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    BIOGRAPHY.*

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    accessible through the cheapness to a larger number of persons ea pable of appreciating it : Books of reference are indispensable to a library , however limited ; aha the smallest . library is not complete without a biographical dictionary . The most earnest students are often the poorest students . There are few ,, however , so very poor as not to be able to afford for the forty-five volumes of a biographical dictionary seven pounds , especially when this sum is spread over ten years . It is books for the thorough student , not boo . cs for the multitude , that it is important to have cheiip ,- and in tin ' s inspect students in France and Germany have a great advantage over those of England . At what an insignificant price are editions of the ancient classical writers procurable in Germany ! The constitution of the English universities , so contrary to the idea and the original is the main whthe

    W HENCE is it that so much more attention is devoted to systematic biography in France than in England ? Besides the * ' Biographie TJniverselle , " Of which a new edition is appearing , Vapereau ' % " pictionnaire des Contemporains , " and many similar publications , we have the " New General Biography" of the Didots , the excellence whereof , notwithstanding notable defects , we deem it a duty fervently to commend . This undertaking has reached its thirtieth voliirne , and fifteen more volumes are to appear . Judged by oiir English ideas , the . work is marvellously cheap . Each volume contains about five hundred pages . The double columns , closely but clearly printed , offer an immense amount of reading ; yet each volume is sold in France for three francs , and in England for three shillings . Now , we are not the idolaters of cheapness by itself . Cheapness is only to be valued where an article really good is made

    objects of a university everywhere , , cause y poor student in England has not the same facilities in regard to books as the poor student in other parts of Europe . We feel , at all events , that it is a disgrace to us that England has not yet produced , cheap or dear , a single b iographical dictionary worthy of thcnarne . When will the English student be able to put on his shelves an English biographical dictionary of fifty volumes at half-a-crown the volume , transcending in merit this which we owe to the enterprise of the Didots ? Here is scope for generous , high-minded emulation among our publishers . It is but fair to say that the Didots , for several generations , have been scholars as well as publishers , and have thus been raised , above the mercenary aspirings of the mere tradesman . It is difficult to believe that the most successful sale of the New General Biosraphv can do more than cover tho expenses . But even

    wore it not to do this , the Didpts would nrobably be satisfied with a grand achievement , which honoured alike themselves and their nation . Warmly as we applaud the noble spirit which has animated the 3 > idots in the f ' New General Biography , " and the talent which marks the worlc as a whole , we yet believe that England could give birth to a biographical dictionary of a much more perfect kind . Thore are numerpus and grpss inaccuracies , of which perhaps only a Frenchman could be guilty . These inaccuracies are almost sure to abound where the subject is an English one . We talk of defending 1 Eng-lund , but there is one thing against which England and Englishmen , must always be absolutely defenceless—a Frenchman ' s blunders . These , in the domain of biography , are not so . amusing as elsewhere , nounsivaoes not

    for the heroic temper which biography should put us much in the mood to laugh . Moreover , in those volumes , I rench biography occupies more space than the biography of all the world besides . The most eminent persons of every age and country except Franco are dismissed frequently in a . paragraph or two , or even entirely omitted , while in reference to thousands of French nood es ana nobodies wo have the most detailed narratives . < J" *" es Dickens is despatched in a few meagre lines , but fcho tribe ot Lebruns , whose glory is so essentially a French glory that the majority of Englishmen have never suspected their existence , occupy about fifty columns . We , in England , who have been taught by Shakespeare ftnd the rest of the demigods to kno ^ v what sublime and genuine poetry is , have been in the habit of behoving that the French have had no poets of tho foremost rank , and few poets of any kind . But in turning to tho pages of the " New General Biogruphy wo encounter French poets by tho hundred , from the highest ) order ^ to ?

    tho lowest . One of the principles , however , guminga W » P « ' «" dictionary , should surely be to give most prominence to that wmou

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    Feb . , I 860 . J The Leader and Saturday Analysts 137

