xvi PREFACE.
Sloane MS. 2156, and the Harleian MS. 80, 60b, have also been consulted,
The sixth secon of the Ofus S/ajus (Scientia E-xpevimentalis) appears to have been seldom copied, Tn the third volume of Baconian MSS. presented ta University College, Oxford, by John Elmhurst, there is a MS. of this section which is described as copied from Allen’s MSS. (sce Brewer, p. xlii). It may, therefore, be merely copicd from the Oxford MS. of the Ofus Majus. But it offers some variants, and in one or two passages it has proved serviceable. It is spoken of in this edition as U.
Of the seventh section, here printed for the first time, there is a MS. in the Royal Library (8, F. ii) containing the first two parts and a portion of the third. This has been carefully collated with the corresponding parts of the Dublin and Oxford MSS. The variations will be seen to be of no great impor- tance. The MS. appears to be of the middle of the fifteenth century.
Besides these MSS., others have been cansulted which throw light on Bacon’s life and work. Chicf amongst these is the important MS. of the Mazarin library (formerly numbered 1271, but at present 3576), from which Professor Emile Charles gives copious ex- tracts in his monograph entitled Atager Lacon, sa vie, ses ounrages, ses doctrines, dapres des textes inédits (Ror- deaux, 1861) More will be said afterwards of its contents, They offer a considerable instalment of the Sertpdum Princtpate, of which the Opus Alajus, inclusive of Its adjuncts, the Opus JA/zzas and the Opus Leréiumt, was but the prelude.
Another valuable fragment of this final work is preserved in the British Museum among the Sloane
