elsewhere. The admirable books of Cicero de Republica are not to be found
anywhere, so far as I can hear, though I have made anxious enquiry for them
in different parts of the world, and by various messengers. I could never
find the works of Seneca, though I made diligent search for them during
twenty years and more. And so it is with many more most useful books
connected with the science of morals." It is only words like these of his
own that bring home to us the keen thirst for knowledge, the patience, the
energy of Roger Bacon. He returned as a teacher to Oxford, and a touching
record of his devotion to those whom he taught remains in the story of John
of London, a boy of fifteen, whose ability raised him above the general
level of his pupils. "When he came to me as a poor boy," says Bacon in
recommending him to the Pope, "I caused him to be nurtured and instructed
for the love of God, especially since for aptitude and innocence I have
never found so towardly a youth. Five or six years ago I caused him to be
taught in languages, mathematics, and optics, and I have gratuitously
instructed him with my own lips since the time that I received your
mandate. There is no one at Paris who knows so much of the root of
philosophy, though he has not produced the branches, flowers, and fruit
because of his youth, and because he has had no experience in teaching. But
he has the means of surpassing all the Latins if he live to grow old and
goes on as he has begun."

The pride with which he refers to his system of instruction was justified
by the wide extension which he gave to scientific teaching in Oxford. It is
probably of himself that he speaks when he tells us that "the science of
optics has not hitherto been lectured on at Paris or elsewhere among the
Latins, save twice at Oxford." It was a science on which he had laboured
for ten years. But his teaching seems to have fallen on a barren soil. From
the moment when the Friars settled in the Universities scholasticism
absorbed the whole mental energy of the student world. The temper of the