the same cavillers would probably have complained that the reader of this volume was expected to sit down to the study of it with ten or twelve other volumes on the table before him, and to look out each of the passages referred to. Again, if an author, in making an extract from some work of his own, gives a reference to it, the caviller will represent him as seeking to puff his own productions: if he omit to give the reference, the same caviller will charge him with seeking to pass off as new what had been published before. And again, a reader of this character, if he meet with a statement of something he was already convinced of, will deride it as a truism not worth mentioning; while anything that is new to him he will censure as an extravagant paradox. For 'you must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind."

I chose then, rather to incur the blame of the fault-if it be one-of encumbering the volume with two or three additional sheets, which, to some readers, may be superfluous, than to run the risk of misleading, or needlessly offending, many others, by omitting, and merely referring to, something essential to the argument, which they might not have seen, or might not distinctly remember.

The passages thus selected are, of course, but a few out of many in which the subjects of these Essays have been treated of. I have inserted those that seemed most to the purpose, without expecting that all persons should agree in approving the selections made. But any one who thinks that some passages from other writers contain better illustrations than those here given, has only to edit the Essays himself with such extracts as he prefers.

1 Antony and Cleopatra, Act v.

BACON'S ESSAYS.

WHAT

ESSAY I. OF TRUTH.

THAT is truth?' said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief-affecting 1 free-will in thinking, as well as in acting-and, though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing2 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 the only difficulty and labour ich men take in finding out of truth; nor again, that, when it is found, it imposeth3 upon men's thoughts; that doth bring lies in favour; but a natural, though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools of the Grecians 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: this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masques and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and, daintily* as candlelights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a

1 Affect. To aim at; endeavour after.

This proud man affects imperial sway.'-Dryden.

2 Discoursing. Discursive; rambling.

We, through madness,

Form strange conceits in our discoursing brains,

And prate of things as we pretend they were.'-Ford.

3 Impose upon. To lay a restraint upon. (Bacon's Latin original is, 'Cogitationibus imponitur captivitas.")

'Unreasonable impositions on the mind and practice.'-Watts.

4 Daintily. Elegantly.

'The Duke exceeded in that his leg was daintily formed.'-Wotton.

B

diamond or carbuncle that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would,1 and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy 'vinum dæmonum,' because it filleth the imagination, and yet is but with the shadow of a lie. 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. But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it-the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it-and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it-is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, 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, 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, 'It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost 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

The man doth fear God, howsoever it seems not in him.'-Shakespere.

5 Lucretius, ii.

6 The Epicureans.

7 Adventures. Fortunes.

'She smiled with silver cheer,

And wished me fair udventure for the year.'-Dryden.