nominis humani oratio visa est, et tamen libertati quam arrogantiæ propior. Ita autem inter se colloquebantur: se instar eorum esse, qui ex locis opacis et umbrosis in lucem apertam subito exierint, cum minus videant quam prius; sed cum certa et læta spe facultatis melioris.

Tum ille qui hæc narrabat; tu vero quid ad ista dicis? inquit. Grata sunt (inquam) quæ narrasti. Atque (inquit) si sunt ut dicis grata, si tu forte de his rebus aliquid scripseris, locum invenias ubi hæc inseras, neque peregrinationis nostræ fructus perire patiaris. Equum postulas, inquam, neque obliviscar.

PREFACE

TO THE

COGITATA ET VISA.

THE Cogitata et Visa stands first in Gruter's volume of 1653, where it first appeared. That a work with that title was composed about the year 1607 may be inferred from the date (1607) of a letter addressed by Bacon to Sir Thomas Bodley "after he had imparted to him a writing entitled Cogitata et Visa;" from a letter addressed (19 Feb. 1607) by Sir Thomas Bodley to Bacon, giving his opinion of it; and from an entry in the Commentarius Solutus (26 July, 1608) "Imparting my Cogitata et Visa, with choice, ut videbitur." Whether the writing here spoken of was exactly the same as that which Gruter published it is of course impossible to say. The following allusion in Bacon's letter to Bodley "If you be not of the lodgings chalked up, whereof I speak in my preface". would seem rather to imply that it was not; there being no preface to the Cogitata as printed by Gruter, nor any allusion to the chalked lodgings anywhere in the work. And it is otherwise probable that it underwent many alterations before it attained its final shape, in which it must certainly be reckoned among the most perfect of Bacon's productions. Allowance being made