Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 195
A vast number of such " small tractates " as Bacon here men-
be found amongst the works which sprang up in his
tions will
time and immediately after his death. They seem to be the
result, for the most part, of diligent pondering upon the works
which Bacon himself had " invented;" they reproduce his sayings,
paraphrasing, diluting, abridging, or delivering them in
short and dispersed aphorisms, according to the method which
he advocates as one means for the advancement of learning.
The method is still extant, and Bacon continues, like evergreen
history, to repeat himself. Often when unexpectedly we come
upon his own words and apparently original thoughts, familiarly
used as household words, or calmly appropriated by subsequent
writers, we think how true it is that one man labours and others
enter into his labours.
Once more, a brief summary of the deficiencies which Bacon
found in the literature and arts of discourse of his own times
1. A history of learning (anything in fact corresponding to
Prof. H. Morley's Tables of English Literature).
2. Civil history, biographies, commentaries, antiquities,
chronicles, perfect histories.
3. Appendices to history, orations, letters, apophthegms or
brief sayings, etc.
4. Registers, journals, memorials, etc.
5. Helps to the art of memory.
G. Philosophic grammar — (a.) Words new-coined, (b.)
Words from foreign sources, (c.) A true grammar of language.
7. A store or provision for discourse, forms of speech, elegancies,
prefaces, conclusions, digressions, etc.
8. A method of discourse and for the transmission of
knowledge.
9. " Collections," dictionaries, encyclopedias, books of reference.
10. Store of sophisms.
11. Store of antitheta, or arguments on all sides; commonplaces.
12. Treatises on elocution and prosody, on sound, measure,
and accent in poetry.