Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/70

Rh Death, Of Great Place, might have been written by Aristotle, and what is said in these and other essays of like character is as true to-day as when Bacon lived. Another type of essay is distinctly limited, partly by Bacon's own character and partly by the social characteristics of his time. The essay Of Friendship grew out of Bacon's longest and most disinterested friendship, but no man can write an adequate essay on this noble theme, and yet say, as Bacon did in Of Followers and Friends, "There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals, which was wont to be magnified. That that is, is between superior and inferior, whose fortunes may comprehend the one the other." A thought like that puts friendship on the low plane of a paying basis. That Bacon could utter it has tarnished his fame with the charge of treachery towards Essex. The essays, Of Love, and Of Marriage and Single Life, were the product of a social condition in which passion did not necessarily enter into the marriage relation, and marriage itself was an affair to be arranged between parties suitably situated. It was a man's world, and it is impossible to judge it fairly now, because in the modern world the advancement of woman has revolutionized the older ideas of domestic relations. Essayists of Bacon's mental characteristics will still write on love and marriage, but their treatment of these themes must inevitably be broader and deeper, because it has been spiritualized. It is juster, because it recognizes the mutual obligations of men and women. Rh