He addressed a letter to the Chancellor Ellesmere on the deficiencies of British history, and on the opportunities which offered for supplying them.

He himself could at present do nothing; "but because there be so many good painters, both for hand and colours, it needeth but encouragement and instructions to give life and light unto it." But he mistook, in this as in other instances, the way in which such things are done.

Men do not accomplish such things to order, but because their souls compel them, as he himself was building up his great philosophical structure, in the midst of his ambition and disappointment.

And this interval of quiet enabled him to bring out his first public appeal on the subject which most filled his mind.

He completed in English the _Two Books of the Advancement of Knowledge_, which were published at a book-shop at the gateway of Gray's Inn in Holborn (Oct., 1605).