it, as in a second draft, which in its turn was superseded by the _Advancement_, the line of thought of the Latin _Cogitationes_ reappears, expanded and more carefully ordered; it contains also the first sketch of his certain and infallible method for what he calls the "freeing of the direction" in the search after Truth, and the first indications of the four classes of "Idols" which were to be so memorable a portion of Bacon's teaching. And between the _Advancement_ and the _Novum Organum_ at least one unpublished treatise of great interest intervened, the _Visa et Cogitata_, on which he was long employed, and which he brought to a finished shape, fit to be submitted to his friends and critics, Sir Thomas Bodley and Bishop Andrewes. It is spoken of as a book to be "imparted _sicut videbitur_," in the review which he made of his life and objects soon after he was made Solicitor in 1608. A number of fragments also bear witness to the fierce scorn and wrath which possessed him against the older and the received philosophies. He tried his hand at declamatory onslaughts on the leaders of human wisdom, from the early Greeks and Aristotle down to the latest "novellists;" and he certainly succeeded in being magnificently abusive. But he thought wisely that this was not the best way of doing what in the _Commentarius Solutus_ he calls on himself to do--"taking a greater confidence and authority in discourses of this nature, _tanquam sui certus et de alto despiciens_;" and the rhetorical _Redargutio Philosophiarum_ and writings of kindred nature were laid aside by his more serious judgment. But all these fragments witness to the immense and unwearied labour bestowed in the midst of a busy life on his undertaking; they suggest, too, the suspicion that there was much waste from interruption, and the doubt whether his work would not have been better if it could have been more steadily continuous. But if ever a man had a great object in life, and pursued it through good and evil report, through ardent hope and keen disappointment, to the end, with unwearied patience and unshaken faith, it was Bacon, when he sought the improvement of human knowledge "for the glory of God and the relief of man's estate." It is not the least part of the pathetic fortune of his life that his own success was so imperfect.