celebrated work, I hope that you will still view it as likely to enable you to offer a considerable return for the labour employed upon it by its venerable author. I may mention, that the subjects discussed in it are of a much more popular and attractive cast than those of the immediately preceding volume; but on this head, I will beg leave to refer you to Lord Lauderdale, who has, I understand, examined it throughout, and will be ready to give you a full account of it, if you should feel disposed to converse with him on the subject.

It may be proper to add that the first volume has ceased to be property, but that Mr. Stewart has annexed to the present volume certain additions to both of its predecessors, which will found a new right of property in both respectively on their republication with these additions. The present property in the second must previously, however, run its period. The right to these additions and their consequences must of course be taken into view and settled in any agreement now to be made.

I shall be obliged by an early communication1 of your ideas on the subject of this letter, and am, with much esteem, yours faithfully, MACVEY NAPIER.

HENRY BROUGHAM.

Lancaster, March 18, 1827. MY DEAR SIR,—I trust our friend L. Horner has apprised you of the substance of our conference here respecting those most important treatises announced in the List-the accounts of the Novum Organum and the De Dignitate et Augmentis. We both ended by being of opinion that they can be confided to no hands so sure of doing them justice as yours. May the Committee, therefore, hope that you will turn your attention betimes toward the preparation of those treatises? Two or three months may be taken, but one of them should be ready

1 The result of this negotiation was an offer by Mr. Murray of 200 guineas for the copyright of the first edition, which was accepted by Mr. Stewart. In 1828, my father obtained the same terms from Mr. Adam Black for the copyright of the first edition of Mr. Stewart's last work, the Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man.

before the end of June. Whether you think each should be made the subject of its separate treatise, or that the Baconian. Philosophy being comprised in both, the two treatises may be upon the two works jointly-is for yourself to consider. Possibly the best method would be (but this I only throw out, and submit to your own judgment) to take the De Dignitate first, as a fitter introduction to the whole-and in itself by much the more wonderful work-and treating as much of the Inductive method as is there unfolded; besides the extraordinary depth and enlargement of the general views. Then to give the nature of the Novum Organum in a separate treatise, and bringing its somewhat cramp technology down to common apprehension; and, above all, to show how Newton applied its principles and rules to practice, and by means of them made Nature reveal her secrets. The thing to avoid in both works, is dissertation on the subjects wide of the two books. What is wanted is an accurate and profound, but plain account of the two books, and their scope and contents. To make these well understood is sufficient originality, for hitherto they have been named and praised by at least ten thousand for one that has read them. Nor is it any reason against performing this useful and difficult task that it will infallibly lower one of the works, the Novum Organum, while it raises the other, and that it will lessen the repute of Bacon as a man practically versed in the application of his own principles-nay, will lessen the value usually affixed to those principles as being the immediate causes of Newton's discoveries. The truth must be told, and after all abatements are made, Bacon's services will remain. second only to Newton's in the Inductive Logic, und his fame second to none in going before his age, and enlarging the minds of men.

I trust you will excuse me for intruding so many remarks on your attention, when they cannot have escaped yourself. With great respect and esteem, yours faithfully and truly, H. BROUGHAM.

TO HENRY BROUGHAM.

Edinburgh, April 6, 1827. MY DEAR SIR,- My wish to comply with any request of yours, and to assist in promoting so praiseworthy an undertaking as the Library of Useful Knowledge, has made me more slow than, under the consciousness of existing engagements, I perhaps ought to have been, to dismiss all thoughts of contributing a treatise on the Philosophical Writings of Lord Bacon. Whichsoever of your plans might be adopted, the execution would require much reading and reflection. Into none of Bacon's writings, except his Essays, have I once looked for ten years; and no such treatise as you propose could be written without a careful reperusal of all his philosophical works. In short, I feel that I ought to have decided, immediately on receipt of your letter, that I could not undertake such a task. In now declining it, I beg to say, that if I should hereafter be able to contribute some other article, I shall not be backward to make the proposal; and in the meanwhile you may rest assured of my hearty co-operation in any other way in which you may think my services likely to be of use.

