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BACON'S LIFE, xxiii
be divided into two periods, apparently of nearly equal length ;
the periods before and after his adinission into the Franciscan
Order. In the seventcenth chapter of the Opus Zertinm he
speaks of having devoted more than twenty years to the study
of languages and of science.” ‘7 sought,’ he says, ‘the friend-
ship of all wise men among the Latins; and I caused young
men to be traincd in languages, in gcometrical figures, in
numbers, in the construction of tables, in the use of instru-
ments, and in many other necessary things... During this
time I spent more than two thousand pounds in those things
and in the purchase of books and instruments.” We may
presume that the pounds were French, which at that time
would correspond to between 600 and 7¢0 pounds sterling.
The sum was a large one, And whether Jarge or small, it
would be quite incompatible with the profession of an Order
specially devoted to poverty. It may be inferred, therefore,
that since he had studied independently for some twenty
years, it was not till some time between 1245 and 125¢ that
Bacon became a Pranciscan.
Among the men distinguished for their learning whose friendship he cultivated at this part of his career may be counted, in all probability, Adam de Marisco; Edmund Rich, afterwards Archbishop of Canterburyand ultimately canonized ; Thomas Bungay, whose name was onc day to be associated with his own as a worker of magic; Thomas, Bishop of St. David; John of Basingstoke, scholar and traveller; John Peckham, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury; Hermann, one of the principal translators of Aristotle; Shirwood, the treasurer of Lincoln; and last and greatest, the illustrious Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosscteste. In Bacon’s earlier years of study, Grosseteste had not plunged into the ardaous and absorbing work of his episcopate. Mout? sezentias, Bacon says of him. He was rector sehelarum, and also Chancellor of Oxford, and in 1224 was the reclor of the Tranciscans recently established there. The terms in which Bacon bears testimony to his cncouragement of philology, to his attempts to apply mathematical methed to the study of physical phenomena, to his disregard of the philosophy of the schools