ABSTRACT
Two copies survive of the opening paragraphs of Boyle’s ‘The Aspireing Naturalist (A Philosophical Romance)’, both in the hand of Robin Bacon, Boyle’s principal amanuensis in his later years; the title appears in the top left-hand margin of the first page of each. The more continuous version appears in Boyle Papers 9, fols 43–4, where a catchword makes it clear that the text on fol. 44 is intended to follow that on fol. 43 (in the title in this version, ‘A Philosophicall Romance’ is not enclosed in brackets). The second copy is to be found in Boyle Papers 8, fols 206–7 (containing the equivalent text to BP 9, fol. 43; the lower part of the second page of the bifoliate is blank) and 210 (containing the equivalent text to BP 9, fol. 44). In contrast to the BP 9 version, this has a few alterations and additions: one of these is in the hand of Robin Bacon, and is incorporated into the fair copy in BP 9, but the others are in the hand of another favoured amanuensis, Hugh Greg, and these make additions to the text which do not appear in BP 9 version. The version in BP 8 has therefore here been adopted as the copy text, with the substantive differences between it and that in BP 9 noted, though minor differences of orthography have been ignored (as have minor orthographic adjustments to the text in BP 8 itself – for example, the alteration of ‘doe’ to ‘do’).
