repayment from Clement. Nor was this all; the work itself, abstruse and
scientific as was its subject, had to be treated in a clear and popular
form to gain the Papal ear. But difficulties which would have crushed
another man only roused Roger Bacon to an almost superhuman energy. By the
close of 1267 the work was done. The "greater work," itself in modern form
a closely-printed folio, with its successive summaries and appendices in
the "lesser" and the "third" works (which make a good octavo more), were
produced and forwarded to the Pope within fifteen months.


[Sidenote: The Opus Majus]

No trace of this fiery haste remains in the book itself. The "Opus Majus"
is alike wonderful in plan and detail. Bacon's main purpose, in the words
of Dr. Whewell, is "to urge the necessity of a reform in the mode of
philosophizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had not made a
greater progress, to draw back attention to sources of knowledge which had
been unwisely neglected, to discover other sources which were yet wholly
unknown, and to animate men to the undertaking by a prospect of the vast
advantages which it offered." The developement of his scheme is on the
largest scale; he gathers together the whole knowledge of his time on every
branch of science which it possessed, and as he passes them in review he
suggests improvements in nearly all. His labours, both here and in his
after works, in the field of grammar and philology, his perseverance in
insisting on the necessity of correct texts, of an accurate knowledge of
languages, of an exact interpretation, are hardly less remarkable than his
scientific investigations. From grammar he passes to mathematics, from
mathematics to experimental philosophy. Under the name of mathematics
indeed was included all the physical science of the time. "The neglect of
it for nearly thirty or forty years," pleads Bacon passionately, "hath