increased to thirty-eight in 1612, the original Essays having been thoroughly revised and in many cases rewritten. From then until the year before his death, when they were issued in their final form and number-fifty-eight-Bacon kept the book constantly beside him, adding, altering, compressing, or expanding as he saw fit. Some of the early Essays passed through many drafts. As his opinions suffered modification through the incidents and accidents of life, so the sentiments expressed in the Essays had to be changed. The papers "On Suitors," "On Faction," and "On Friendship" were altered very materially during the course of the editions, the last-named one being entirely rewritten in view of the issue of 1625.

From the first, their popularity was great. Their brevity was a recommendation to readers with limited and Ph.D.S leisure, their compactness of thought and conciseness of expression a virtue, passing meritorious, in an age when looseness alike in thought and language was the rule rather than the exception. While the Essays may not, as a whole, display the stately music of Donne or of Hooker, the florid ornateness of Burton or of Browne, the sustained grandeur of Johnson-a grandeur at times verging on grandiloquence or the sinewy flexibility of Selden, they unite in themselves a portion of the excellences of all the six. The qualities of his age-the word

painting of Jacobean diction, the 'involution of thought even beyond the border line of conceits, the quaint humour and the sparkling wit, all have their place in the Essays. The sharp, antithetic

form in which he elected to present his thoughts in the earlier Essays necessarily contributed as much to the pregnancy of their matter as to the epigrammatic precision of their manner. While some of the earlier Essays read, in places, like extracts from the Book of Proverbs, others among the later ones exhibit all the brightness, the colour, and the vivid word-painting of Sidney's Arcadia or Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living. As an example of the first-named type, we select at random from the Essay "On Studies" the following sentences: "To spend too much time on studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation. . . Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them;"1 and from the Essay "On Suitors the following: "To be ignorant of the value of a suit is simplicity; as well as to be ignorant of the right thereof, is want of conscience."2 Now contrast with the antithetic compactness, almost reaching baldness, characteristic of both the aforementioned papers, the wealth of diction and felicitous power of description displayed in the Essays "On Building " and "On Gardens."4 A passage like

1 P. 214.

2 P. 211.

3 P. 188.

4 P. 195.

this comes to one like the breath of a cool mountain breeze amid the sultry stillness of a midsummer's afternoon: "Because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Of bean flowers I speak not, because they are field flowers; but those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three ; that is, burnet, wild thyme, and water-mints; therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread."1

As one of the world's epoch-making books, Bacon's Essays have done much to mould and direct the character of many individuals. With Montaigne's Essays they almost inevitably challenged comparison, inasmuch as only some seventeen years separated the publication of their first editions. Montaigne's Essays appeal to broader social sympathies and cover a larger area of human action, as the sphere of their observation and criticism. But we miss the firm intellectual grip, the bone and sinew of compact thought, the comprehensive survey over the entire domain of knowledge, the almost preternatural acumen displayed in detecting

1 P. 198.

far-reaching analogies, and the polymathic acquaintance with the entire range of the learning of his age, evinced by Bacon. He lacked Montaigne's lightness of touch and piquant picturesqueness in stating obvious truths so as to make them look like new; while Montaigne in turn was entirely destitute of the great English Essayist's marvellous penetration into the very soul of things, and of his superb ratiocinative faculty. If Montaigne were the greater literary artist, Bacon was the profounder moral and intellectual force.

That Bacon had read Montaigne when the first book of the latter's Essays was published in 1580 is strongly probable, though he does not personally mention him until 1625. Both Essayists have treated several topics in common. Bacon has an Essay "On Ceremonies and Respects," Montaigne, one "On Ceremonies in the Interview of Kings"; both writers have an Essay "On Friendship"; Bacon writes on "Vain Glory," Montaigne on "Glory" and on "Vanity"; Bacon treats of "Studies," and Montaigne of "Books," but the subject under discussion in both is much the same. Bacon in his Essay on "Friendship" says, "It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we speak so great as they purchase it hazard of their own safety and

many times at the

2

greatness, for princes in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience." 1 On the same question Montaigne says to us, through the translation of John Florio: "There is nothing to which Nature hath more addressed us than to Societie. And Aristotle saith that perfect Lawgivers have had more regardful care of friendship than of justice. And the utmost drift of its perfection is this. For generally all those amities which are forged and nourished by voluptuousness or profit, publike or private need, are thereby so much the lesse faire and generous, and so much the lesse true amities, in that they intermeddle other causes, scope and fruit with friendship, than itself alone.'

3

Further, Bacon's Essays, viewed in their entirety, may be said to group themselves round three great principles. These are (1) Man in his relations to the World and Society; (2) Man in his relations to himself; (3) Man in his relations to his Maker. These divisions cannot be said to be altogether mutually exclusive. Some of the Essays, therefore, 2 Published in 1603.

1 P. 110.

3 Lawgivers-also translated Rulers or Princes, which makes the resemblance to Bacon's words more remarkable.

+ Montaigne's Essays, Bk. I. xxvii.