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PREFACE. xiii

spoken of. Next in order to this is the Museum MS. Add. 8786 (early four- teenth century in double columns, 20b-45b). In the additional notes mention is made of an interesting preamble to this treatise, given in this MS. only, which fixes its position as part of a larger philosophical work. There are certain passages in it not given elsewhere against which the word superfluit is written in the margin in a contemporary hand. Further, some of the chapters of Parts II. and III. are removed from their proper position: e.g., f. 35d is continued on f. 37a, and chapter ix. of Part II. is found embedded in Part IV.

Later MSS. of the Multiplicatio will be found in Sloane 2156, in Magd. Coll., Cambridge, following on the MS. of Perspectiva already mentioned ; and in the library of St. Mark's, Venice (Lat. vi. 133), preceding a MS. of Perspectiva.

In framing a text from the foregoing MSS. it will be noticed that the principal difficulty occurs in the transition from Part III. to Part IV. In J. and also in V., which rank among the oldest (the first being of the thirteenth, the second of the beginning of the fourteenth century), the distinction is by no means clearly marked. On the other hand in P., a MS. not later than 1350, and in all other MSS, of the fourth Part, the division of this section is very distinctly indicated. Some clue to this discrepancy is probably to be found in a remarkable passage occurring in the Baconian fragment published by Dr. Gasquet in the English Historical Review, July 1897: Sentiens meam imbecillitatem nihil scribo difficile quod non transeat usque ad quartum vel quintum exemplar antequam habeam quod intendo. J. and V. represent perhaps one, or more probably two, of the earlier drafts. J. appears to represent a somewhat more advanced "state" of the work than V.

There remains the difficulty of accounting for the many curious inaccuracies in J.; errors so gross as to render it impossible that the copy could have been made, as some critics have supposed that it was made, under Bacon's superintendence. To this difficulty Bacon has hiniself supplied the cluc when explaining to the Pope, as he docs in Opus Tertium. In the second chapter of that work he speaks of the difficulty of getting his work transcribed: "It could not," he said, "be fairly written out except by scribes who stood outside our body; and these would transcribe on their own account, whether I liked it or not, in the way in which writings are very frequently published in Paris fraudulently." It is far from improbable that J., or at any rate the first portion of J., represents one of these pirated editions.

The question was raised by one of my reviewers, whether there was any such work as the Opus Majus? Although the question seems to carry scepticism rather far, it may be well to answer it. The earliest evidence for