a magician. He was educated at Oxford, and next proceeded to Paris, then the first university in the world. Returning to Oxford, he applied himself closely to the study of languages and experimental philosophy; but the lectures which he gave in the University were soon prohibited, and he was accused of magic, a charge then frequently brought against those who studied the sciences, and particularly chemistry. The following detached passages of his Opus Majus no doubt contains opinions which its author was in the habit of expressing: Most students have no worthy exercise for their heads, and therefore languish and stupefy upon bad translations, which lose them both time and money. Appearances alone rule them, and they care not what they know, but what they are thought to know by a senseless multitude. There are four principal stumbling blocks in the way of arriving at knowledge-authority, habit, appearances as they present themselves to the vulgar eye, and concealment of ignorance combined with ostentation of knowledge. Even if the first three could be got over by some great effort of reason, the fourth remains ready. Men presume to teach before they have learnt, and fall into so many errors, that the idle think themselves happy in comparison-and hence, both in science and in common life, we see a thousand falsehoods for one truth.-And this being the case, we must not stick to what we heard read, but must examine most strictly the opinions of our ancestors, that we may add what is lacking, and correct what is erroneous, but with all modesty and allowance.-We must, with all our strength, prefer reason to custom, and the opinions of the wise and good to the perceptions of the vulgar; and we must not use the triple argument: that is to say, this has been laid down, this has been usual, this has been common, therefore it is to be held by. For the very opposite conclusión does much better follow than the premises. And though the whole world be possessed by the causes of error, let us freely bear opinions contrary to established usage. The Opus Majus begins with a book on the necessity of advancing knowledge, and a dissertation on the use of philosophy in theology. It is followed by books on the utility of grammar and mathematics;* in the latter of which the author runs through the various sciences of astronomy, chronology, geography, and music. Bacon was also long reputed to have been acquainted with gunpowder and the telescope; but the former is proved to have been known centuries before his time; and though he discovered optic lenses, he was not acquainted with the principle of the telescope. EDWARD II. SCHOLARS IN HIS REIGN. Edward II., the eldest surviving son of Edward I., born at Carnarvon, in 1284, at the age of seven years lost his excellent mother, Eleanor of Castile, who would probably have guided his education better than his less stern father. He was of a kindly nature, of impulsive character and passionate will, though not wanting in courage; for at seventeen he led a battalion against the Scots. * Bacon said of those who applied themselves to the study of mathematics in his time, most stopped at the fifth proposition of Euclid. Hence this proposition used to be called the Pons Assininus, or Asinorum, or Asses' Bridge, a name by which it is still known. Among the most distinguished names in literature and science that belong to the reign of Edward I., is Duns Scotus, a Franciscan friar, educated in a convent of that Order at Newcastle. He became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and professor of theology in the University, his great fame causing incredible numbers to attend his lectures. Although he died at the early age of forty-three, "he wrote so many books that one man is hardly able to read them." In his day he was accounted "the Subtle Doctor;" but his learning was only in the Divinity of Schoolmen, far removed from the sound and useful learning which enables the scholar to discover the truth, and to impart the knowledge of it to others. Scotus having dared to controvert some positions of Thomas Aquinas, who was deemed the oracle of the Schools, he became the founder of a new sect in philosopy, and revived, with inextinguishable ardor, the old disputes between the Realists and the Nominalists. The Greeks and Persians, it has been observed, never fought against each other with more fury and rancor than these two discordant sects. Oxford was a grand theater of their contests. Though much poetry now began to be written, the name of only one English poet has descended to posterity: Adam Davy or Davie, the author of various poems of a religious cast, which have never been printed. There is still extant a curious Latin poem on the battle of Bannockburn, written in rhyming hexameters, by Robert Baston, a Carmelite friar, whom Edward carried along with him to celebrate his anticipated victory; but who being taken prisoner, was compelled by the Scotch to sing the defeat of his countrymen in this jingling effusion. Bale speaks of this Baston as a writer of tragedies and comedies, some English; but none of them are now known to exist. EDWARD III.-HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS. Edward III., the eldest son of Edward II., was born at Windsor in 1312. Joshua Barnes, in his Life of this renowned king, a closely-printed folio volume of 900 pages, gives the following "small taste" of his character: From his Birth he was carefully bred up to all things that seemed necessary or proper for Princes to excel in; so that, through the Vigor of his Parts, being rendered very apt to imbibe the best Principles, he made a speedy and extraordinary improvement in all Noble Qualities;for he was of a very piercing Judgment, Sweet Nature and Good Discretion, and considering the many weighty affairs that employed his whole Life, not only kind to the Muses, but much befriended by them, as appears by those Learned Writings of which_Pilsons says he was the Author. When he was capable of receiving more ingenious Education, a Man of Great Reading, Erudition and Honor, was provided from Oxford to be his Tutor, who though commonly called Richard Bury,* from the place of his Birth, was indeed Son to one S. Richard Anngervile, Knight, but was afterward. by this his Royal Pupil. made Privy Seal and Treasurer of England, then Dean of Wells, Lord Chancellor of England and Bishop of Durham. * From a passage in Richard of Bury it might be inferred that about 1343, none but ecclesiastics could read at all. He deprecates the putting of books into the hands of 66 Edward was proclaimed king when in his fifteenth year, and in a few months marched at the head of a large army against the Scotch; so that his boyhood presented few opportunities for his intellectual culture; but the glories of his reign of fifty years gave a more vigorous activity to the faculties of England.” This was the golden age of chivalry, of architecture, and of costume; and in literature the age of Chaucer-his tales being read alike in the baronial hall and the student's chamber. The universities were filled with scholars. From the Anglo-Norman had finally been involved that noble tongue upon which our literature has been built, though many books perfectly intelligible to us were written before this reign. In 1307, Sir John Mandeville wrote a narrative of his Travels in English, as well as in French and Latin; and Wickliffe, the great Reformer, delivered his earliest appeals to the people on questions of religion in English. SCHOOLS IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER. Chaucer, traditionally born in 1328, of a wealthy and respectable family, received the education of a gentleman; he is believed to have studied both at Cambridge and Oxford; he was well acquainted with divinity and philosophy, and the scholastic learning of his age, and displays in numerous passages an intimate knowledge of astronomy, and most of the sciences as far as they were then known or cultivated. "Chaucer's language," says Mr. Bell, "is that of the good society in which he lived, and into which a large accession of Norman blood, usages, and idioms, had been infused." Heretofore, Norman-French had been the language of education, of the court, and of legal documents; and when the Normanized Anglo-Saxon was employed by literary men, it was for the special purpose, as they were usually very careful to mention, of conveying instruction to the common people. But now the distinction between the conquering Normans and subjected Anglo-Saxons was nearly lost in a new and fraternal national feeling, which recognized the country under the name of England, and the people and language under the simple appellation of English. Scriveners at this time were chiefly employed in copying books. Chaucer thus addresses his scrivener: Adam Scrivener, yf ever it the befalle Boice or Troiles for to write newe, Under thy long locks thou mayst have the scalle, laici (laymen), who do not know one side from another; and in several places, it seems that he thought books were meant for the "tonsured alone." But a great change took place in the ensuing half century; and he can be scarcely construed strictly even as to his own time. * Annotated Edition of the English Poets: Life of Chaucer. But after my making thou write more true; Such was the affectation for speaking French in this reign, that it became a proverb "Jack would be a gentleman, if he could speak French." It was, however, often very corrupt, in allusion to which Chaucer says in the Prologue to the Prioress's Tale: "And French she spak ful fayre and fety saly It was, nevertheless, so necessary, that Robert of Eglesfield, who