304 TOUCHING HELPS FOR INTELLECTUAL POWERS.

There is no use of a Narrative Memory in academies, viz. with circumstances of times, persons, and places, and with names; and it is one art to discourse, and another to relate and describe; and herein use and action is most conversant.

Also to sum up and contract is a thing in action of very general use.

SHORT NOTES

FOR

CIVIL CONVERSATION.

VOL. XIII.

20

PREFACE.

THESE notes were first printed — first so far as I know — in the Remains (1648): a book of no authority when unsupported by better. No one however who has read Bacon's Essay on Discourse will doubt that they are his ; and they contain one or two observations not to be found elsewhere. Mr. Montagu says there is a manuscript of them in the British Museum ; but he gives a wrong reference; and I regret to say that I cannot supply the right one: for though I feel confident that I have seen them in some manuscript collection, I cannot find it again. In the absence of better authority, I have printed this little piece as I find it in Birch's edition of Bacon's works : who seems to have had some better copy than that in the Remains ; though I suspect it to be still far from correct.