volume, entitled The History of Friar Bacon: containing the wonderful things that he did in his life; also the manner of his death; with the lives and deaths of the two conjurers, Bungye and Vandermast, a work which has been reprinted in Mr Thoms's interesting collection of Early Prose Romances. Bungye and Vandermast are comparatively modern creations, introduced partly to work up the legends into a story, and for the same purpose legends are worked into it which have nothing to do with the memory of Roger Bacon. According to this story, In most men's opinions he was borne in the west part of England, and was sonne to a wealthy farmer, who put him to the schoole to the parson of the towne where hee was borne; not with intent that hee should turne fryer (as he did), but to get so much understanding, that he might manage the better that wealth hee was to leave him. But young Bacon took his learning so fast, that the priest could not teach him any more, which made him desire his master that he would speake to his father to put him to Oxford, that he might not lose that little learning that hee had gained.' The father made an outward show of receiving the application fayourably, but he had no sooner got his son away from the priest, than he deprived him of his books, treated him roughly, and sent him to the plough, telling him that was his business. Young Bacon thought this but hard dealing, yet would he not reply, but within sixe or eight dayes he gave his father the slip, and went to a cloyester some twenty miles off, where he was entertained, and so continued his learning, and in small time came to be so famous, that he was sent for to the University of Oxford, where he long time studied, and grew so excellent in the secrets of art and nature, that not England onely, but all Christendome admired him.' Such was Bacon's youth, according to the legend. His fame soon attracted the notice of the king (what king we are not told), and his wonderful feats of magic at court gained him great reputation, which leads him into all sorts of queer adventures. On one occasion, with an ingenuity worthy of the bar in its best moments, he saves a man from a rash contract with the devil. But one of the most famous exploits connected with the history of the legendary Friar Bacon was the manufacture of the brazen head, famous on account of the misfortune which attended it. It is, in fact, the grand incident in the legend. Friar Bacon, reading one day of the many conquests of England, bethought himselfe how he might keepe it hereafter from the like conquests, and so make himselfe famous hereafter to all posterities.' After deep study, he found that the only way to effect this was by making a head of brass, and if he could make this head speak, he would be able to encompass England with an impregnable wall of the same material. Bacon took into his confidence Friar Bungye, and, having made their brazen head, they consulted the demon who was under their power, and were informed by him that, if they subjected the head to a certain process during a month, it would speak in the course of that period, but that he could ROGER BACON. not tell them the exact day or hour, and that, if they heard him not before he had done speaking, their labour would be lost. The two friars proceeded as they were directed, and watched incessantly during three weeks, at the end of which time Bacon employed his man Miles, a shrewd fellow, and a bit of a magician himself, as a temporary watch while they snatched a few hours' repose. Accordingly, Bacon and Bungye went to sleep, while Miles watched. Miles had not been long thus employed, when the head, with some preparatory noise, pronounced very deliberately the words, Time is.' Miles thought that so unimportant an announcement was not a sufficient reason for waking his master, and took no further notice of it. Half an hour later, the head said in the same manner, ‘Time was,' and, after a similar interval, Time is past;' but Miles treated it all as a matter of no importance, until, shortly after uttering these last words, the brazen head fell to the ground with a terrible noise, and was broken to pieces. The two friars, thus awakened, found that their design had been entirely ruined, and so, the greate worke of these learned fryers was overthrown (to their great griefes) by this simple fellow.' The next story is curious as presenting a legendary account of two of the great inventions ascribed to Roger Bacon. One day the king of England invaded France with a great army, and when he had besieged a town three months without producing any effect, Friar Bacon went over to assist him. After boasting to the king of many inventions of a description on which people were often speculating in the sixteenth century, Bacon proceeded to work. In the first place, having raised a great mound, Fryer