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    ardent was his love for intellectual freedom and moral P »" ty ; and , although-remaming- an orthodox son of the Church , as the Church then was , to the end of his life , his object clearly was to spread knowledge among the people , without regard to the effect that that knowledge might have on long-cherished ^ pimona . For this pur . pose he advocated the cultivation : of the ^ Hebrew and Greek languages , and made almost superhuman efforts to acquire them " Those who look back to the thirteenth century frequently forget how nearly on a par was the intelligence of the educated and the uneducated . In those days men who . held themselves to be scholars were , for the most part , content with a littkv Latin and some scholastic theology ; and this latter , while it had the effect of causing them to treat the unlearned with supreme contempt , usually was of the vilest and meanest sort ; but among the entirely untaught , there was that genuine love of practical instruction which is so characteristic of our race ; besides which there had long been a deeply-seated belief that , in the unknown regions of chemistry , mathematics and astronomy were hidden truths which a student who would turn his eyes stedfastly in that direction , and determine not to be hampered or hindered by ignorance in high places , might assuredly bring to light for their good and that of all succeeding time . In this opinion time has proved them to be right , although the light did not arise in that part of the heavens where it was . most looked for . ¦ In these opinions it is probable that the powerful in Church and State to some degree participated . But they were content with things as they were . If philosophy were to advance , who could tell but that it might militate against received traditions—traditions which , as it seemed to them , were the very life and soul Of the Christian commonwealth . And think not that this was an idle fear ; for had not the Crusaders brought from the fur East strange tongues and stranger opinions—Arabic literature and Greek philosophy ? And had not these two new discoveries already produced heresies and rebellions more than enough ? Were there riot already the Albigenses in the south , who avowed that their opinions were to be found in the Greek Scripture ; and the PaterinU who , like unto them in detestable unbelief , dwelled in the forests of Germany , gave no obedience to the Pope , and ate flesh on Fridays ? Was there not Abelard too , who from the same godless armoury had furnished himself with weapons which had well-nigh worsted the great Saint Bernard himself ? Bacon had not long been a member of the order of St . Francis , ere his genius and his thirst for knowledge displayed itself'in colours which were not a little alai'hiirig 1 to those who were set over him . We are so ignorant of his life ' s history , thai the struggle he underwent with stolidity in high places is now ' only to be ; conjectured . The result , however , gives us an insight into what must have gone before . He was branded as a magician ; Or , at least , as one who studied unlawful things , was confined to his cell , and writing materials were even , it is said , denied him . This cruelty was not , however , of Ipng duratipn . The fame and the sufferings of the poor monk came , at last , to the ears of the Pope , whp did himself everlasting honour by stepping in to save Bacon from his enemies . In a papal brief , dated May 23 rd , in the second year of his pontificate , Clement IV . ordered him to put on record his discoveries , and forward them to Rome without delay . The alacrity with which the neglected scholar set to work , and the immense amount of labour which he performed in little more than a year and a half , are evidence of the intense delight he experienced at his deliverance from the restraints of his . ignorant superiors , by one whom he and they alike acknowledged as the highest authority on earth . The pleasure was greater , inasmuch as he had never sought the Papal countenance for his labours . The volume that we have now before us contains two of the treatises which he wrote at the Pope ' s desire . They have never before been printed . These documents will modify many of our opinions , both as to Bacon ' s philosophy and the times in which , he lived ; for , while showing that even then knowledge could be attained on subjects which we are apt to think are open to us alone , they bring out in the strongest relief tho densonoss of the human mind as it then ordinarily existed . Bacon believed , as other men of his generation did , that in the all but unknown Greek , Hebrew , and Arabian literatures were contained secrets of the greatest value ; he therefore set . to work to learn those tongues , and to compile a comparative grammar of them for future philological explorers . Those whp know what-tho difficulties are in mastering two or three ancient languages when surrounded with every help that modern scholarship has to offer will best appreciate him who , without any of these aids , had the courage to begin and tho will to carry out so great a labour . , Not cpntent even with what conld be learned in his own land , he orossed the sea simply for the sake of conversing 1 with foreign students . Ho did not find many , for he tolls us : " There are not four scholars in western Eurppe who understand Greek , Arabic , or Hebrew grammar . I know them well , for on both sides of tlie sea . 1 have * niado diligent inquiries and undergone much labour in these matters . " With that strong faith in the justice and the kindly appreciation of posterity which none but tho greatest minds ever seem to have , ho looked forward to the time when ho might sayr—« " Jamque opus exogi , quod neo Jovis ira , noo ignis Noq potent forrum , neo odax abolere votusttve . " Suoh faith in ultimate justice must ever have its reward ; bufc how strange has that reward hitherto been I For two centuries after his death branded by an ignorant and licentious clergy

    The writings of Bacon will never be popular books , but for the historical and philosophical student they will always retain great value , containing , as they dp , the irimpst thoughts of a man who exercised sp great an influence over the mind of mediseval England . Mr . Brewer is nearly all that could be wished for as an editor . This is the best edited book of the series , and all are carefully done .

    as little better than a heretic , and altogether a wizard , he is now thought of , by most pf us , more as an illustration of the injustice and ultimate "nullity of dogmatism , than on account of those things fpr which he labpured sp bravely and sp well . " The fashipn of this world passetli away" as surely if not as ; rapidly in those things that relate to the mind of man , as iii the houses he builds , or , the garments wherewith he clothes himself ; and we ar " e . but too- apt not tp consider out of what material pur present greatness has been built . Had there been no Roger Bacon , with his astounding hints on physical science and his proofs of the worthlessness of scholasticism in dealing with it , there might have been no Wycliffe to apply the same principles to a different class of phenomena , and no patient , brave yet doubting people ready to welcome the light when liberty of thought became an avowed principle .

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    • Nouvollo Jiioaraphlo GJnJralo . Tomo trentlSmo . Pftrii ? : DUlot .

    Biography.*

    BIOGRAPHY *

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 11, 1860, page 137, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2333/page/13/