NOTE B B B. 



To the King. 



It may please your most excellent Majesty, It being a thing to speak or 

 ?rite, specially to a king, in public, another in private, although I have dedi 

 cated a work, or rather a portion of a work, which at last I have overcome, to 

 your majesty by a public epistle, where I speak to you in the hearing of others ; 

 yet I thought fit also humbly to seek access for the same, not so much to your 

 person, as to your judgment, by these private lines. 



The work, in what colours soever it may be set forth, is no more but a new 

 logic, teaching to invent and judge by induction, as finding syllogism incom 

 petent for sciences of nature ; and thereby to make philosophy and sciences 

 both more true and more active. This tending to enlarge the bounds of reason, 

 and to endow man s estate with new value, was no improper oblation to your 

 majesty, who, of men, is the greatest master of reason, and author of benefi 

 cence. 



There be two of your council, and one other bishop of this land, that know I 

 have been about some such work near thirty years ; so as I made no haste. 

 And the reason why I have published it now, specially being unperfect, is, to 

 speak plainly, because I number my days, and would have it saved. There is 

 another reason of my so doing, which is to try, whether I can get help in one 

 intended part of this work, namely, the compiling of a natural and experimental 

 history, which must be the main foundation of a true and active philosophy. 



This work is but a new body of clay, whereinto your majesty, by your coun 

 tenance and protection, may breathe life. And, to tell your majesty truly what 

 I think, I account your favour may be to this work as much as an hundred 

 years time ; for I am persuaded the work will gain upon men s minds in ages, 

 but your gracing it may make it take hold more swiftly, which I would be very 

 glad of, it being a work meant, not for praise or glory, but for practice and the 

 good of men. One thing, I confess, 1 am ambitious of, with hope, which is, 

 that after these beginnings, and the wheel once set on going, men shall seek 

 more truth out of Christian pens than hitherto they have done out of heathen. 

 I say with hope ; because I hear my former book of the Advancement of 

 Learning is well tasted in the universities here, and the English colleges 

 abroad : and this is the same argument sunk deeper. And so I ever humbly 

 rest in prayers, and all other duties, your Majesty s most bounden and devoted 

 servant, FR. VERULAM, Cane. 



York House, this 12th of October, 1620. 



This Letter was written with the King s own hand, to my Lord Chancellor 

 Verulam, upon his Lordship s sending to his Majesty his Novum Organum. 



My Lord, I have received your letter and your book, than the which you 

 could not have sent a more acceptable present unto me. How thankful I am 

 for it cannot better be expressed by me than by a firm resolution I have taken ; 

 first, to read it through with care and attention, though I should steal some 

 hours from my sleep^ Having otherwise as little spare time to read it as you 

 had to write it. And then to use the liberty of a true friend, in not sparing to 

 ask you the question in any point whereof I shall stand in doubt: &quot; Nam ejus 

 est explicare, cujus est condere,&quot; as on the other part 1 will willingly give a due 

 commendation to such places as in my opinion shall deserve it. In the mean 

 time I can with comfort assure you, that you could not have made choice of a 

 subject more befitting your place, and your universal and methodical know 

 ledge ; and in the general, I have already observed, that you jump with me, in 

 keeping the mid-way between the two extremes ; as also in some particulars, I 

 have found that you agree fully with my opinion. And so praying God to give 

 your work as good success as your heart can wish, and your labours deserve, I 

 bid you heartily farewell. JAMES R. 



October 16, 1620. 



