NOTE BEE. 



touching that work, such as beyond which I could not expect at the first in so 

 abstruse an argument ; yet nevertheless I have just cause to doubt, that it flies 

 too high over men s heads : (a) have a purpose therefore, though I break the 

 order of time, to draw it down to the sense, by some patterns of a Natural Story 

 and Inquisition. And again, for that my book of Advancement of Learning 

 may be some preparative or key for the better opening of the Instauration, 

 because it exhibits a mixture of new conceits and old ; whereas the Instauration 

 gives the new unmixed, otherwise than with some little aspersion of the old for 

 taste s sake : I have thought good to procure a translation of that book into the 

 general language, not without great and ample additions, and enrichment 

 thereof, especially in the second book, which handleth the partition of sciences j 

 in such sort, as I hold it may serve in lieu of the first part of the Instauration, 

 and acquit my promise in that part.&quot; 



Such are the different sentiments expressed by Lord Bacon of his favourite 

 work. 



The notices of this work by his faithful secretary and biographer, Dr. Rawley, 

 and his admirer Archbishop Tennison, are as follows : Dr. Rawley, in his life 

 of Lord Bacon says, &quot; I have been induced to think, that if there were a beam 

 of knowledge derived from God, upon any man in these modern times, it was 

 upon him : for though he was a great reader of books, yet he had not his know 

 ledge from books, but from some grounds and notions from within himself. 

 Which, notwithstanding, he vent&amp;lt;d with great caution and circumspection. 

 His book of Instauratio Magna (which, in his own account, was the chiefest of 

 his works,) was no slight imagination or fancy of his brain, but a settled and 

 concocted notion, the production of many years labour and travail. I myself 

 have seen, at the least, twelve copies of the Instauration revised, year by year, 

 one after 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; 



And Archbishop Tennison, speaking of the Novum Organum, says, The 

 second part of his great Instauration (and so considerable a part of it, that the 

 name of the whole is given to it) is his Novum Organum Scientiarum, written 

 by himself in the Latin tongue, and printed also most beautifully and correctly 

 in folio, at London. This work he dedicated to King James, with the following 

 excuse ; that, if he had stolen any time, for the composure of it, from his 

 majesty s other affairs, he had made some sort of restitution, by doing honour to 

 his name and his reign. The king wrote to him, then chancellor, a letter of 

 thanks with his own hand. Part of the dedication is then stated. 



This Novum Organum containeth in it instructions concerning a better and 

 more perfect use of reason in our inquisitions after things. And therefore the 

 second title which he gave it was, directions concerning interpretations of 

 nature. And by this art he designed a logic more useful than the vulgar, and 

 an Organon apter to help the intellectual powers than that of Aristotle. For 

 he proposed here, not so much the invention of arguments, as of arts; and in 

 demonstration, he used induction more than contentious syllogism ; and in his 

 induction, he did not straightway proceed from a few particular sensible notions 

 to the most general of all, but raised axioms by degrees, designing the most 

 general notions for the last place ; and insisting on such of them as are not 

 merely notional, but coining from nature, do also lead to her. 



(a) Mr. Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, ambassador at 

 Holland, dated at London, October 28, 1620, mentions, that Mr. Henry Cuffe, 

 who had been secretary to Robert, Earl of Essex, and executed for being con 

 cerned in his treasons, having long since perused this work, gave his censure, 

 &quot; that a fool could not have written such a work, and a wise man would not.&quot; 

 And, in another letter, dated February 3, 1620-1, Mr. Chamberlain takes 

 notice, that the King could not forbear sometimes, in reading that book, to say, 

 that it was &quot; like the peace of God, that passeth all understanding.&quot; 



