Excerpt from The Baconian Mint: Its Claims Examined: Being a Supplement to an Address Delivered in the Hall of the Society, May 29th, 1902 The idols imposed upon the understanding by words are of two kinds, they are either the names of things that have no existence. - Bacon's Novum Organum.the same land, - a land where a rich and noble language is written and spoken - if they use the same words, the presumption is, until the contrary appears, that they derived them from their native tongue, independently ofeach other. The English people at the time of the birth of Bacon and Shakespeare, with the exception of scientific expressions, enjoyed the use ofa greater number of words than any generation of Englishmen since. As soon as I saw the list of words set forth by Mr. Theobald, I knew, at once, that many of them had not been coined, either by the author of the folio volume, or by Lord Bacon. I have become familiar with only a small portion of English literature extant at the time of Lord Bacon's birth, chiefly the writings of Divines, Ecclesiastical Records, and Correspondence. This partial acquaintance, however, enabled me to see that many of the words, in Mr. Theobald's list, were in common use before Shakespeare or Bacon wrote a line, and others were used by contemporaries, who were in no way indebted, as far as I could judge, to Bacon or to the folio, for their use I have searched a great many volumes to find the words said to be coined by Bacon and the author of the folio, and now set forth the result of my labours. I have only in a few instances taken my authorities from the dictionary. They are chiefly such as I have met with in the course of my reading. As the result of my examination, I firmly believe that Lord Bacon did not enrich the English language by the addition of a single new word, nor by the use of a word, in a new or unusual sense. The Author of the folio may have done both these things, in some few instances. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.