Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, of Francis Bacon

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Like Burns, like Shakspere, it is man's meat; and especially it appeals to the hard head acquainted with human nature and the shifts of life as it is led in the world, open to broad views and aware of great elements in the private and public spheres alike, but tangled, nevertheless, in the prudences, the safeties, the necessities of a permanently I lower plane of social being. The unique ness of the Essays is to be sought in this direction: they give a grandiloquent voice to the worldly-wise heart; they mix nobility of intellect with meanness of action, beauty and charm of language with lame and im potent conclusions of cynical fact, the great ness with the littleness of man. Scarcely any other English prose classic makes so much the impression characteristic of the ancient writers, as of something coneen trated and old with experience, not to be challenged any more than proverbial wis dom - conclusions which, whether gold or baser matter, are the settled dregs of time.) Such, in substance, is the amalgam of the Essays, lasting in fame, and obstinate because of the mixed truth which, like life itself,-and therein they represent life, they contain.