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vi　PREFACE.

considerate treatment of the matter I offer my grateful acknowledgments, had already spent much money on the work and were unwilling to incur further cxpenditure. They offered, however, to transfer to me the stock and copyright. This offer was accepted, and the work, including the present volume, will in future be sold by Messrs. Williams and Norgate. A revised text of the first three parts of the Opus Majus is here presented, based in the main upon V. of which a photographic copy was obtained in Rome. It has been carefully collated by Mr. J. A. Herbert of the British Museum, with J. and also with the Bodleian MS. Digby 235 (here called O.), which was entrusted to the Keeper of MSS, of the British Museum for this purpose. As the footnotes show, the readings of J. and of O. have been frequently adopted. It will be seen that this revised text contains much that has not been printed before, and that it throws new light on Bacon's zeal for philological culture. This is further illustrated by facsimiles of f. 15, b. and f. 16 of the Vat. MS., which contain the Greck and Hebrew alphabets, and the remarkable passage in which Hebrew is compared with Chaldean. For the remaining parts of the Opus Majus, a minute collation of my text has been made by Mr. Herbert with the best MSS. available, with results shown in the appended list of Corrections and Emendations, and in the Additional Notes. To have reprinted the whole work in the form adopted for parts i-iii. was a task beyond my means, nor did it seem to be needed. Among the Notes will be found the missing preamble to Multiplicatio Specierum, contained in the early fourteenth century MS., Add. 8786; and the Vatican MS. 4091 (denoted X.), for knowledge of which, as well as of other Vatican MSS., I have to thank Mr. Bliss, has supplied some important passages of Part VI., which O. omits, In the preface to vol. i. pp. xiii-xvii, something was said of the MSS. of the Opus Majus. Of the most important of those some further details are subjoined. The Oxford MS. Digby 235 (denoted O.) is the earliest MS. containing all seven parts of the Opus Majus. From it, as was stated vol. i. p. xiv, the Dublin MS. was copied; the Gale MS. in Trin. Coll. Camb. (sce Brewer, Rogeri Bacon Opera Inedita, pp. xliii-iv), being a copy of this