INTRODUCTION TO THE ESSAYS.

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that it needs no exemplification. Under the head of wit we may also class those

"Jewels five-words-long,

That on the stretched forefinger of all time

Sparkle for ever."

How many of them have passed into household words: Riches are the baggage of virtue--Revenge is a sort of wild justice-Education is an early custom-Custom is the principal magistrate of man's life.

5. His richness of quotations is marvellous. This is a general characteristic of Elizabethan writers. The revival of learning was like the discovery of a new world, and the first discoverers loved to parade their newlyfound treasures. Bacon's reading would not now be thought extensive, but no one ever made so good a use of what he had read. His favourite authors, after the Bible, which he quotes on every page, were the Latin classics-Tacitus ranking first among prose writers, Ovid and Virgil among the poets. Next to these the Fathers, Macchiavelli, Montaigne. With Greek he does not appear nearly so conversant as with Latin. The New Testament he generally quotes from the Vulgate, and Plutarch he probably read in North's translation. It is strange that in all his voluminous works there does not occur a single certain reference to Shakspere.

6. Lastly, we may notice the poetry of his style. As far as is known, he never wrote but one composition in verse (see Golden Treasury, p. 37), but all his literary works are instinct with poetry in the wider sense of the word. Sometimes it is seen in a beautiful simile or a felicitous phrase, sometimes in a touch of pathos, more often in the rhythmical cadence of a sentence which clings to the memory as only poetry can. The pupil

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INTRODUCTION TO THE ESSAYS.

will in the course of these twenty Essays find abundant illustrations of each of these points. We have only room for two examples: "Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth" (Essay 1); "But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love" (Essay 27).

The first edition of Bacon's Essays was published in 1596-7, when Bacon was in his thirty-seventh year. It contained only ten Essays, and those in a much shorter form. The last edition, consisting of fifty-eight Essays, appeared in 1625, a year before Bacon's death. In his dedication to his brother, Anthony Bacon, which accompanied the first edition, he calls them fragments of his conceits, and pleads as an excuse for the smallness of the volume that they had been already pirated. Again, in his dedication to Prince Henry, which he was prevented from publishing by the death of that prince, he speaks of them as brief notes set down rather significantly than curiously." "Essays" was a much more unpretending title in Bacon's days than it is now. It conveyed much the same shade of meaning as the French "ébauche,” a rough sketch, an unfinished outline, just as we still speak of a first essay.

The Latin Version of the Essays (L. V. of the Notes) was published in 1638. It was the work of various authors, and is of very various merit. Parts of it were probably supervised by Bacon himself. In any case it is of great value to the student as a contemporary interpretation of the Essays.

BACON'S ESSAYS.

"WHAT

(1) I. OF TRUTH:

ΙΟ

'HAT is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness,3 and count it a bondage to fix a belief;4 affecting free-wills in thinking, as well as in acting. And, though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing' wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth; nor again, that, when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts; that doth bring lies in favour; but a natural, though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians 1o examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies, where neither they make for" pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: 12 this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not shew the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs13 of the world, half so stately1 and daintily as candle-lights.15 Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond 16 or carbuncle," that sheweth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.18 Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would," and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition," and un

A

pleasing to themselves? One of the fathers," in great severity, called poesy "vinum dæmonum," because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with a shadow of a lie.23 But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before.25 But howsoever these things are thus,26 in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself,27 teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it;28 the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth,29 which is the enjoying of it; is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God,30 in the works of the days, was the light of the sense, the last was the light of reason, and His Sabbath work, ever since, is the illumination of His Spirit. First He breathed light upon the face of the matter,31 or Chaos; then He breathed light into the face of man; and still He breatheth and inspireth light into the face of His chosen. The poet that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well :34 "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof, below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errours and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below," so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.35

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business, it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honour of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like allay37 in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it; for these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious. And therefore Montaigne saith prettily,38 when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and

such an odious charge. Saith he: "If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men;" for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that when Christ cometh, "he shall not find faith upon the earth.”39

(2) II. OF DEATH.

MEN fear death as children fear to in the

8

and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin3 and passage to another world, is holy and religious ;4 but 5 the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak." Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars'7 books of mortification, that a man should think with himself what the pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed, or tortured, and thereby imagine what the pains of death are when the whole body is corrupted and dissolved; when' many times death passeth with less pain then the torture of a limb; for the most vital parts are not the quickest of sense. And by him that spake only as a philosopher and natural man," it was well said: "Pompa mortis magis terret, quam mors ipsa."12 Groans and convulsions and a discoloured face,13 and friends weeping, and blacks,1 and obsequies, and the like, shew death terrible.

ΤΟ

It is worthy the observing,15 that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates 16 and masters the fear of death; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him." Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honour aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear pre-occupateth 18 it; nay, we read, after Otho19 the emperor had slain himself, pity (which is the tenderest of affections) provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. Nay, Seneca adds, niceness and satiety:20 "Cogita quam diu