e
invention, as much as to the credulity, of the adventurers;
and we might be disposed to believe with Hume, that 'men
returning from so great a distance used the liberty [a too
general one] of imposing every fiction upon their believing
audience.'

Conspicuous in the vulgar prejudices is the suspicion attaching
to the extraordinary discoveries of philosophy and science.
Diabolic inspiration (as in our age infidelity and atheism are
popular outcries) was a ready and successful accusation against
ideas or discoveries in advance of the time. Roger Bacon, Robert
Grostete, Albert the Great, Thomas of Ercildoun, Michael
Scot--eminent names--were all more or less objects of a
persecuting suspicion. Bacon may justly be considered the
greatest name in the philosophy of the Middle Age. That anomaly
of mediaevalism was one of the few who could neglect a vain and
senseless theology and system of metaphysics to apply his genius
to the solid pursuits of truer philosophy; and if his influence
has not been so great as it might have been, it is the fault of
the age rather than of the man. Condemned by the fear or jealousy
of his Franciscan brethren and Dominican rivals, Bacon was thrown
into prison, where he was excluded from propagating 'certain
suspected novelties' during fourteen years, a victim of his more
liberal opinions and of theological hatred. One of the traditions
of his diabolical compacts gives him credit at least for
ingenuity in avoiding at once a troublesome bargain and a
terrible fate. The philosopher's compact stipulated that after
death his soul was to be the reward and possession of the devil,
whether he died within the church's sacred walls or without them.
Finding his end approaching, that sagacious magician caused a
cell to be constructed in the walls of the consecrated edifice,
giving directions, which were properly carried out, for his
burial in a tomb that was thus neither within nor without the
church--an evasion of a long-expected event, which lost the
disappointed devil his prize, and probably his temper. 'Friar
Bacon' became afterwards a well-known character in the vulgar
fables: he was the type of the mediaeval, as the poet Virgil was
of the ancient, magician. A popular drama was founded on his
reputed exploits and character in the sixteenth century, by
Robert Greene, in 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay;' but the famous
Dr. Faustus, the most popular magic hero of that time on the
stage, was a