n into exile
and reduced to poverty by the civil wars. From Oxford, where he studied
under Edmund of Abingdon to whom he owed his introduction to the works of
Aristotle, he passed to the University of Paris, and spent his whole
heritage there in costly studies and experiments. "From my youth up," he
writes, "I have laboured at the sciences and tongues. I have sought the
friendship of all men among the Latins who had any reputation for
knowledge. I have caused youths to be instructed in languages, geometry,
arithmetic, the construction of tables and instruments, and many needful
things besides." The difficulties in the way of such studies as he had
resolved to pursue were immense. He was without instruments or means of
experiment. "Without mathematical instruments no science can be mastered,"
he complains afterwards, "and these instruments are not to be found among
the Latins, nor could they be made for two or three hundred pounds.
Besides, better tables are indispensably necessary, tables on which the
motions of the heavens are certified from the beginning to the end of the
world without daily labour, but these tables are worth a king's ransom and
could not be made without a vast expense. I have often attempted the
composition of such tables, but could not finish them through failure of
means and the folly of those whom I had to employ." Books were difficult
and sometimes even impossible to procure. "The scientific works of
Aristotle, of Avicenna, of Seneca, of Cicero, and other ancients cannot be
had without great cost; their principal works have not been translated into
Latin, and copies of others are not to be found in ordinary libraries or
elsewhere. The admirable books of Cicero de Republica are not to be found
anywhere, so far as I can hear, though I have made anxious enquiry for them
in different parts of the world, and by various messengers. I could never
find the works of Seneca, though I made diligent search for them during
twenty years and more. And so it is with many more most useful books
connected with the science of morals." It is only words like these of his
own that bring home to us the keen thirst for knowledge, the patience, the
energy of Roger Bacon. He returned as a teacher to Oxford, and a touching
record of his devotion to those whom he taught remains in the story of John
of London, a boy of fifteen, whose ability raised him above the general
level of his pupils. "When he came to me as a poor boy," s