Page:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu/54

32 The Study of Friar Bacon, which Master Pepys "up and saw" was contained in a hexagonal tower on Folly Bridge; but it was taken down in 1779, more's the pity, a century and a decade after Pepys's famous and expensive visit. Why, oh why, should Improvement, in its march, march over, and wipe out, Friar Bacon's Study, which we all, now, would so much like to "up and see"?

Roger Bacon is believed to have gone first to Oxford about 1233; but the exact date, and the length of his stay then, and later, are very uncertain. He lived, for a time, in the Monastery of the Franciscans, "under the City Wall, in the suburb, south of St. Ebbe's Church," and he is said to have died there and to have been buried in its chapel. But that is uncertain too! No stone of Monastery or Chapel is now left.

Anthony Wood tells a story of Bacon, in Oxford, which is probably the parent of many similar stories, told of many other Men of Mind. It seems, according to the gossipy Annalist, that when certain scholars of Cambridge went to play a game of brains and learning with the Oxford students, the latter sent out Bacon, disguised as a thatcher, to meet them, and to paralyze them, on the road, with a display of that knowledge of the Dead Languages, which was supposed to be possessed then, even by the hedgers and ditchers of the