Now, perhaps, I ought to stop; but your letter has suggested a few remarks which I shall take leave to submit to your consideration in the view of your making a fresh application upon the subject of it to some other person.1

Allow me then to say, that I rather incline to dissent from your opinion, that the De Augmentis Scientiarum is a more wonderful book than the Novum Organum. The design of the latter was more vast, its execution more difficult. It displays more invention, more abstractive power, more unaided wisdom. The former is unquestionably the more various, interesting, and imposing work. Its classifications, surveys, and suggestions exhibit a mind of surprising grasp and reach of view. But can it be truly said that it contributed as many new and fruitful truths to the stock of philosophical know

1 The late Professor Hoppus wrote an account of the Novum Organum for the Useful Knowledge Society.

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ledge as the Novum Organum? In both, the author is a philosopher and a prophet. In the latter, he superadds the character of a legislator, delivering a new code of laws of universal use-a code sound and irrefragable in all its regulating maxims, and erring only in holding out the prospect, that by following its precepts, mankind might reach a higher eminence in science than they seem destined ever to attain.

After all, it may not be easy to decide which of the two is the more wonderful work. Nor is this point of any consequence, except as it might determine the choice of the one or the other as the subject of a treatise. For such a publication as the Library of Useful Knowledge, a view of the Baconian Philosophy would form, if not a necessary, certainly a very becoming contribution; and that view could be nothing else but a summary of the Method of Induction, as delineated in the Novum Organum. I doubt whether any account of the De Augmentis could be considered as coming fairly within the scope of the publication in question. Bacon's name is associated with the history of science, only as the great leader of reform in Experimental Philosophy; and though his method is mentioned in the De Augmentis, it is not there laid down in such detail as to furnish the basis of a full and proper view of it.

It must, I fear, be admitted that the Novum Organum is liable to the charge of representing the discovery of physical essences as forming the ultimate object and reward of experimental inquiry. It seems to me, however, that Dr. Thomas Brown has laid too much stress on this circumstance, as affecting the general merits and character of Bacon's philosophy. His observations occur in an elaborate Note to the last edition of his Essay on Causation, and they ought not to be overlooked in any new treatise. The error in question may somewhat abate our commendations of the justness of Bacon's estimate of the proper limits of scientific inquiry; but it takes nothing from the truth or the value of his logical instructions. In order to be satisfied how truly important and opportune was the boon which he conferred upon philosophy by the publication of his Novum Organum, all that

seems necessary is, to contrast the principles of its method with those of the method recommended by Des Cartes, and to consider what philosophy must have become had the spirit of the age allowed the latter to predominate.

The task of explaining the terms and doctrines of the Novum Organum has been greatly facilitated by the valuable commentary of Professor Playfair, contained in one of hist discourses prefixed to the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. It is only in this piece that one finds any satisfactory view of that extensive and remarkable portion of the Novum Organum which is devoted to the classification of facts and experiments with reference to their value as means of discovery. Mr. Stewart has made some important observations on the distinctive principles and objects of Bacon's Logic, in the second volume of the Philosophy of the Human Mind; but the inquiry is not exhausted, and ought to be resumed, for there are yet some who, like Dr. Gillies, can find the Induction of Bacon in the Induction of Aristotle; and others who, like Hume and Fabroni, can find its counterpart in the writings of Galileo.

There have been some mistakes, I may add, even among the greatest admirers of Bacon's writings, as to their actual effects, particularly as to the period when their influence commenced. About ten years ago, I drew up a paper on this subject, which was published in the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions. It was hastily written, on a particular occasion, but it establishes, as I humbly think, that Bacon's writings were immediately and powerfully effective in exciting a taste for genuine Physics, and in accelerating the formation of that Experimental School to which the world is indebted for the discoveries of Newton. As this paper is not at all likely to be known, I have ventured to egotise so far as to mention it, especially as Mr. Stewart and Mr. Playfair, who had both concurred in representing Bacon's writings as having been long disregarded, were by it satisfied of their mistake.Believe me, with the highest esteem, yours very truly, MACVEY NAPIER.