entor or at least the re-inventor of the inductive
method, and the father of all discovery since his time. These notions
have been held firmly, while more special ones concerning his system and
himself have been, for the most part, vague or unformed.

In great part, this fact is the result of the condition in which Lord
Bacon left his works, the manner of their composition, and their
intrinsic defects. He did not publish them in any systematic order,
but printed one after another, as it was written, or as extraneous
circumstances might induce. Nor did he leave his system complete in any
one treatise. His mind discursive, his imagination easily fired, he
seized subject after subject and discussed each in a separate treatise,
all with more or less reference to a general plan, but not embodied in
any consecutive and harmonious development. The growth of his ideas, the
changes of his views, as his life advanced, are manifest in the want of
connection, as well as in the connection, of these various fragments.
Dr. Rawley, his chaplain, says,--and it is a marvellous illustration of
Bacon's diligence and desire for perfection,--"I myself have seen, at
the least, twelve copies of the 'Instauration,' revised year by year,
one after another, and every year altered and amended in the frame
thereof."

Such, then, being the state of Bacon's works at his death, much was left
to the judgment of his editors, and, unfortunately, the labor of editing
his books has, up to the present time, fallen into hands wanting in
competence and discretion. It has consequently been a task of special
difficulty to get from the ill-arranged mass of Bacon's writings a
satisfactory view of the essential elements of his philosophy and a just
knowledge of his final opinions.

But the reproach of non-fulfilment of the trust committed to them will
rest upon "the next ages" no longer; for the edition which is now in
course of publication amply redeems the faults of those that have
preceded it, and is such a one as Bacon himself might have approved. In
the second book of the "Advancement of Learning," in recounting "the
works or acts of merit toward learning," he includes among them "new
editions of authors, with more correct impressions, more faithful
translations, more profitable glosses, more diligent annotations, and
the like." In each of these respects the edition before us deserves the
highest praise. The editors have engaged in their task as in a labor