founded Queen's College in Oxford, directed by his statutes that the scholars should speak either French or Latin. Female education at this period consisted in needle-work (especially) and reading. Boccacio describes a wife as "young and beautiful in her person; mistress of her needle; no man-servant waiting better at her master's table; skilled in horsemanship and the management of a hawk; no merchant better versed in accounts." Chaucer mentions reading and singing as the education of little children. SCHOLARSHIP OF EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE. Edward the Black Prince, the eldest son of Edward III., was born at Woodstock in 1330: Nursed at the bosom of his mother (Queen Phillippa), he he received health and strength from the same pure blood that had given him existence; the gentle impress of her own sweet mind fixed upon her child, during his early education, those kindly virtues which tempered in his nature the fierceness of his father's courage. Never, perhaps, in the world's history, do we find so strong an example of the qualities possessed by both parents being blended in the child, as in the case of the Black Prince, in whose heart the generous and feeling nature of Phillippa elevated rather than depressed the indomitable valor and keen sagacity of Edward III.—James's Life of the Black Prince. Holinshed tells us that Phillippa herself,selected for the Prince's tutor a person of whose talents and virtues she had possessed the opportunity of judging; this was Doctor Walter Burleigh, a wellknown scholar of Merton College, Oxford, who had been appointed almoner to the Queen, and had remained from that time attached to her household. Simon Burleigh, "a near kinsman of the Doctor's (says Barnes), was admitted, with other young gentlemen, to be school-fellows with this noble Prince." Before the Prince was seven years of age he was girded by his father with a sword, and saluted the first English Duke; and immediately, inexercise of his new dignity, he dubbed twenty knights. In his thirteenth year he entered upon the chivalrous training of the time, which, by inuring the body to fatigue, and the limbs to the contin ual use of arms, gave skill and great power of endurance to his active and robust figuré. In 1343, he was created Prince of Wales, upon which the knightly feast of the Round Table was appointed to be held in an ample theater near Windsor Castle; at the age of sixteen, the Black Prince led an army to the field of battle, and in a few years grew to be "the flower of all chivalry in the world." WINCHESTER COLLEGE FOUNDED BY WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM. In the reign of Edward III. lived the celebrated William of Wykeham, who was born at the village of Wykeham, in Hampshire, in 1324. By the liberality of Sir Nicholas Uvedale, governor of Winchester Castle, the boy Wykeham was sent to "the Great Grammar-school in Winchester," originally an institution for education founded before the Conquest. Uvedale next presented Wykeham to Edward III. for his skill in architecture. In the short space of four years he was promoted through civil and ecclesiastical grades, to be Bishop of Winchester and Lord High Chancellor of these realms. He had already commenced the building of New College at Oxford; and in the following year, with the view of taking the early education of youth out of the hands of the monks, "it was his admirable thought to raise a nursery school preparatory to his coöperating with a higher course in his college; and thus to raise the standard of education in the country, to that stamp and character which has ever since (through his institution and the copies which were drawn from it) distinguished the English gentlemen amongst the families of Europe."* Thus arose Winchester College, the scholars of which are designated to this day Wykehamists. The novelty and merit of the plan were imitated by Chicheley, at All Souls, Oxford; Henry VI. at Cambridge; and Waynflete at Magdalene. "Twenty years before his hives were built (1373), Wykeham had gathered his swarming bees under temporary roofs, with masters and statutes: which with parental solicitude he watched, altered, and amended from time to time, by his daily experience. So long before his colleges were built was his institution effective." Wykeham died in 1404, at the age of eighty years, with the respect and admiration and gratitude of all; and like the spirit which he had ever sought throughout his amiable life, "length of days were in his right hand, and in his left riches and honor." He is buried in Winchester Cathedral: "beneath the spot where the school-boy prayed, the honored prelate sleeps."-Walcott. * C. R. Cockerell, R.A.-Chicheley was a Wykehamist; as was apparently Waynflete, who certainly was master of Wykeham's school in 1429. |