“Considering, then, the reverence due to you, and the nature of your command, I solicited many and great people, the faces of some of whom you know well, but not their minds; and I told them that a certain affair of yours must he attended to by me in France, (but I did not disclose to them what it was,) the performance of which required a large sum of money.  But how often I was deemed a cheat, how often repulsed, how often put off with empty hope, how often confused in myself, I cannot express.  Even my friends did not believe me, because I could not explain to them the affair; and hence I could not advance by this way.  In distress, therefore, beyond what can be imagined, I compelled serving-men and poor to expend all that they had, to sell many things, and to pawn others, often at usury; and I promised them that I would write to you every part of the expenses, and would in good faith obtain from you payment in full.  And yet, on account of the poverty of these persons, I many times gave up the work, and many times despaired and neglected to proceed; and indeed, if I had known that you would not attend to the settling of these accounts, I would not for the whole world have gone on,—­nay, rather, I would have gone to prison.  Nor could I send special messengers to you for the needed sum, because I had no means.  And I preferred to spend whatever I could procure in advancing the business rather than in despatching a messenger to you.  And also, on account of the reverence due to you, I determined to make no report of expenses before sending to you something which might please you, and by ocular proof should give witness to its cost.  On account, then, of all these things, so great a delay has occurred in this matter."[15]

There is a touching simplicity in this account of the trials by which he was beset, and it rises to dignity in connection with a sentence which immediately follows, in which he says, the thought of “the advantage of the world excited me, and the revival of knowledge, which now for many ages has lain dead, vehemently urged me forward.”  Motives such as these were truly needed to enable him to make head against such difficulties.

The work which he accomplished, remarkable as it is from its intrinsic qualities, is also surprising from the rapidity with which it was performed, in spite of the distractions and obstacles that attended it.  It would seem that in less than two years from the date of Clement’s letter, the three works composed in compliance with its demand were despatched to the Pope.  Bacon’s diligence must have been as great as his learning.  In speaking, in another part of the “Opus Tertium,” of the insufficiency of the common modes of instruction, he gives incidentally an account of his own devotion to study.  “I have labored much,” he says, “on the sciences and languages; it is now forty years since I first learned the alphabet, and I have always been studious; except two years of these forty, I have been always