DE AUGMENTIS SCIENTIARUM. 419 



tent himself with a mere translation of the two books of the 

 Advancement with additions, it is not difficult to conjecture, if 

 we take into account the circumstances of his life. When the 

 Novum Organum was published in October 1620, the king had 

 just resolved to call a new Parliament after six years' inter- 

 mission, and questions of vital interest both at home and abroad 

 hung upon the issue of it. The necessary preparations for the 

 session, Bacon's own impeachment which almost immediately 

 followed, a severe illness consequent upon that, his condemna- 

 tion and imprisonment, negotiations with importunate creditors, 

 and the composition of the History of Henry the Seventh, which 

 was finished in October 1621, must have given him occupation 

 enough during the next twelve months. Then came the ques- 

 tion, how he was to proceed with the Instauratio, so as to make 

 the most of such time and means as remained. Sixty-two years 

 old, with health greatly impaired, an income scarcely sufficient 

 to live upon, and an establishment of servants much reduced, he 

 could not afford to waste labour upon things not essential. The 

 Novum Organum was not half finished. The Natural History 

 was not even begun, and no fellow-labourer had yet come forward 

 to help in it. 1 It was only in the completion of the first of the 

 six parts that he could hope for material assistance from others. 

 Even this, if he had attempted to recast it in the form which I 

 suppose him to have designed, the form indicated in the De- 

 scriptio Globi Intdlectualis, he could hardly have executed by 

 deputy ; whereas a translation of the Advancement of Learning 

 might be so executed, and would need only corrections and 

 additions to make it a complete survey of the intellectual globe, 

 adequate in substance to its place, though not symmetrical in 

 form. Accordingly, " by help of some good pens which did not 

 forsake him," he proceeded at once to put this in train, and then 

 turned his own attention to the Natural History, which he con- 

 sidered as " basis totius negotii" 



Concerning the causes which delayed the publication of the 

 De Augmentis a twelvemonth beyond the expected time, I 

 have no information. But it is probable that the additions 

 which suggested themselves as he preceded were far larger than 

 he had anticipated ; being indeed in the second book as much 

 again as the original, and more. The measures which he took 



1 " Neque huic rei deero quantum in me est. Utinam habeam et adjutorcs 

 idoncos." Letter to Father Redtmpt. Baranzan, 30 June, 1 622. 



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