t of the philosophy of the two Bacons have
been pointed out, and it has even been supposed that the later of these
two great philosophers borrowed his famous doctrine of "Idols" from the
classification of the four chief hindrances to knowledge by his
predecessor. But the supposition wants foundation, and there is no
reason to suppose that Lord Bacon was acquainted with the works of the
Friar. The Rev. Charles Forster, in his _Mahometanism Unveiled_, a work
of some learning, but more extravagance, after speaking of Roger Bacon
as "strictly and properly an experimentalist of the Saracenic school,"
goes indeed so far as to assert that he "was the undoubted, though
unowned, original when his great namesake drew the materials of his
famous experimental system." (Vol. II. pp. 312-317.) But the
resemblances in their systems, although striking in some particulars,
are on the whole not too great to be regarded simply as the results of
corresponding genius, and of a common sense of the insufficiency of the
prevalent methods of scholastic philosophy for the discovery of truth
and the advancement of knowledge. "The same sanguine and sometimes rash
confidence in the effect of physical discoveries, the same fondness for
experiment, the same preference of inductive to abstract reasoning
pervade both works," the _Opus Majus_ and the _Novum Organum_.--Hallam,
_Europe during the Middle Ages_, III. 431. See also Hallam, _Literature
of Europe_, I. 113; and Mr. Ellis's Preface to the _Novum Organum_, p.
90, in the first volume of the admirable edition of the _Works of Lord
Bacon_ now in course of publication.]

[Footnote 18: _Opus Tertium_. Cap. xv. pp. 55, 56.]

[Footnote 19: _Id_. Cap. x. p. 33.]

[Footnote 20: The famous Grostete,--who died in 1253. "Vir in Latino et
Graeco peritissimus," says Matthew Paris.]

[Footnote 21: _Comp. Studii Phil_. Cap. vi.]

[Footnote 22: _Opus Minus_, p. 330.]

[Footnote 23: This was Michael Scot the Wizard, who would seem to have
deserved the place that Dante assigned to him in the _Inferno_, if not
from his practice of forbidden arts, at least from his corruption of
ancient learning in his so-called translations. Strange that he, of all
the Schoolmen, should have been honored by being commemorated by the
greatest poet of Italy and the greatest of his own land! In the Notes to
the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, his kinsman quotes the following lines
concerning him from Satchell's poem on _The Right Hon