London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. Glasgow: 263, ARGYLE STREET. Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. Bombay: GEORGE BELL AND SONS. IN preparing this edition of Bacon's Essays, I have had two objects in view. In the first place I have endeavoured to provide the general reader with information which shall enable him to understand the Essays, and in the second place I have endeavoured to convey the information in such a form that he may read them with enjoyment. It is only the advanced scholar who can understand Bacon without the aid of threefold explanations,-explanations of the language, of the thought, and of the allusions. With regard to Bacon's language, Mr Reynolds says that 'almost every page of the Essays bristles with difficulties, some of them the more likely to mislead because even careful reader, not familiar with the language of Bacon's age, might fail to detect them for what they are.' I have therefore added footnotes which explain these verbal difficulties and furnish an English rendering of the numerous Latin quotations. From these footnotes the reader can obtain the interpretation of Bacon's language without repeatedly turning the pages to hunt for words in a Glossary. Interruptions of this sort inevitably rob a book of much of its charm, and one aim of this edition is to make it possible, as we said, for Bacon to be read with enjoyment. But when the stumbling-blocks have been removed from the vocabulary, it happens now and then that the thought remains obscure. Sometimes the relevance of a remark is not obvious: sometimes the terseness of a sentence conceals its drift. In such cases an explanation or a paraphrase is given in the Notes. Lastly, though obscurities of diction and of argument may have been cleared away, Bacon's historical and mythological allusions cause perplexity. Of such allusions the number contained in the whole series of Essays exceeds three hundred. In the 19th Essay there are forty; in the 27th there are close upon thirty. An Index of Proper Names furnishes the necessary details respecting every person and place mentioned in Bacon's text and a reference to the Essay in which the allusion occurs. As a means of making the Essays intelligible to the ordinary student, I believe that this Index will be found of far greater service than disquisitions upon Bacon's politics, morals, or philosophy. The student who understands Bacon's language, the drift of his argument, and the point of his allusions, has attained the principal object with which, presumably, he read Bacon's book. But there are some readers for whom questions of grammatical usage possess considerable interest, and a classified enumeration is therefore supplied in the Appendix of the differences between the English of the Essays and the English of our own day. As we are concerned in the Essays with Bacon only as the man of letters, I have said nothing of his work in philosophy or of his political career. I have also abstained from quoting at length parallel passages from his other writings. Bacon was careful of his good things and when he had said |