Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients

Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients

In the early part of the year 1597, Lord Bacons first publication appeared. It is a small 12mo. volume, entitled Essayes, Religious Meditations, Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. It is dedicated The Essays, which are ten in number, abound with condensed thought and practical wisdom, neatly, pressly, and weightily stated, and, like all his early works, are simple, without imagery. They are written in his favorite style of aphorisms, although each essay is apparently a continued work, and without that love of antithesis and false glitter to which truth and justness of thought are frequently sacrificed by the writers of maxims. A second edition, with a translation of the Meditationes Sacr, was published in the next year; and another edition enlarged in 1612, when he was solicitor-general, containing thirty-eight essays; and one still more enlarged in 1625, containing fifty-eight essays, the year before his death. The Essays in the subsequent editions are much augmented, according to his own words: I always alter when I add, so that nothing is finished till all is finished, and they are adorned by happy and familiar illustration, as in the essay of Wisdom for a Mans Self, which concludes, in the edition of 1625, with thexiii following extract, not to be found in the previous edition: Wisdom for a mans self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall. It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says of Pompey) are Sui Amantes sine Rivali are many times unfortunate. And whereas they have all their time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of Fortune, whose wings they thought, by their self wisdom, to have pinioned. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 56463
Author: Bacon, Francis
Release Date: Jan 29, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English