opportunity to lead other than military lives, so the decline of the
theological spirit enabled them to attain that diffusion of knowledge
without which there could be no civilization. The Roman clergy, during
many centuries, partly from conscientious motives, and partly to
maintain their own power, had suppressed intellectual and material
advancement, and had kept men in a state of gross ignorance and
superstition. In England the church gradually lost her old influence by
her internal rottenness: she was unable to resist the new growth of
learning which sprung up in the first half of the sixteenth century;
and her power for evil was destroyed by the Reformation. The
superstitions, however, which she had nourished, lingered long after
her power had passed away, and these have given birth to some curious
specimens of fiction. The natural tendency of an ignorant and
superstitious people was to ascribe superior mental ability to
intercourse with Satan, and to imagine that any unusual learning must
be connected with the occult sciences. These ideas are illustrated by
the stories relating to Friar Bacon and to Virgil which were printed
during the sixteenth century, and which embodied the legends regarding
these great men which had passed current for two hundred years. The
same ignorant indifference to useful learning which made Roger Bacon,
the great philosopher of the thirteenth century, "unheard, forgotten,
buried," represented him after his death as a conjurer doing tricks for
the amusement of a king. "The Famous Historie of Frier Bacon," is
written in a clear and simple style, very similar to that of "Thomas of
Reading," and recounts: "How Fryer Bacon made a Brazen Head to speake,
by the which hee would have walled England about with Brasse"; "how
Fryer Bacon by his arte took a towne, when the king had lyen before it
three months, without doing to it any hurt"; with much more of the same
sort. This story would be without interest, were it not for the
introduction of the Friar's servant, one Miles, whose futile attempts