is not, however, by any means the only obstacle in the way of
mastering the text. Leonardo made use of an orthography peculiar to
himself; he had a fashion of amalgamating several short words into
one long one, or, again, he would quite arbitrarily divide a long
word into two separate halves; added to this there is no punctuation
whatever to regulate the division and construction of the sentences,
nor are there any accents--and the reader may imagine that such
difficulties were almost sufficient to make the task seem a
desperate one to a beginner. It is therefore not surprising that the
good intentions of some of Leonardo s most reverent admirers should
have failed.

Leonardos literary labours in various departments both of Art and of
Science were those essentially of an enquirer, hence the analytical
method is that which he employs in arguing out his investigations
and dissertations. The vast structure of his scientific theories is
consequently built up of numerous separate researches, and it is
much to be lamented that he should never have collated and arranged
them. His love for detailed research--as it seems to me--was the
reason that in almost all the Manuscripts, the different paragraphs
appear to us to be in utter confusion; on one and the same page,
observations on the most dissimilar subjects follow each other
without any connection. A page, for instance, will begin with some
principles of astronomy, or the motion of the earth; then come the
laws of sound, and finally some precepts as to colour. Another page
will begin with his investigations on the structure of the
intestines, and end with philosophical remarks as to the relations
of poetry to painting; and so forth.

Leonardo himself lamented this confusion, and for that reason I do