ther."

Bacon, as has been said, was a great maker of notes and note-books: he
was careful not of the thought only, but of the very words in which it
presented itself; everything was collected that might turn out useful in
his writing or speaking, down to alternative modes of beginning or
connecting or ending a sentence. He watched over his intellectual
appliances and resources much more strictly than over his money
concerns. He never threw away and never forgot what could be turned to
account. He was never afraid of repeating himself, if he thought he had
something apt to say. He was never tired of recasting and rewriting,
from a mere fragment or preface to a finished paper. He has favourite
images, favourite maxims, favourite texts, which he cannot do without.
"_Da Fidei quae sunt Fidei_" comes in from his first book to his last.
The illustrations which he gets from the myth of Scylla, from Atalanta's
ball, from Borgia's saying about the French marking their lodgings with
chalk, the saying that God takes delight, like the "innocent play of
children," "to hide his works in order to have them found out," and to
have kings as "his playfellows in that game," these, with many others,
reappear, however varied the context, from the first to the last of his
compositions. An edition of Bacon, with marginal references and parallel
passages, would show a more persistent recurrence of characteristic
illustrations and sentences than perhaps any other writer.

The _Advancement_ was followed by attempts to give serious effect to its
lesson. This was nearly all done in Latin. He did so, because in these
works he spoke to a larger and, as he thought, more interested audience;
the use of Latin marked the gravity of his subject as one that touched
all mankind; and the majesty of Latin suited his taste and his thoughts.
Bacon spoke, indeed, impressively on the necessity of entering into the
realm of knowledge in the spirit of a little child. He dwelt on the
paramount importance of beginning from the very bottom of the scale of
fact, of understanding the commonplace things at our feet, so full of
wonder and mystery and instruction, before venturing on theories. The
sun is not polluted by shining on a dunghill, and no facts were too
ignoble to be beneath the notice of the true student of nature. But his
own genius was for the grandeur and pomp of general views. The practical
details of experimental science were, except in partial instances