430 PREFACE TO THE 



the papers which he had collected, was transferred to 

 Dr. Birch. 



Of the histpry of this manuscript I have not been 

 able to learn anything beyond what appears upon 

 the face of it. It is a transcript in a hand of the 

 18th century, and has evidently been made from a 

 mutilated original ; blank spaces having been left by 

 the transcriber in several parts, such as would occur 

 in the copy, not of an unfinished or illegible writing, 

 but of one worn away at the edges of the outer leaves. 

 The leaves of the transcript are put together in a false 

 order, and are not numbered ; which makes it less easy 

 to guess what the original consisted of. But it looks 

 as if there had been three separate papers, each want 

 ing a leaf or two at the beginning, and each containing 

 a series of &quot; Cogitationes &quot; or short philosophical es 

 says. The transcript has been corrected throughout 

 by Locker himself and prepared for the press or the 

 copyist ; some passages being marked for omission, and 

 some to stand, and titles being added to the latter. It 

 seems that he meant to include in his edition of Bacon s 

 works all those portions which were not to be found 

 elsewhere in the same or nearly the same words. As 

 these titles do not appear to have formed part of the 

 original, I have omitted them here ; my object being 

 to print Bacon s own paper as Locker received it ; 

 which I suppose the transcriber to have copied as cor 

 rectly as he could. 



The subjects of cogitation are various, and not ar 

 ranged in any logical order. I find interspersed among 

 them the four fables, Metis, Soror Grigantum, Coelum, 

 and Proteus, exactly as they are printed in the Dt 

 Sapientid Veterum ; and the fifth, sixth, seventh, and 



