NOTE I. 



another, and every year altered and amended in the frame thereof, till at last it 

 came to that model in which it was committed to the press, as many living 

 creatures do lick their young ones, till they bring them to their strength of 

 limbs.&quot; 



The attention of the reader is particularly requested to the extracts (in pages 

 xxviii and xxix of preface to vol. i.) and the observations upon universities in 

 the Filum Labyrinth!, and in the Novum Organum. 



&quot; Lost, likewise,&quot; says Tennison, &quot; is a book which he wrote in his youth, 

 he called it (Temporis Partus Maximus) the Greatest Birth of Time : or rather, 

 Temporis Partus Masculus, the Masculine Birth of Time. For so Gruter found 

 it called in some of the papers of Sir William Boswel. This was a kind of 

 embrio of the Instauration : and the fragment, lately retrieved, and now first 

 published. But this loss is the less to be lamented, because it is made up with 

 advantage, in the second and better thoughts of the author, in the two first parts 

 of his Instauration.&quot; 



Mr. Mallet, speaking of this treatise, is pleased to deliver himself thus : 

 &quot; Though the piece itself is lost, it appears to have been the first outlines of 

 that amazing design, which he afterwards filled up and finished, in his grand 

 Instauration of the Sciences. As there is not a more amusing, perhaps a more 

 useful speculation, than that of tracing the history of the human mind, if I may 

 so express myself, in its progression from truth to truth, and from discovery to 

 discovery ; the intelligent reader would, doubtless, have been pleased, to see in 

 the tract I have been speaking of, by what steps and gradations, a spirit like 

 Bacon s advanced in new and universal theory.&quot; 



But here seems to lie the difficulty : some writers who have reviewed the 

 scattered works and fragments of Lord Bacon have, with great labour and 

 industry, endeavoured to bring in this treatise, otherwise styled Of the Interpre 

 tation of Nature, as a part of that great body of philosophy which he had 

 framed ; whereas our author himself, speaking of this treatise, tells us, as the 

 reader may see above, that it was not a part or portion of his great structure of 

 philosophy, but the first sketch or rough draught of the whole. Now I con 

 ceive, that whoever looks into these fragments of the book on the Interpretation 

 of Nature, as they stand in the works of our author, and shall afterwards com 

 pare them with the beginning of his Instauration, will not need many argu 

 ments to persuade him, that this conjecture is founded in truth, and that there is 

 as much reason to conceive that the great work, just mentioned, rose out of the 

 Temporis Partus Masculus, as that the Novum Organum sprung from another 

 of the fragments which accompanies this, and is commonly called his Cogitata 

 et Visa. If the reader would be told what is the issue, what the advantage of 

 this laboured inquiry, he will surely be satisfied with this answer; that by 

 drawing these fragments of the Interpretation of Nature into a good light, it 

 appears, that what the honest and candid Tennison thought so fine a sight, the 

 generation of Lord Bacon s philosophy from the egg, is still in our power ; and 

 what the ingenious and instructive Mr. Mallet most truly observes, the ability 

 of reviewing and tracing the author s steps from one discovery in science to 

 another, is yet in a great measure with us ; which, to such as rightly apprehend 

 Lord Bacon s worth, and have a just conception of the value of his writings, 

 will appear somewhat of considerable consequence. I am satisfied, that in 

 matters of this nature there is no absolute certainty, and that in the depths of 

 , Lord Bacon s knowledge, a man of ordinary talents may be very easily lost ; 

 but I own at the same time, the thing struck me so strongly, that I could not 

 help putting it down, yet with all imaginable submission to the reader, to whose 

 service, as I dedicate my labours, I hope (should it be found so) he will the 

 more easily pardon my mistake. There are, however, a few circumstances 

 more, to which 1 must desire the reader s attention, and then he will have a 

 just notion of Mr. Bacon s frame of mind. While at Gray s Inn, he was 

 eagerly engaged in the study and pursuit of his new philosophy, the whole 

 scheme of which he had already formed. It was to this he applied his thoughts, 

 and this was the great object of his ambition. If he desired or laboured for 

 preferment in civil life, it was but with a view to gain thereby the means of 



