the original was to him.
Bacon points out many instances of this kind; and it is against such
errors--errors so destructive to all learning--that he inveighs with the
full force of invective, and protests with irresistible arguments. His
acquirements in Greek and in Hebrew prove that he had devoted long labor
to the study of these languages, and that he understood them far better
than many scholars who made more pretence of learning. Nowhere are the
defects of the scholarship of the Middle Ages more pointedly and ably
exhibited than in what he has said of them.

But, although his knowledge in this field was of uncommon quality and
amount, it does not seem to have surpassed his acquisitions in science.
"I have attempted," he says in a striking passage, "with great
diligence, to attain certainty as to what is needful to be known
concerning the processes of alchemy and natural philosophy and
medicine.... And what I have written of the roots [of these sciences]
is, in my judgment, worth far more than all that the other natural
philosophers now alive suppose themselves to know; for in vain, without
these roots, do they seek for branches, flowers, and fruit. And here I
am boastful in words, but not in my soul; for I say this because I
grieve for the infinite error that now exists, and that I may urge you
[the Pope] to a consideration of the truth."[35] Again he says, in
regard to his treatise "De Perspectiva," or On Optics,--"Why should I
conceal the truth? I assert that there is no one among the Latin
scholars who could accomplish, in the space of a year, this work; no,
nor even in ten years."[36] In mathematics, in chemistry, in optics, in
mechanics, he was, if not superior, at least equal, to the best of his
contemporaries. His confidence in his own powers was the just result of
self-knowledge and self-respect. Natural genius, and the accumulations
of forty years of laborious study pursued with a method superior to that
which guided the studies of others, had set him at the head of the
learned men of his time; and he was great enough to know and to claim
his place. He had the self-devotion of enthusiasm, and its ready, but
dignified boldness, based upon the secure foundation of truth.

In spite of the very imperfect style in which he wrote, and the usually
clumsy and often careless construction of his sentences, his works
contain now and then noble thoughts expressed with simplicity and force.
"Natura est instrumentum Div