Valerius Terminus | Page 5

dated 3rd July 1603, that he had
at that time resolved "to meddle as little as possible in the King's
causes," and to "put his ambition wholly upon his pen;" and we know
from the ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING that in 1605 he was
engaged upon a work entitled "The Interpretation of Nature:" to which I
may add that there is in the Lambeth Library a copy of a letter from
Bacon to Lord Kinlosse, dated 25th March, 1603, and written in the
same hand as this manuscript.
Bacon's corrections, if I may judge from the character of the
handwriting, were inserted a little later; for it is a fact that about the

beginning of James's reign his writing underwent a remarkable change,
from the hurried Saxon hand full of large sweeping curves and with
letters imperfectly formed and connected, which he wrote in Elizabeth's
time, to a small, neat, light, and compact one, formed more upon the
Italian model which was then coming into fashion; and when these
corrections were made it is evident that this new character had become
natural to him and easy. It is of course impossible to fix the precise date
of such a change,--the more so because his autographs of this period are
very scarce,--but whenever it was that he corrected this manuscript, it is
evident that he then considered it worthy of careful revision. He has not
merely inserted a sentence here and there, altered the numbers of the
chapters, and added words to the headings in order to make the
description more exact; but he has taken the trouble to add the running
title wherever it was wanting, thus writing the words "of the
Interpretation of Nature" at full lengths not less than eighteen times
over; and upon the blank space of the titlepage he has written out a
complete table of contents. In short, if he had been preparing the
manuscript for the press or for a fresh transcript, he could not have
done it more completely or carefully,--only that he has given no
directions for altering the order of the chapters so as to make it
correspond with the numbers. And hence I infer that up to the time
when he made these corrections, this was the form of the great work on
which he was engaged: it was a work concerning the Interpretation of
Nature; which was to begin where the NOVUM ORGANUM begins;
and of which the first book was to include all the preliminary
considerations preparatory to the exposition of the formula.
I place this fragment here in deference to Mr. Ellis's decided opinion
that it was written before the ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. The
positive ground indeed which he alleges in support of that conclusion I
am obliged to set aside, as founded, I think, upon a misapprehension;
and the supposition that no part of it was written later involves a
difficulty which I cannot yet get over to my own satisfaction. But that
the body of it was written earlier I see no reason to doubt; and if so, this
is its proper place.
The particular point on which I venture to disagree with Mr. Ellis I

have stated in a note upon his preface to the NOVUM ORGANUM,
promising at the same time a fuller explanation of the grounds of my
own conclusion, which I will now give.
The question is, whether the "Inventory" in the 10th chapter of
VALERIUS TERMINUS was to have exhibited a general survey of the
state of knowledge corresponding with that which fills the second book
of the ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. I think not.
It is true indeed that the title of that 10th chapter,--namely, "The
Inventory, or an enumeration and view of inventions already
discovered and in use, with a note of the wants and the nature of the
supplies",--has at first sight a considerable resemblance to the
description of the contents of the second book of the
ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING,--namely, "A general and faithful
perambulation of learning, with an inquiry what parts thereof lie fresh
and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of Man;...
wherein nevertheless my purpose is at this time to note only omissions
and deficiencies, and not to make any redargutions of errors," and so on.
But an "enumeration of INVENTIONS" is not the same thing as "a
perambulation of LEARNING;" and it will be found upon closer
examination that the "Inventory" spoken of in VALERIUS
TERMINUS does really correspond to one, and one only, of the
fiftyone Desiderata set down at the end of the DE AUGMENTIS; viz.
that INVENTARIUM OPUM HUMANARUM, which was to be an
appendix to the MAGIA NATURALIS. See DE AUG. iii. 5. This will
appear clearly by comparing the descriptions of the two.
In the ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING Bacon