inductive philosophy went straight to its aim when he endeavoured to guide men's minds into the one way of profitable research. But the modifications of man's speech and actions that are due to the just influence of feeling, are so far essential to the right conduct of life, that whoever wants or avoids the prompting to them cannot live long without blundering very gravely more than once, as Bacon did. He was well-read in Machiavelli, whose keen intellect he appreciated; indeed, from the fifth chapter of the second book of Machiavelli's "Discourses upon Livy" Bacon took suggestion of his essay of "Vicissitudes of Things.' There is a touch of Machiavelli often in Bacon's counsels of life; they are all wise, but they are not the whole abstract of worldly wisdom, and sometimes, not often, they sink where they should rise.

Bacon kept his first little book of Essays by him, adding, altering, and writing more as inclination or occasion prompted. Under James I. he prospered rapidly. The books in which he developed his method of research into Nature-his philosophy-appeared from time to time. He rose to the head of his profession. In the year of Shakespeare's death, Bacon was made a Privy Councillor. In March, 1617, he became Lord Keeper. In January, 1618, he became Lord Chancellor ; in July he became Baron Verulam; in October, 1620, he produced what we have of the chief work in his philosophical series, the "Novum Organum ;" on the 27th of January, 1621, he was made Viscount St. Albans, and touched the highest point of all his greatness. On the 3rd of May in the same year he was sentenced, upon twenty-three specified charges of corruption, admitted by himself, to a fine of forty thousand pounds, which the king remitted; to be committed to the Tower during the King's pleasure, and he was released next day; thenceforth to be incapable of holding any office in the State, or sitting in Parliament. It was decided by a majority of two that he should not be stripped of his titles. There remained to him five years of life, and in these he withdrew from all strife of the world, closing his life in peace. During all these years he had been embodying his counsels of life in his "Essays." They had increased in number from ten to thirty-eight when he produced an edition of them in 1612; and in his last edition of them, that was issued as "newly written" in the year before his death, the number had risen to fifty-eight. That is their final form, as given in the second section of the present volume.

Real literature has, for one of its qualities, that it deals with the essentials of life. It is therefore not addressed to a select company of critics, but to all who live. Every true book that has really a place in literature speaks to every mind that has been awakened to a consciousness of interets beyond those of the flesh. If it be said that Bacon's Essays are mere literature and caviare to the general, let it be replied that, being absolutely literature, they are absolutely life-life, that is the dearest interest of each of us, as one of the acutest of men sought to interpret it; and have we not our own experience of life to measure with it as we read?

November, 1883.

HENRY MORLEY.

THE FIRST EDITION

ESSAYS.

I.

OF STUDIES.

STUDIES serve for pastimes, for ornaments, for abilities; their chief use for pastimes is in privateness and retiring; for ornaments in discourse; and for ability in judgment; for expert men can execute, but learned are men more fit to judge and censure. To spend too much time in them is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar; they perfect nature, and are themselves perfected by experience; crafty men contemn them, wise men use them, simple men admire them; for they teach not their own use, but that there is a wisdom without them and above them won by observation. Read not to contradict nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. Some

books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some are to be read only in parts, others to be read but curiously, and some few to be read wholly with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready, and writing an exact man ; therefore, if a man write little, he had need of a great memory; if he confer little, he had need of a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not know. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.

II.

OF DISCOURSE.

SOME, in their discourse, desire rather commendation of wit in being able to hold all arguments than of judgment in discerning what is true, as if it were a praise to know what might be said, and not