Bacon published his _Essays_ in 1597. They were, in the estimation of
Mr. Hallam, the first in time and in excellence of English writings on
moral prudence. Of the fifty-eight Essays, of which the work is now
composed, ten only appeared in the first edition. But to these were
added _Religious Meditations, Places of Perswasion and Disswasion,
Seene and allowed_; many of which were afterwards embodied in the
Essays. These Essays were: 1. Of Studie; 2. Of Discourse; 3. Of
Ceremonies and Respects; 4. Of Followers and Friends; 5. Of Sutors; 6.
Of Expence; 7. Of Regiment of Health; 8. Of Honor and Reputation; 9. Of
Faction; 10. Of Negociating. In the edition of 1612, “The Essaies of
S^r Francis Bacon Knight, the King’s Atturny Generall,” were increased
to forty-one.
The new Essays added are: 1. Of Religion; 2. Of Death; 3. Of Goodnesse,
and Goodnesse of Nature; 4. Of Cunning; 5. Of Marriage and Single
Life; 6. Of Parents and Children; 7. Of Nobility; 8. Of Great Place;
9. Of Empire; 10. Of Counsell; 11. Of Dispatch; 12. Of Love; 13. Of
Friendship; 14. Of Atheism; 15. Of Superstition; 16. Of Wisedome for a
Man’s selfe; 20. Of seeming wise; 21. Of Riches; 22. Of Ambition; 23.
Of Young Men and Age; 24. Of Beauty; 25. Of Deformity; 26. Of Nature in
Men; 27. Of Custom and Education; 28. Of Fortune; 35. Of Praise; 36. Of
Judicature; 37. of Vaine-Glory; 38. Of Greatnesse of Kingdomes; 39. Of
the Publique; 40. Of Warre and Peace.
These forty-one Essays were afterwards again augmented to fifty-eight,
with the new title of _The Essaies or Covnsels, Civill and Morall_;
they were likewise improved by corrections, additions, and
illustrations. By the peculiarity of Bacon, already noticed, the later
Essays rise in beauty and interest.
Bacon considered his Essays but as “the recreations of his other
studies.” He has entitled them, in the Latin translation, _Sermones
fideles, sive Interiora rerum_. The idea of them, as has been already
mentioned, was suggested by those of Montaigne; but there is but
little resemblance between the two productions. Montaigne is natural,
ingenuous, sportive. Bacon’s “_Essays or Counsels, civil and moral_,”
“the fragments of his conceits,” as he styles them, are all study,
art, and gravity; but the reflections in them are true and profound.
Montaigne confessedly painted himself, declared that he was the matter
of his own book,[36] while with Bacon the man was merged in the author
and the philosopher, who propounded like Seneca, and somewhat in
Seneca’s style, the maxims of practical wisdom, that, to use Bacon’s
own language, “come home to men’s business and bosoms,” and clothed
them in a garb, new, elegant, and rich, hitherto unknown in England.
But our author, if we may judge by the matter and even manner of his
Essays, may have had in view, not so much Montaigne’s _Essais_ as
Seneca’s _Letters to Lucilius_. The Essay of _Death_ is obviously
founded on Seneca’s Epistles on this subject. That he was well
acquainted with Seneca’s _Letters_, is incontrovertible. He alludes
to them thus in the dedication to Prince Henry, in 1612: “The word
(Essays),” says he, “is late, but the thing is ancient; for Seneca’s
Epistles to Lucilius, if you mark them well, are but Essays, that is,
dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of epistles.” Bacon
justly foretold of his Essays that they “would live as long as books
last.”
The following is the opinion of Dugald Stewart, himself an eminent
philosopher and elegant writer:
“His _Essays_ are the best known and most popular of all his
works. It is also one of those where the superiority of his
genius appears to the greatest advantage; the novelty and depth
of his reflections often receiving a strong relief from triteness
of the subject. It may be read from beginning to end in a few
hours; and yet, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails
to remark in it something unobserved before. This, indeed, is a
characteristic of all Bacon’s writings, and only to be accounted
for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own
thoughts, and the sympathetic activity they impart to our torpid
faculties.”[37]
The reader will, perhaps, be rather gratified than wearied with another
appreciation of this valuable production of our young moralist of
twenty-six. It is of no incompetent judge,—Mr. Hallam.
“The transcendent strength of Bacon’s mind is visible in the
whole tenor of these Essays, unequal as they must be from the
very nature of such compositions. They are deeper and more
discriminating than any earlier, or almost any later work in the
English language, full of recondite observation, long matured and
carefully sifted. It is true that we might wish for more vivacity
and ease; Bacon, who had much wit, had little gayety; his Essays
are consequently stiff and grave where the subject might have
been touched with a lively hand; thus it is in those on Gardens
and on Building. The sentences have sometimes too apophthegmatic
a form and want coherence; the historical instances, though far
less frequent than with Montaigne, have a little the look of
pedantry to our eyes. But it is from this condensation, from this
gravity, that the work derives its peculiar impressiveness.
Few books are more quoted, and what is not always the case
with such books, we may add that few are more generally read.
In this respect they lead the van of our prose literature; for
no gentleman is ashamed of owning that he has not read the
Elizabethan writers; but it would be somewhat derogatory to a man
of the slightest claim to polite letters, were he unacquainted
with the Essays of Bacon. It is, indeed, little worth while to
read this or any other book for reputation sake; but very few in
our language so well repay the pains, or afford more nourishment
to the thoughts. They might be judiciously introduced, with a
small number more, into a sound method of education, one that
should make wisdom, rather than mere knowledge, its object, and
might become a text-book of examination in our schools.”[38]