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Bacon's Essays, With Intr., Notes and Index by E.a. Abbott
Bacon's Essays With Intr Notes and Index by Ea Abbott Author:Francis Bacon General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1876 Original Publisher: Longmans, Green, and co Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where... more » you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. WHAT BACON WAS HIMSELF. ' I Never LOOK,' says Montaigne, ' upon an author, be they such as write of virtue and of actions, but I curiously endeavour to find out what he was himself.'1 This hint, useful for the students of any book, is especially useful for those that want to understand Bacon's Essays, for they spring directly out of Bacon's life. They are not the results of his reading, nor the dreams or theories of his philosophy; they are the brief jottings of his experience of men and things. On this ground he tells the Prince he can commend them : he has endeavoured to make them, not vulgar, but of a nature whereof a man shall find much in experience, little in books, so as they are neither repetitions nor fancies. Moreover, the experience of the author's old age, as well as that of his youth, finds condensed expression in the little volume of the Essays : for, besides the fact that they embody the Antitheta, which he is known to have collected during his youth or early manhood, the first edition was published when he was thirty-six, the second when he was fifty- two, the third when he was sixty-four, so that the different editions cover the whole period of his active life. Nor again need we suspect that in the Essays we have, notthe true Bacon, but an artificial essayist, wishing to found a literary reputation, or a reputation for morality or statesmanship. Such a suspicion might attach to some of his more formal compositions ; but it is out of place here, and it is disproved by internal evidence. For the Essays are strewn t...« less