NOTE BUB. 



searching it backwards, because indeed the first times were the youngest ; 

 especially in points of natural discovery and experience. For though I grant 

 that Adam knew the natures of all beasts, and Solomon of all plants, not only 

 more than any, but more than all since their time ; yet that was by divine 

 infusion, and therefore they did not need any such Organum as your lordship 

 hath now delivered to the world ; nor we neither, if they had left us the memo 

 ries of their wisdom. 



But I am gone further than I meant in speaking of this excellent labour, 

 while the delight yet I feel, and even the pride that I take in a certain congeni 

 ality, as I may term it, with your lordship s studies, will scant let me cease : 

 and indeed I owe your lordship even by promise, which you are pleased to 

 remember, thereby doubly binding me, some trouble this way ; I mean, by the 

 commerce of philosophical experiments, which surely, of all other, is the most 

 ingenuous traffic : therefore, &.c. 



That a copy was sent to Sir Edward Coke, appears from the following melan 

 choly exhibition of this great lawyer s mind. 



In the library of the late Thomas Earl of Leicester, the descendant of Sir 

 Edward Coke, at Holkham in Norfolk, is a copy of the Novum Organum, 

 entitled Instauratio Magna, printed by John Bill in 1620, presented to Sir 

 Edward, who at the top of the title page has written Edw. C. ex dono auctoris. 



Auctori Consilium. 



Insturare paras veterum documenta sophorum : 

 Instura Leges Justitiamq ; prius. 



And over the device of the ship passing between Hercules s pillars, Sir Edward 



has written the two following verses : 



&quot; It deserveth not to be read in schooles, 

 But to be freighted in the Ship of Fools/ () 



The Novum Organum is noticed by Lord Bacon in other letters, both before 

 and after the publication in 1620. In the year 1609 he wrote 



To Mr. Matthew, upon sending to him a part of Instauratio Magna. 

 Mr. Matthew, I plainly perceive by your affectionate writing touching my 

 work, that one and the same thing affecteth us both ; which is, the good end 



tage. In giving the name of old or elder to the earlier generation of the two, 

 the misrepresentation is not less gross, nor the folly of it less incontestable, than 

 if the name of old man or old woman were given to the infant in its cradle. 

 What then is the wisdom of the times called old 1 Is it the wisdom of gray 

 hairs 1 No. It is the wisdom of the cradle.&quot;* 



(a) Alluding to a famous book of Sebastian Brand, born at Strasburgh about 

 1460, written in Latin and High Dutch verse, and translated into English in 

 1508, by Alexander Barklay, and printed at London the year following by 

 Richard Pyuson, printer to Henry VII. and Henry VIII. in folio, with the 

 following title, &quot; The Shyp of Follys of the World : translated in the Coll. of 

 Saynt Mary Otery in the count of Devonshyre, oute of Latin, Frenche, and 

 Doche, into Engtesse tongue, by Alex. Barklay, preste and chaplen in the said 

 College M.ccccc.vm.&quot; It was dedicated by the translator to Thomas Cornish, 

 bishop of Tine and suffragan bishop of Wells, and adorned with a great variety 

 of wooden cuts. 



* No one will deny that preceding ages have produced men eminently distin 

 guished by benevolence and genius ; it is to them that we owe in succession all 

 the advances which have hitherto been made in the career of human improve 

 ment : but as their talents could only be developed in proportion to the state of 

 knowledge at the period in which they lived, and could only have been called 

 into action with a view to then existing circumstances, it is absurd to rely on 

 their authority, at a period and under a state of things altogether different. 



