ART. XI.-LITERARY ITEMS. OF Mr. Rigg's work on Modern Anglican Theology, the Clerical Journal (Eng.) says: "Perhaps nowhere else can be found more discriminating estimates of the characters and writings of Hare, Maurice, Kingsley, and Jowett, both in relation to general theology and to the Church of England." The British Standard says: "It may be doubted whether any other man in Great Britain has so complete and strong a grasp of the entire theme." Our American Bibliotheca Sacra calls it "A small book, of greater pretense than performance." T. & J. Clark of Edinburgh are publishing a translation of John Albert Bengel's valuable Gnomon of the New Testament. Essays on the Accordance of Christianity with the Nature of Man, by Edward Fry, are noticed by critics with high commendation. An experiment has been completed to test the validity of the methods of deciphering Assyrian inscriptions, by placing in the hands of four independent translators a single document, namely, the inscription of Tiglath Pileser I., King of Assyria, B. C. 1150. The translations have been published, and are considered as establishing in the main the valuation of the character of these inscriptions, and the scientific character of the method. The general sense of the translations is similar, with plentiful and essential variation in the details. Rawlinson's translation is as follows: "Bit-Khamri, the temple of my lord Vul, which Shansi-Vul, high-priest of Ashur, son of Ismi-Dagan, high-priest of Ashur, had founded, became ruined. I leveled its site, and from its foundation to its roofs I built it up of brick; I enlarged it beyond its former state, and I adorned it. Inside of it I sacrificed precious victims to my lord Vul." The Prophecies relating to Nineveh and the Assyrians. Translated from the Hebrew, with Historical Introduction and Notes, exhibiting the principal Results of the recent Discoveries. By George Vance Smith, B. A. The Book of Jonah, illustrated by Discoveries at Nineveh. By Rev. P. S. Desprez, B. D. London, 1857. These two works are considered as interesting, but somewhat premature in the attempt to make abundant and safe illustrative use of the recent developments. Chevalier Bunsen is engaged in a new translation of the Bible into German. The work will consist of seven volumes. It will be divided into three sections, and the last section will be entitled, Bible and World History; or, the Life of Jesus, and the Everlasting Kingdom of God. The Lectures of Sir William Hamilton, embracing his Metaphysical and Logical Courses, with Notes from the original materials, and appendix containing the author's latest development of his Logical Theory, is in process of publication by Messrs. Blackwood of Edinburgh. They are to be published in four octavo volumes, under the editorial care of Rev. H. L. Mansel, Oxford, and John Veitch, Edinburgh. The article in the London Quarterly on Philosophy Old and New, which was republished in the Eclectic of this country, was written, as we learn, by Richard Watson Dixon, son of the late delegate to our General Conference, and late a graduate of Oxford. Herodotus, a new version, from the text of Gaisford, with Illustrative Appendices, founded upon recent Historical and Ethnographical discoveries, obtained in the progress of the Cuneiform and Hierological developments, by Rev. George Rawlinson, assisted by Sir Henry Rawlinson and Sir G. J. Wilkinson, is in the press of Murray. A History of the Life and Times of Edmund Burke, by Thomas M'Knight, author of the Biography of D'Israeli, by the same publisher. A work on The Light of Nature, by Nathaniel Culverwell, with a Critical Essay on the work by John Cairns, M.A., is just published by Constable & Co. The Romish paper, the Tablet, in discoursing on the future of the Romish Church in the United States, says: "Few insurance companies, we venture to assert, would take a risk on the national life of a creed which puts five hundred daily into the grave for one it wins over to its communion. And yet this is what Catholicity is doing in these States while we write." Smith's Harmony of the Dispensations, from the press of Carlton & Porter, is just issued, and will be noticed in our next number. THE METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW. APRIL, 1858. ART. I.-FRIAR BACON AND LORD BACON. [SECOND ARTICLE.] 