12 PREFACE TO THE 



, he is profuse even to ostentation in professions 

 of respi-ct and deference for tlie authors of them, and 

 in disclaiming for himself all pretensions to rivalry in 

 abilities or authority. Here for once he assumes a tone 

 quite different ; entering abruptly into the subject in a 

 spirit of contemptuous invective, not to call it presump- 

 tuous and insolent, of which in all his writings, public 

 or private, I remember no other example. How is this 

 t<> be accounted for? I cannot help thinking that it 

 was one of those experiments which I have spoken of in 

 my general preface to the third part of the Philosophi- 

 cal works, experiments in the art of commanding 

 audiences and winning disciples, and that the key to 

 the true explanation of it may be found in a memoran- 

 dum set down by himself in July 1608. To assist his 

 memory, and perhaps also to excite his thoughts, he 

 was in the habit of jotting down in commonplace books 

 such reflexions and suggestions as occurred to him on 

 I'Ulen. These he would review from time to time, 

 and enter in a fresh book such of them as he thought 

 worth preserving. At the end of July 1608, the busi- 

 of term being over and a considerable accession to 

 his income having just fallen in, he seems to have spent 

 three or four days in this occupation, reviewing all 

 his affairs in turn and endeavouring to set the clock of 

 his life anew ; and the record of his meditations has 

 fortunately been preserved. This is the book to which 

 I have already so often referred by the name of Com- 

 Solutm, and which will be printed in its 

 among the Occasional Works. The notes which 

 tains, and which are evidently set down solely for 

 un private memory and instruction, refer to a 

 of subjects ; among which the progress 



