It is not easy to determine how soon an atmosphere of legend gathered around the figure of 'the Admirable Doctor;' but undoubtedly it originated quite as much in his astrological errors as in his scientific experiments. Some of the myths of which he is the traditional hero belong to a very much earlier period, as, for instance, that of his Brazen Head, which appears in the old romance of 'Valentine and Orson,' as well as in the history of Albertus Magnus. Gower, too, in his 'Confessio Amantis,' relates how a Brazen Head was fabricated by Bishop Grosseteste. It was customary in those days to ascribe all kinds of marvels to men who obtained a repute for exceptional learning, and Bishop Grosseteste's Brazen Head was as purely a fiction as Roger Bacon's. This is Gower's account:
'For of the gretè clerk Grostest I rede how busy that he was Upon the clergie an head of brass To forgè; and make it fortelle Of suchè thingès as befelle. And seven yerès besinesse He laidè, but for the lachèsse[3] Of half a minute of an hour ... He lostè all that he hadde do.'
Stow tells a story of a Head of Clay, made at Oxford in the reign of Edward II., which, at an appointed time, spoke the mysterious words, 'Caput decidetur--caput elevabitur. Pedes elevabuntur supra caput.' Returning to Roger Bacon's supposed invention, we find an ingenious though improbable explanation suggested by Sir Thomas Browne, in his 'Vulgar Errors':
'Every one,' he says, 'is filled with the story of Friar Bacon, that made a Brazen Head to speak these words, "_Time is_." Which, though there went not the like relations, is surely too literally received, and was but a mystical fable concerning the philosopher's great work, wherein he eminently laboured: implying no more by the copper head, than the vessel wherein it was wrought; and by the words it spake, than the opportunity to be watched, about the _tempus ortus_, or birth of the magical child, or "philosophical King" of Lullius, the rising of the "terra foliata" of Arnoldus; when the earth, sufficiently impregnated with the water, ascendeth white and splendent. Which not observed, the work is irrecoverably lost.... Now letting slip the critical opportunity, he missed the intended treasure: which had he obtained, he might have made out the tradition of making a brazen wall about England: that is, the most powerful defence or strongest fortification which gold could have effected.'