32. It seems hard to determine whether or not Roger Bacon be entitled to the honours of a discoverer in science; that he has not described any instrument analogous to the telescope, is now generally admitted; but he paid much attention to optics, and has some new and important notions on that subject. That he was acquainted with the explosive powers of gunpowder, it seems unreasonable to deny: the mere detonation of nitre in contact with an inflammable substance, which of course might be casually observed, is by no means adequate to his expressions in the well-known passage on that subject.[272] But there is no ground for doubting that the Saracens were already conversant with gunpowder. [272] This has been suggested by Professor Leslie, in the article on arithmetic above quoted; a great chemical authority, but who had not taken the trouble to look at Bacon, and forgot that he mentions charcoal and sulphur as well as nitre. |His resemblance to Lord Bacon.| 33. The mind of Roger Bacon was strangely compounded of almost prophetic gleams of the future course of science, and the best principles of the inductive philosophy, with a more than usual credulity in the superstitions of his own time. Some have deemed him overrated by the nationality of the English.[273] But if we may have sometimes given him credit for discoveries to which he has only borne testimony, there can be no doubt of the originality of his genius. I have in another place remarked the singular resemblance he bears to Lord Bacon, not only in the character of his philosophy, but in several coincidences of expression. This has since been followed up by a later writer,[274] (with no knowledge, probably, of what I had written, since he does not allude to it), who plainly charges Lord Bacon with having borrowed much, and with having concealed his obligations. The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon was not published till 1733, but the manuscripts were not uncommon, and Selden had thoughts of printing the work. The quotations from the Franciscan and the Chancellor, printed in parallel columns by Mr. Forster, are sometimes very curiously similar; but he presses the resemblance too far; and certainly the celebrated distinction, in the Novum Organum, of four classes of _Idola_ which mislead the judgment, does not correspond in meaning, as he supposes, with the causes of error assigned by Roger Bacon. [273] Meiners, of all modern historians of literature, is the least favourable to Bacon, on account of his superstition and credulity in the occult sciences. Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 710, and iii. 232. Heeren, p. 244, speaks more candidly of him. It is impossible, I think, to deny that credulity is one of the points of resemblance between him and his namesake. [274] Hist. of Middle Ages, iii. 539. Forster’s Mahometanism Unveiled, ii. 312. |English mathematicians of fourteenth century.|