Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/79

Rh literary style developed the thought of the earliest essays does not materially change in the second edition, but that it is here and there expanded by a qualifying idea or by an apt illustration. For example, the apothegms of the last paragraph of Studies, of 1597, "Histories make men wise, Poets wittie," etc., is enlarged in 1612 by the simile comparing the effect of study upon the mind to that of exercise upon the body. The edition of 1625 sent forth the ten early essays expanded to nearly double their original size, while some of the essays of 1612 were entirely rewritten, notably the essay Of Friendship.

When Bacon expanded a subject the method that came most natural to him was that of the scientist, by analysis and contrast. Friendship resolves itself for him into three principal "fruits," "peace in the affections," "support of the judgment," and "aid and comfort in action." The puzzling degrees of dissimulation he describes, Of Simulation and Dissimulation, remind one of the excellent fooling of Touchstone on how to "quarrel in print, by the book," or the seven degrees of lies. The essay Of Adversity is merely a series of antitheses, an oracular list of pros and cons. It might have been composed by drawing up on opposite pages a debit and credit account of life. Again, Bacon's choice of abstract subjects to write upon is in keeping with the analytic character of his mind. To choose a general theme, like "Truth" or "Death" or "Praise," and to say something upon it which is at once worth while and new can be Rh