Bacon went with the king to the top of it, and did with a perspect shew to him the towne, as plainly as if hee had beene in it. This is evidently an allusion to the use of the camera obscura. The king, having thus made himself acquainted with the interior of the town, ordered, with Bacon's advice, that the assault should be given next day at noon. When the time approached, 'in the morning Fryer Bacon went up to the mount, and set his glasses and other instruments up. and, ere nine of the clocke, Fryer Bacon had burnt the state house of the towne, with other houses, only by his mathematicall glasses, which made the whole towne in an uprore, for none did know whence it came; whilest that they were quenching of the same, Fryer Bacon did wave his flagge, upon which signall given, the king set upon the towne, and tooke it with little or no resistence.' This is clearly an allusion to the effects of burning lenses. Other stories follow of a more trivial character, and not belonging to the story of Friar Bacon. At length, according to this legendary history, after many strange adventures, Bacon became disgusted with his wicked life,' burnt all his magical (P scientific) books, and gave himself up entirely to the study of divinity-a very orthodox and Catholic conclusion. He retained, however, sufficient cunning to cheat the fiend, for it is implied that he had sold his soul to the devil, A PHILOSOPHER OF THE THE BOOK OF DAYS. whether he died inside the church or outside, so 'then caused he to be made in the church wall a cell, where he locked himself in, and there remained till his death Thus lived he some two yeeres space in that cell, never coming forth his meat and drink he received in at a window, and at that window he did discourse with those that came to him. His grave he digged with his owne nayles, and was laid there when he dyed. Thus was the life and death of this famous fryer, who lived most part of his life a magician, and dyed a true penitent sinner, and an anchorite.' A PHILOSOPHER OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Such were the natural gifts of Sir Kenelm Digby, that although, as the son of one of the gunpowder conspirators, he began his career under unfavourable circumstances, he eventually succeeded in winning almost general admiration. He even became a favourite with the king, who had executed his father, and was prejudiced against his name. And if he be estimated by the versatility of his genius, he would not be undeserving of the pinnacle of fame on which his admirers have placed him. There seemed no post in literature, science, politics, or warfare, that he could not undertake with credit. He was a philosopher, a theologian, a linguist, a mathematician, a metaphysician, a politician, a commander by land and by sea, and distinguished himself in each capacity. The estimation in which he was held appears in the following lines written for his epitaph: Under this tomb the matchless Digby lies, The name of Sir Kenelm Digby is depreciated in our day by the patronage he bestowed on alchemy and other arts, now generally concluded upon as vain and superstitious. He was understood to possess a means of curing wounds, independent of all traceable physical causes. Mr Howell, the author of Dendrologie, having been seriously wounded in the hand while attempting to prevent a couple of friends from fighting, found various surgeons unserviceable for a cure, but at length applied to Sir Kenelm. It was my chance,' says the latter, to be lodged hard by him; and four or five days after, as I was making myself ready, he came to my house, and prayed me to view his wounds, "for I understand," said he, "that you have extraordinary remedies on such occasions, and my surgeons apprehend some fear that it may grow to_a gangrene, and so the hand must be cut off." In effect, his countenance discovered that he was in much pain, which he said was insupportable, in regard of the extreme inflammation. I told him I would willingly serve him; but if haply he knew the manner how I would cure him, without touching or seeing him, it may be he would not 772 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. expose himself to my manner of curing, because he would think it, peradventure, either ineffectual or superstitious. He replied, "The wonderful things which many have related unto me of your way of medicinement, makes me nothing doubt at all of its efficacy, and all that I have to say unto you is comprehended in the Spanish proverb, Hagase el milagro y hagalo Mahoma,-Let the miracle be done, though Mahomet do it." I asked him then for anything that had the blood upon it; so he presently sent for his garter, wherewith his hand was first bound; and as I called for a basin of water, as if I would wash my hands, I took a handful of powder of vitriol, which I had in my study, and