1. Lord Bacon's Essays, Apophthegms, Wisdom of the Ancients, New Atlantis, and Henry VII; with Introductory Dissertations and Notes, by J. DEVEY, M. A. London: H. G. Bohn. 1 vol. 12mo. 2. The Entire Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England. A new Edition, revised and elucidated; and enlarged by the addition of many pieces not printed before. Collected and edited by ROBERT LESLIE ELLIS, M. A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; JAMES SPEDDING, M. A., of Trinity College, Cambridge; and DOUGLAS DENON HEATH, Esq., Barrister at Law, and late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans. [Announced in Oct., 1848.] WE have been anxious to introduce the evidences which justify the suspicion of Francis Bacon's obligations to Roger so gradually that they may prepare the way for more conclusive testimonies, and give to the whole array a cumulative effect. Francis Bacon was a man of wonderful and versatile powers of mind, and of vast genius. Tact, sagacity, ingenuity, depth, eloquence, and facility of expression he possessed in the highest degree. After all possible deductions are made from his reputation, he will still remain a great man, a great reformer, a great philosopher. If such a man stooped to plagiarism, or the semblance of plagiarism, he would carefully conceal all traces of the source to which he was indebted. It is, consequently, a difficult as well as a delicate task to demonstrate the suspected crime, and to catch the criminal flagrante delicto; and, however strong the direct testimony may be, it will be scarcely credited, unless the evidence is sustained by previous indications, and the combined significance of the separate testimonies is duly appreciated. FOURTH SERIES, VOL. X.-12 It may be that everything hitherto advanced is insufficient to prove that the later philosopher was indebted to his predecessor. If this constituted the entire proof, it might be represented as too slight to sustain any definite conclusion, though, in our opinion, it would sanction a very strong suspicion of such obligations. When, however, this is confirmed by such coincidences as could not be accidental, and which, nevertheless, are essential characteristics of each author, these acquire additional strength themselves, and prepare us for a more correct and prompt estimation of the relations of the parties. Will any casual agreement explain the fact that both allege the same four impediments to correct knowledge? Roger Bacon declares that "there are four principal obstacles to the discovery of truth, which embarrass every one in the pursuit of knowledge, and scarcely permit any to attain true wisdom; namely, the example of frail and inadequate authority; length of custom or habit; the belief of the untrained multitude; and the concealment of one's own ignorance with the pretension to apparent learning. It is stated by Brucker,† that Roger Bacon wrote an essay "On the Four Universal Causes of Human Ignorance." This must have been the work entitled in Jebb's catalogue, De Causis Ignorantiæ Humanæ, and which that learned editor, as already observed, regards as contained in the First Book of the Opus Majus. If, however, it was a separate work, the means are not accessible to us of determining the fact, or consulting its pages. We must content ourselves with what is before us, but that suffices to demonstrate that Roger Bacon reduced the chief impediments to the apprehension of truth to four, to wit, authority, habit, popular opinion, and vain ostentation. Is it an accident that Lord Bacon agrees so completely with Roger Bacon in declaring that "four species of idols beset the human mind; to which, for distinction's sake, we have assigned names; calling the first, Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Den; the third, Idols of the Market; the fourth, Idols of the Theater?" The designations are Lord Bacon's, and are glaring instances of that constant affectation of quaint and novel technicalities, which was peculiar to his style. But the division itself is Roger Bacon's. If the developments of these general fallacies by each author are carefully compared together, it will be apparent that the Idols of the Theater correspond with the fallacies proceeding from undue reverence for authority; the Idols of the Market with those occasioned by vulgar Opus Majus, Pars I, cap. i, pp. 1, 2. † Brucker, Hist. Crit. Phil., tom. III, p. 822. opinion; the Idols of the Den with those resulting from habit; and the Idols of the Tribe, alone, do not accord thoroughly with those caused by empty display and the desire to conceal ignorance. These fallacies seem to be included under the Idols of the Tribe,* but they are not distinctly assigned to any of the four divisions; and on a close examination it will be discovered that there is much confusion in Lord Bacon's distribution of fallacies, and that the four genera, which the translator has clumsily rendered species, run continually into each other. His hand is not as steady as Roger Bacon's in