatises in one year."(1b)

(1) See his contribution, "On Roger Bacon's Life and Works," to _Roger
Bacon Essays_.

(1b) B. R. ROWBOTTOM: "Roger Bacon," _The Journal of the Alchemical
Society_, vol. ii. (1914), p. 77.

The works appear to have been well received. We next find BACON at
Oxford writing his _Compendium Studii Philosophiae_, in which work he
indulged in some by no means unjust criticisms of the clergy, for which