presently dissolved it. As soon as the bloody garter was brought me, I put it within the basin, observing in the interim what Mr Howell did, who stood talking with a gentleman in a corner of my chamber, not regarding at all what I was doing; but he started suddenly, as if he had found some strange alteration in himself. I asked him what he ailed? "I know not what ails me; but I find that I feel no more pain. Methinks that a pleasing kind of freshness, as it were a wet cold napkin, did spread over my hand, which hath taken away the inflammation that tormented me before." I replied, "Since then, that you feel already so good effect of my medicament, I advise you to cast away all your plasters; only keep the wound clean, and in a moderate temper betwixt heat and cold." This was presently reported to the Duke of Buckingham, and a little after to the king, who were both very curious to know the circumstance of the business, which was, that after dinner I took the garter out of the water, and put it to dry before a great fire. It was scarce dry, but Mr Howell's servant came running, that his master felt as much burning as ever he had done, if not more; for the heat was such as if his hand were twixt coles of fire.' Sir Kenelm sent the servant back, and told him to return to him unless he found his master eased. The servant went, and at the instant,' continues Sir Kenelm, 'I did put again the garter into the water; thereupon he found his master without any pain at all. To be brief, there was no sense of pain afterwards; but within five or six days the wounds were cicatrized and entirely healed.' Sir Kenelm represented himself as having learnt this secret from a Carmelite friar who had been taught it in Armenia or Persia. Amongst the marvels of Sir Kenelm's discoveries in metaphysics and alchemy, we may notice the following as far more amusing than instructive. To remove warts he recommends the hands to be washed in an empty basin into which the moon shines; and declares that the moonshine will have humidity enough to cleanse the hands because of the star from which it is derived.' He tells us of a man, who, having lived from boyhood among wild beasts in a wood, had learnt to wind at a great distance by his nose where wholesome fruits or roots did grow,' and could follow persons, whom he knew, by scenting their footsteps like a dog. At a scientific meeting in France he made 'several considerable relations, whereof two did ravish the hearers to admiration. The one was of a king's house in England, which, having stood covered with lead for five or six ages, and being sold after that, was found to contain three-fourths of silver in the lead thereof. The other was of a fixed salt, drawn out of a certain potter's earth in France, which salt being for some time exposed to the sunbeams became salt-petre, then vitriol, then lead, then tin, copper, silver, and, at the end of fourteen months, gold; which he experienced himself and another able naturalist besides him.' Butler, who keenly satirizes the philosophical credulity of his day, thus ridicules a belief in sympathetic powder, and similar nostrums : 'Cure warts and corns with application But every age has its mania in science and SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. GEORGE WITHERS. 'I lived,' says this remarkable man, 'to see eleven signal changes, in which not a few signal transactions providentially occurred to wit, under the government of Queen Elizabeth, King James, Charles I., the King and Parliament together, the King alone, the Army, Oliver Cromwell, Richard Cromwell, a Council of State, the Parliament again, and the now King Charles II.' Withers was brought up as a rigid Puritan. Imbued with a mania for scribbling, and a thorough detestation of what Mr Carlyle calls shams, he left behind him upwards of a hundred and forty satirical pieces, the greater part in verse. In early life he took service under Charles I., but when the civil war broke out, he sold his estate to raise a troop of horse, which he commanded on the side of the Parliament. He was once taken prisoner by the Royalists, and about to be put to death as a traitor; but Sir John Denham begged his life, Withers, I will then be the worst poet in saying to the king-'If your Majesty kills England.' As Withers's satires directed against all that he considered wrong, were conscientiously either in his own or the opposite party, he very often was made acquainted with the interior of a prison; but in spite of these drawbacks, he degree by both sides, as he held office under managed to rub through life, favoured in some Charles II. as well as under Cromwell. He died on the 2nd of May 1667, having reached (for a poet) the tolerable age of seventy-nine. SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. Sir John Franklin sailed, June 1845, in command of an