The Greater Work (Opus Majus), Vol. 1

Sloane MS. 2156, and the Harleian MS. 80, 60 b, have also been consulted. The Sloane and Harleian collections are major manuscript groups within the British Library, named after Sir Hans Sloane and the Earls of Oxford, respectively.

The sixth section of the Greater Work original: "Opus Majus" (Experimental Science original: "Scientia Experimentalis") appears to have been seldom copied. In the third volume of Baconian manuscripts presented to University College, Oxford, by John Elmhurst, there is a manuscript of this section which is described as copied from Allen’s manuscripts (see Brewer, p. xliii). J.S. Brewer was a 19th-century historian who edited several of Bacon's other works. It may, therefore, be merely copied from the Oxford manuscript of the Greater Work. 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 manuscript in the Royal Library (8, F. ii) containing the first two parts and a portion of the third. This has been carefully collated Collation is the process of comparing different manuscripts of the same text to identify differences in wording or errors. with the corresponding parts of the Dublin and Oxford manuscripts. The variations will be seen to be of no great importance. The manuscript appears to be of the middle of the fifteenth century.

Besides these manuscripts, others have been consulted which throw light on Bacon’s life and work. Chief amongst these is the important manuscript of the Mazarin library (formerly numbered 1271, but at present 3576), from which Professor Émile Charles gives copious extracts in his monograph entitled Roger Bacon: His Life, His Works, His Doctrines, according to unpublished texts original: "Roger Bacon, sa vie, ses ouvrages, ses doctrines, d’après des textes inédits"; published in Bordeaux, 1861.. More will be said afterwards of its contents. They offer a considerable instalment of the Principal Treatise original: "Scriptum Principale", of which the Greater Work, inclusive of its adjuncts, the Lesser Work original: "Opus Minus" and the Third Work original: "Opus Tertium", was but the prelude.

Another valuable fragment of this final work is preserved in the British Museum among the Sloane