And finally, in 1623, he brought out in Latin a greatly enlarged recasting of the _Advancement_; the nine books of the "_De Augmentis_." But the great scheme was not completed; portions were left more or less finished.

Much that he purposed was left undone, and could not have been yet done at that time.
But the works which he published represent imperfectly the labour spent on the undertaking.

Besides these there remains a vast amount of unused or rejected work, which shows how it was thought out, rearranged, tried first in one fashion and then in another, recast, developed.

Separate chapters, introductions, "experimental essays and discarded beginnings," treatises with picturesque and imaginative titles, succeeded one another in that busy work-shop; and these first drafts and tentative essays have in them some of the freshest and most felicitous forms of his thoughts.
At one time his enterprise, connecting itself with his own life and mission, rose before his imagination and kindled his feelings, and embodied itself in the lofty and stately "Proem" already quoted.

His quick and brilliant imagination saw shadows and figures of his ideas in the ancient mythology, which he worked out with curious ingenuity and often much poetry in his _Wisdom of the Ancients_.