Page:Bacons Essays 1908 West.djvu/15



Bacon meant by the word 'Essay' he has told us himself. 'The want of leisure', he says, 'hath made me choose to write certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called. The word is late, but the thing is ancient. For Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius, if one mark them well, are but Essays,—that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of Epistles.'

Montaigne's Essays had appeared in 1580. The first edition of Bacon's Essays was published in 1597. Bacon was acquainted with Montaigne's work, though he refers to Montaigne by name only once. In the Essay on Truth, which was a new contribution to the third edition of 1625, he quotes Montaigne, and quotes him with characteristic inaccuracy. 'Mountaigny saith prettily,' he writes; but the pretty saying is Plutarch's, not Montaigne's, and is mentioned by Montaigne as the remark of 'un ancien'. Between the Essays of Bacon and the Essays of Montaigne there is little in common, 'except their rare power of exciting interest, and the unmistakable mark of genius which is impressed on both .'

Short jottings on great subjects,—jottings thrown together without any serious attempt at elaboration, completeness, or methodical arrangement,—jottings 'of a nature whereof a man