If we turn to Bacon, who was in London while Bruno was with Mauvissière, already in high favour with the Queen, and at home in the society of Burghley, Leicester, Walsingham, and Sidney, we find entire neglect of Bruno's philosophy. Only in one passage, perhaps, does Bacon mention Bruno's name; it is in the introduction to the _Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis_.[608] After a list of the philosophers of Greece, and the remark that "all these made up at their pleasure feigned accounts (or "plots") of worlds, as of fables, and recited, published these fables of theirs--some more consistent certainly and probable, others harder of belief," he adds that among the moderns, through the instruction of schools and colleges, the imagination is kept within stricter bounds, yet men have not ceased imagining. "Patrizzi, Talesio, _Bruno_, Severin of Denmark, Gilbert of England, Campanella, have tried the stage, acted new plays which were neither marked by applauding favour of the public, nor by brilliancy of plot." The names are those of men with whom it is no shame for Bruno to stand side by side; and one and all are instances of Bacon's incapacity for grasping the true direction in which the thought of his time was flowing; but the mere mention of Bruno in such a context implies that his works were still read, and that they were estimated at a high value by the lovers of "philosophy." There are, however, many points of contact between Bacon and Bruno, suggesting an influence, indirect if not direct, of the latter upon the former. Bacon was perfectly at home in Italian literature, and it is unlikely that he omitted to read Bruno's dialogues. Two casual but significant proofs that he did so are, the legend related of Mount Athos and of Olympus, that men had written in the ashes of the sacrifices offered upon their summits, and had returned the following year to find the ashes and the writing undisturbed, the inference being that the summits of these mountains were in a region of perpetual calm;[609] and the suggestion that the movements of the heavenly bodies may be in spiral lines instead of in perfect circles.[610] The latter especially is a characteristic thought of Bruno.