\i HISTORY AND PLAN 



nature and amount, and requires qualifications differing 1 ac- 

 cordingly. To understand and illustrate the Philosophical 

 works in their relation to this age, a man must be not only 

 well read in the history of science both ancient and modern, 

 but himself a man of science, capable of handling scientific 

 questions. To produce a correct text of the Professional 

 works and supply what other help may be necessary for a 

 modern student, a man must be a lawyer. To explain and 

 interpret the Occasional works, and set them forth in a 

 shape convenient for readers of the present generation, a 

 man must have leisure to make himself acquainted- by te- 

 dious and minute researches among the forgotten records 

 of the time with the circumstances in which they were 

 written. Now as it would not be easy to find any one man 

 in whom these several qualifications meet, it was thought 

 expedient to keep the three divisions separate, assigning each 

 to a separate editor. It was agreed accordingly that the 

 Philosophical works should be undertaken by Mr. Robert 

 Leslie Ellis ; the Professional works by Mr. Douglas Deuon 

 Heath ; the Occasional and the Literary works by me ; each 

 division to be made complete in itself, and each editor to be 

 solely responsible for his own part of the work. 



Such was our original arrangement. It was concluded in 

 the autumn of 1847; and Mr. Ellis, whose part was to 

 come first, had already advanced so far that he expected to 

 have it ready for the press within another half year, when 

 unhappily about the end of 1849 he was seized with a rheu- 

 matic fever, which left him in a condition of body quite 

 incompatible with a labour of that kind. At which time, 

 though the greater portion was in fact done, he did not con- 

 sider any of it fit to be published as it was ; many blanks 

 having been left to be filled up, and some doubtful notes to 

 be corrected, in that general revision which the whole was to 

 have undergone before any part were printed. It was long 

 before he could finally resolve to abandon his task. As soon 

 as he had done so, he handed all his papers over to me, with 

 permission to do with them whatever I thought best. And 