drawing the lines of demarkation between the several classes; and his exposition manifests much more poetry than logic. We cannot repress the conviction that Lord Bacon originally derived his ideas on the subject of idols from his Franciscan precursor, and that he expanded and modified them according to his own taste, with rare sagacity and exuberant imagination. He did not copy servilely, but if he copied at all, he is guilty, because he studiously concealed the obligation and withheld all commendation. We only remember a single instance in which he has mentioned Roger Bacon; but that instance proves that he either was acquainted, or pretended to be acquainted with his writings, and that he disguised their true character. His own doctrines on the subject of fallacies grew as he advanced in his philosophical career. The idols are not mentioned under their distinctive names in the Advancement of Learning, though their subsequent appellations manifestly grew out of the metaphorical expressions there employed. These designations are introduced in the Novum Organon, and thence transferred to the treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum,§ whose views, however, approximate in other respects to the original draft of the doctrine. The distribution of fallacies, as it appears in the Organon, was, therefore, not conceived at a single heat, but gradually assumed its present shape. Still, in the earlier and the later forms, it bears such a resemblance to the ideas of Roger Bacon that we cannot resist the conviction that it was thence derived. There is a singular and inexplicable substitution, at times, of four for three classes of fallacies, and three for four, in the writings • Vide Nov. Org., lib. I, Aph. xlix. In his censure of the Alchemists, he remarks, "Yet I count them not all alike; forasmuch as there is a useful sort of them, who, not very solicitous about theories, do, by a kind of mechanic subtilty, lay hold of the extensions of things; such is Bacon."-Interpretation of Nature, vol. xv, p. 98; vol. x, p. 440. Bacon's Works, vol. ii, pp. 190-193. § De Augm. Scient., lib. V, cap. iv, vol. viii, pp. 292–296. of Lord Bacon.* This vacillation produces much confusion, and is wholly unintelligible, until we perceive a similar hesitancy and inconsistency in Roger Bacon.† It must be observed that the mode of reasoning usually adopted by Roger Bacon is widely different from that employed by Francis. The former assails authority; he declares it to be the cause of fallacy; yet his opposition to it is sustained by the citation of authorities. Each position is backed by a long array of quotations from saints and sinners, from the classical authors, from the Christian fathers, from the Arabian philosophers, and occasionally from his cotemporaries, of whom he speaks not very highly. Some reason for this procedure may, however, be discovered in the fact that the Opus Majus was addressed to Pope Clement IV., and was written for his especial illumination. We will not dwell upon the four kinds of causes, the efficient, the material, the formal, and the final, which were accepted by both the Bacons. These are borrowed from Aristotle, and had been fully expounded by Abelard.§ But we will note that the maxim of Aristotle, repudiated in our days, and which Lord Bacon has been represented as repudiating, that true knowledge is a knowledge of causes, is distinctly endorsed by him, "Recte ponitur; vere scire est per caussas scire."|| Induction and experimentation have been regarded almost universally as the characteristic triumphs of the Baconian method, meaning thereby the method of Lord Bacon. In very recent times the more intelligent scholars have renounced this old delusion, and, acknowledging the important services rendered by Lord Bacon in directing public attention more forcibly to these processes, they have ascribed to Socrates and Aristotle the merit of developing the Inductive system, and to the Alchemists the credit of having employed experimentation in physical inquiries, and of having applied induction to the investigation of nature with much greater success than attended the efforts of Lord Bacon. If, indeed, he had otherwise any special claims to original invention in these respects, they would be sadly attenuated when it was recognised that he had been anticipated by Roger Bacon. Both modes of proceeding are Advancement of Learning, vol. ii, p. 193. De Augm. Scient., lib. V, cap. iv, vol. viii, p. 292. † Opus Majus, Ps. I, cap. ii, p. 2; cap. iii, p. 3; cap. iv, p. 6; cap. viii, p. 9; cap. ix, p. 9. Opus Majus, Pars 1, cap. vii, p. 9. § Rémusat Abélard, No. II, chap. v, vol. ii, p. 444. Nov. Org., lib. II, Aph. ii. |