He was never tired of recasting and rewriting, from a mere fragment or preface to a finished paper.

He has favourite images, favourite maxims, favourite texts, which he cannot do without.
"_Da Fidei quae sunt Fidei_" comes in from his first book to his last.
The illustrations which he gets from the myth of Scylla, from Atalanta's ball, from Borgia's saying about the French marking their lodgings with chalk, the saying that God takes delight, like the "innocent play of children," "to hide his works in order to have them found out," and to have kings as "his playfellows in that game," these, with many others, reappear, however varied the context, from the first to the last of his compositions.

An edition of Bacon, with marginal references and parallel passages, would show a more persistent recurrence of characteristic illustrations and sentences than perhaps any other writer.
The _Advancement_ was followed by attempts to give serious effect to its lesson.

This was nearly all done in Latin.

He did so, because in these works he spoke to a larger and, as he thought, more interested audience; the use of Latin marked the gravity of his subject as one that touched all mankind; and the majesty of Latin suited his taste and his thoughts.
Bacon spoke, indeed, impressively on the necessity of entering into the realm of knowledge in the spirit of a little child.