Other similar parallelisms of expression on this topic are to be found in these two authors, but need not be here quoted. Many resemblances in the words and in the spirit 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 Grostête,--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 Honorable Name of Scott_:-- "His writing pen did seem to me to be Of hardened metal like steel or acumie; The volume of [his book] did seem so large to me As the Book of Martyrs and Turks Historie."] [Footnote 24: _Comp. Studii Phil_. Cap. viii. p. 472.] [Footnote 25: _Comp. Studii Phil_. Cap. viii. p. 469.]