IV HISTORY AND PLAN 



great inconvenience it mixes up earlier writings with 

 later, discarded fragments with completed works, and pieces 

 printed from loose manuscripts found after the author's 

 death with those which were published or prepared for 

 publication by himself. Birch, the original editor of the 

 quarto edition in four volumes 1 which (reprinted in ten 

 volumes octavo) has since kept the market and is now 

 known as the " trade edition," followed Blackbourne's 

 arrangement in the main, though with several variations 

 which are for the most part not improvements. The 

 arrangement adopted by Mr. Montagu 2 is in these respects 

 DO better, in all others much worse. M. Bouillet, in his 

 (Euvres Philosophiques de Frangois Bacon 3 , does not pro- 

 fess to include all even of the Philosophical works ; and he 

 too, though the best editor by far who has yet handled 

 Bacon, has aimed at a classification of the works more 

 systematic, as it seems to me, than the case admits, and has 

 thus given to some of the smaller pieces a prominence 

 which does not belong to them. 



In the edition of which the first volume is here offered to 

 the public 4 , a new arrangement has been attempted ; the 

 nature and grounds of which I must now explain. 



When a man publishes a book, or writes a letter, or 

 delivers a speech, it is always with a view to some parti- 

 cular audience by whom he means to be understood without 

 the help of a commentator. Giving them credit for such 

 knowledge and capacity as they are presumably furnished 

 with, he himself supplies what else is necessary to make his 

 meaning clear ; so that any additional illustrations would be 



1 The Works of Francis Bacon, &c., in five volumes. London, 1763. 



2 The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England. A new edition by 

 Basil Montagu, Esq. London, 1825-34. 



3 Paris, 1834. 



4 The announcement in Messrs. Longman's monthly list for December was made 

 without my knowledge, or I should have objected to it as apparently implying that a 

 volume would be published every month until the whole work were completed. The 

 fact is that the first three volumes, which include the whole of the Philosophical works, 

 are ready now and will appear at monthly intervals ; the 4th and 5th containing the 

 translations, and the 6th and 7th containing the Literary and Professional works, 

 will I hope be ready to follow in order. But I cannot make any promise at present 

 as to the time when the remaining portion will be ready. 



