Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/69

Rh himself even when writing on a strictly scientific theme. In the Sylva Sylvarum: or A Natural History, for example, Bacon brings together a great many facts about nature, which he calls "experiments," some of them observations of real value, while others must have been trivial even to himself. In the Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall the method is ever to reduce reflection to its lowest terms, to try to discover the fundamental principles of conduct that influence the actions of men. Again, Bacon has nothing of the attractive personality of Montaigne, a man of the world who made a point of finding out what the world was like from all sorts and conditions of men, from the king on his throne to the groom of his riding-horse. Montaigne writes on and on about a subject in breezy discursiveness, like a man on horseback traversing an interesting country. Bacon's Essays reflect his experience of life, but they tell us little or nothing of his personal likes and dislikes. They are austere, brief to the point of crudeness, they smell of the lamp.

Bacon's own judgment of his Essays, as we know from the dedicatory epistle prefixed to the third edition, was that they might last as long as books last. In the essay, Of Innovations, he says, "Time is the greatest innovator." The most obvious division of the Essays is that which time has made. Certain essays do "come home to men's business and bosoms" in a universal way. They appeal to all men at all times. They discourse of great subjects in the grand manner. The essays, Of Truth, Of Rh