expedition, composed of two vessels, the Erebus and Terror, for the discovery of the supposed North-west Passage. Several years having elapsed without affording any news of these ships, expedition after expedition was sent out with a view to ascertain their fate, but without any clear intelligence as to the vessels or their commander till 1859, when Captain F. L. M'Clintock, in command of a little vessel which had been fitted out at the expense of Lady Franklin, discovered, at Point Victory, in King William's Island, a record, contained in a canister, to the effect that the Erebus and Terror had been frozen up in lat. 7005 N., and long. 98.23 W., from September 1846, and that Sir John Franklin died there on the 11th of June 1847. It further appeared that, at the date of the record, April 25, 1848, the survivors of the expedition, having abandoned their vessels, were about to attempt to escape by land; in which attempt, however, it has been learned by other means every one perished. Franklin's expedition must be admitted to have been wholly an unfortunate one; but there is, after all, some consolation in looking to the many gallant efforts to succour and retrieve itin the course of one of which the North-west Passage was actually discovered and in remembering the constancy of a tender affection, through which, after many failures, the fate of the expedition was finally ascertained. Born.-Rev. Charles Kingsley, novelist, 1819; Harriet Martineau, novelist, historian, miscellaneous writer, 1802. Died.-James III. of Scotland, killed near Bannockburn, Stirlingshire, 1488; Adrian Turnebus, eminent French scholar, 1565, Paris; James, Duke of Berwick, French commander, 1734, Philipsburgh; William Collins, poet, 1759, Chichester; R. F. P. Brunck, eminent philologist, 1803; General Pierre Augereau (Duc de Castiglioni), 1816; Edward Troughton, astronomical instrument maker, 1835, London; Rev. Dr Thomas Arnold, miscellaneous writer, eminent teacher, 1842, Rugby; Rev. John Hodgson, author of History of Northumberland, 1845; Dr Robert Brown, eminent botanist, 1858. COLLINS. The story of the life of Collins is a very sad one: Dr Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, well expresses the unhappy tenor of it. Collins,' he says, 'who, while he studied to live, felt no evil but poverty, no sooner lived to study than his life was assailed by more dreadful calamities, disease and insanity.' The poet's father, a hatter and influential man in Chichester, procured his son a good education, first at Winchester school, and then at Oxford. Accordingly, Collins promised well but the seeds of disease, sown already, though yet concealed, silently took root; and strange vacillation and indecision trailed in the path of a mind otherwise well fitted for accomplishing noble designs. Suddenly and unaccountably throwing up his advantages and position at Oxford, he proceeded to London as a literary adventurer. His was not the strong nature to breast so rough a sea; and when home-supplies, for some reason, at length failed, he was speedily reduced to poverty. Nevertheless, at the age of twenty-six, an opportune legacy removed for ever this trouble; and then it seemed he was about to enter upon a brighter existence. Then it was that the most terrible of all personal calamities began to assail him. Every remedy, hopeful or hopeless, was tried. He left off study entirely; he took to drinking; he travelled in France; he resided in an asylum at Chelsea; he put himself under the care of his sister in his native city. All was in vain; he died, when not quite forty, regretted and pitied by many kind friends. As we may naturally suppose, Collins wrote but little. At school he produced his Oriental Eclogues, and published them when at college, in 1742, some four or five years afterwards. These poems he grew to despise, and fretted at the public, because it continued to read them. In 1746 he published his Odes, when the public again crossed him; but this time by not reading what he had written. He was so annoyed that he burnt all the remaining copies. One lost poem, of some length, entitled an Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, was recovered and published in 1788. ROBERT BROWN. Time has avenged the neglect which Collins experienced in his own day. His Ode on the Passions is universally admired; the Ode to Evening is a masterpiece; there are not two more popular stanzas to be found than those which commence How sleep the brave; nor a sweeter verse in all the language of friendship than that in the dirge for his poet-friend :- 'Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore When Thames in summer wreaths is dressed; And oft suspend the dashing oar To bid his gentle spirit rest.' ROBERT BROWN. A kind, modest, great man-so early in the history of science, that he may be called the originator of