DE AUGMENTIS SCIENTIARUM. 417 



faults were not yet known, he must have appeared like the very 

 man for such an office. To Bacon it would naturally seem an 

 object of the first importance to engage him, if possible, as a 

 patron of the new philosophy ; and, as men's minds are most 

 impressible in times of transition, he would wish to lose no 

 time in attempting to give his ambition a turn in that di- 

 rection, while his fortune was fresh, his course unsettled, his 

 imagination excited and open to great ideas. For this pur- 

 pose, however, the work on the Interpretation of Nature was 

 not forward enough to be available, nor very fit perhaps in 

 itself, had it been more forward than it was. The idea was 

 too new, the scheme too vast, the end too remote, to engage 

 the serious attention of a king nearly forty years old, who had 

 been bred in the ancient learning and attained a proficiency in it 

 of which he was proud. " Restat unica salus ac sanitas ut opus 

 mentis universum de integro resumatur" was an avowal which 

 might well startle him. Not so a work representing the state of 

 human science as it was, and the means of perfecting and ex- 

 tending it in many new directions. This lay in James's own pro- 

 vince; of the review of what had been already done few men of 

 his time were better qualified to judge ; few perhaps were more 

 likely to be attracted and excited by the prospect of doing 

 more. Now Bacon's own travels in search of the light he had 

 been looking for had carried him over the whole surface of 

 the intellectual globe ; and he was therefore well qualified to 

 report upon the condition of it, to declare how far and in 

 what directions the dominion of knowledge had been already 

 advanced, what regions were still unexplored and unsubdued, 

 and what measures might best be taken to bring them into 

 subjection. Such a representation was likely enough to make 

 an impression on a mind constituted and trained like that of 

 James the First. Possibly it might even rouse him to take up 

 the extension of knowledge as a royal business ; in which case 

 the new philosophy would have started with advantages not 

 otherwise to be hoped for. 



This work therefore Bacon seems to have set about at 

 once. There is reason to believe that the first book of the 

 Advancement of Learning, which treats of the excellence and 

 dignity of knowledge as a pursuit for kings and statesmen, was 

 written in 1603, immediately after James's accession ; and the 

 second, which treats of the deficiencies remaining and the sup- 



VOL. i. E E 