vegetable physiology; so late in the actual chronology of the world that he died on the 12th of June 1858 (at, it is true, the advanced age of eighty-five)-has to be described under this homely appellative. His gentle, yet dignified presence in his department of the British Museum will long be a pleasing image in the memory of living men of science. The son of a minister of the depressed episcopal church of Scotland at Montrose, he entered life as an army surgeon, but quickly gravitated to his right place; first acting as naturalist in an Australian surveying expedition; afterwards as keeper of the natural history collections of Sir Joseph Banks; finally, National Museum. as keeper of the botanical collection in the Botany of New Holland, published in 1814; but His great work was the he wrote many papers, equally valuable in point of matter, for the Linnæan and Royal Societies. utterly wrong classification before his time, beWhat was a dry assemblage of facts under an came through his labours a clearly apprehensible portion of the great scheme of nature. The microscope was the grand means by which this end was carried out-an instrument little thought of before his day, but which, through his example in botany, was soon after introduced in the examination of the animal kingdom, with the noblest results. Indeed, it may be said that, whereas little more than the externals of plants and animals were formerly cared for, we now have become familiar with their internal constitution, their growth and development, and their several true places thank Mr Robert Brown. in nature, and for this, primarily, we must Animal-Named Plants. at least, by names involving reference to some animal, A great number of plants are recognised, popularly or what appears as such. Sometimes this animal element in the name is manifestly appropriate to something in the character of the plant; but often it is so utterly irrelative to anything in the plant itself, its locality, and uses, that we are forced to look for other reasons for its being applied. According to an ingenious correspondent, it will generally be found that in these latter cases the animal name is a corrup tion of some early term having a totally different signification. cat-mint, that the bee-orchis and the fly-orchis Our correspondent readily admits that cats love resemble respectively the bee and the fly, and that the flower of the single columbine is like an assemblage of doves [Lat. columba, a dove,]; hence the animal names are here presumably real. He allows that the crane's-bill, the stork's-bill, fox-tail grass, hare's-tail grass, adder's-tongue fern, hare's-ear, lark's-spur, mare's-tail, mouse-tail, and snake's-head, are all appropriate on the plain meaning of the terms. He goes on, however, to cite a more considerable number, regarding which he holds it certain that the appellative is a metamorphose of some word, generally in another language, with no meaning such as the term would suggest to ordinary ears. We let him state his ideas in his own way : 6 The name hare-bell is at present assigned to the wild hyacinth (Scilla Nutans), but properly belonging to the blue-bell (Campanula rotundifolia). Harebell may be traced to the Welsh awyr-bel, a balloon; that is, an inflated ball or distended globe or bell, to which description this flower corresponds; the name therefore would be more correctly spelled Airbell.' Foxglove, embodying the entire sense of the Latin Digitalis purpurea, is simply the red-glove, or red-gauntlet, for fox or foxy, as the Latin fuscus, and Italian fosco, signifies tawny or red, and hence is derived the name of the fox himself. The toad-flax (Cymbalaria Italica) is so named from the appearance it presents of a multitudinous mass of threads (flax), matted together in a cluster or branch, for which our old language had the significant term tod, which may be met with in several of our older dictionaries, from tot, or total, a mass or assemblage of things. So the toad-pipe (Equisetum Arvense), which consists of a cluster of jointed hair-like tubes, as also the bastard-toadflax, a plant with many clustering stems, both have the term toad or tod applied to them for the same reason. Louse-wort (Pedicularis palustris) appears to be only a corruption of loose-wort, the plant being otherwise called the red-rattle, from its near resemblance to the yellow-rattle (Rhinanthus), the seeds of which, being loosely held in a spacious inflated capsule, may be distinctly heard to rattle when the ripe, dry seed-vessel is shaken. Buck-bean (Menyanthes trifoliata) is more correctly bog-bean, its habitat being in very wet bog land. Swallow-wort, otherwise celandine (Chelidonium Majus), is properly sallow wort, having received this name from the dark yellow juice which exudes freely from its stems and roots when they are broken. Horse radish takes its name from its excessive pungency, horse, as thus used, being derived from the old English curs, or Welsh gwres, signifying hot or fierce; and the horsechestnut, not from any relation to a chestnut horse, but for a like reason, namely, that it is hot or bitter, and therein differs from the sweet or edible chestnut. The horse-mint also is pungent and disagreeable to the taste and to the smell, as compared with the cultivated kinds of mint. Bear's garlic or the common wild garlic (Allium ursinum), may be traced in the Latin specific name, ursinum, and this, although it would at the present time be interpreted as pertaining to a bear,' may have had what is termed a barbarous origin, viz., curs-inon or urs-inon, the hot or strong onion. The bear gets his own name, Ursa, from the same original, as describing his savage ferocity. The sowthistle, which is not indeed a true thistle, has the latter part of its name from the thistle-like appearance of its leaves; when these are handled, however, they are found to be perfectly inoffensive-they are formidable to the eye only, being too soft to inflict the slightest puncture; hence sote or sooth-thistle, that is soft thistle. The duck-weed, or ducks-meat, is by no means choice food for ducks, but simply ditchweed. It is that minute, round, leaf-like plant which so densely covers old moats and ponds with a green mantle. Its Latin name, Lemna, confirms this, derived as it is from the Greek Limné, a stagnant pool. The ARCHERY IN ENGLAND. corruption in this case may have originated in a misconstruction of the Saxon word Dig, which signifies both a ditch and a duck. This is still used in both senses in districts in our own country where a Saxon dialect prevails. Colts'-foot (Tussilago farfara) seems to be either from cough-wood or cold-wood, in accordance with the Latin name, which is derived from Tussis, a cough. We are disposed to regard it as a corruption, and to conclude that it refers to the medicinal use of the plant, because, in our English species at least, we see no resemblance to the foot of a horse, whereas its virtue in the cure of colds, coughs, and hoarseness, has, whether justly or not, been believed in from time immemorial. Pliny tells us that it had been in use from remote times, even at his day, the fume of the burning weed being inhaled through a reed. Lastly may be instanced the well-known gooseberry, notable for two things of very opposite characterfor its fruit and its thorns,-the latter hardly less dreaded than the former is coveted, and in the name given to this tree may be found a combined reference to these two features-its terrors and its attractions. In the Italian, Uva spina, this is very plainly shewn. The old English name carberry, probably has the same meaning; and the north country name, grozar or groser, as also the French groseille, and the Latin grossularia, scarcely conceal in their slightly inverted form the original gorse, which means prickly. In short, we regard the name gooseberry as simply a modified form of gorseberry. There was a time when goose was both written and pronounced gos, as is shewn by the still current word gosling, a young goose, and gorse (the furze or whin) is familiarly pronounced exactly in the same way; therefore the transition of gorse to goose will not be wondered at. mean, ARCHERY IN ENGLAND. In an epistle to the sheriffs of London, dated 12th June 1349, Edward III. sets forth how 'the people of our realm, as well of good quality as times exercised their skill of shooting arrows; have commonly in their sports before these whence it is well known that honour and profit have accrued to our whole realm, and to us, by the help of God, no small assistance in our warlike acts.' Now, however, the said skill being as it were wholly laid aside,' the king proceeds to command the sheriffs to make public proclamation that every one of the said city, strong in body, at leisure times on holidays, use in their recreations bows and arrows, or pellets or bolts, and learn and exercise the art of shooting, forbidding all and singular on our behalf, that they do not after any manner apply themselves to the throwing of stones, wood, or iron, handball, football, bandyball, cambuck, or cockfighting, nor suchlike vain plays, which have no profit in them.' It is not surprising that the king was thus anxious to keep alive archery, for from the Conquest, when it proved so important at Hastings, it had borne a distinguished part in the national military history. Even in his own time, notwithstanding the king's complaint of its decay, it was (to use modern language) an arm of the greatest potency. Creçy, Poitiers, and Agincourt were, in fact, archers' victories. At Homildon, the men-at-arms merely looked on while the chivalry of Scotland fell before the clothyard shafts. In one skirmish in the French |