IN THE MASTERTON LIBRARY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8486, 13 July 1907, Page 5

IN THE MASTERTON LIBRARY.

(Specially Written for the Wairarapa* Age.) No. IX. BACON'S ESSAYS AND OTHER: WORKS.—London, 1891. Though the portly volume of Bacon in the library is lettered on the back, "The Essays of Lord Bacon," it contains, among other of his writings, the first book of "The Advancement of Learning," "New Atlantis," and "The Wisdom of the Ancients;'" the: essays occupying only a little over-one-fourth of the volume. The publishers probably knew their own business when they so entitled the volume' for, of his literary, as distinct from his philosophical and professional works, the Essays are for the most popular and important, and for one person who has read or heard of the Novum Organum or the De Augments, there are probably hundreds having morej or less acquaintance with the Essays, which may be regarded as a storehouse of the practical wisdom gathered during the author's lifetime, a life singularly rich in opportunities for such accumulations. Dean Church writes of them as follows: —"These short papers say what they have to say without preface, and in literary undress, without a superfluous word, without the joints and bands of structure: they say it in brief, rapid, sentences which come down, sentence after sentence, like the strokes of a great hammer. No wonder that in their disdainful brevity they seem rugged and abrupt, "and do not seem to end, but fall." But with their truth and piercingness and delicacy of observation, their roughness gives a kind of flavour which no elaboration could 1 give. It is none the less that their wisdom is of a somewhat cynical kind, fully alive to the slipperiness and self-deceits and faithlessness which are in the world and rather inclined to be amused at them. In some we can see distinct records of the writer's own experience Some of them are memorable oracular utterances not inadequate to the subject, on Truth, or Death, or Unity. Others reveal an utter incapacity to come near a subject, except as a strange external phenomena like the essay on Love. There is a distinct tendency in them to the Italian school of political and moral wisdom, the wisdom of distrust and of reliance on indirect and roundaboutways. There is a group of them, "Of Delays," "Of Cunning:, * "Of Wisdom for a Man's Sell," "Of Despatch," which show how vigilantly and to what purpose he had watched the treasurers and secretaries and intriguers of Elizabeth's and James' Courts, and there are curious self-revelations, as in the essay on Friendship. But there are also currents of better and larger feeling, such as those which show his own ideal of "Great Place," and what he felt of its dangers and duties. And mixed with the fantastic taste and conceits of the time, there is evidence in them of Bacon's keen delight in nature, in the beauty and scents of flowers, in the charm of open-air life, as in the es ;y on Gardens, "The purest of h nnan pleasures, the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man." In his notorious essay, MacCaulay gave two extracts contrasting Bacon's early and late styles. As these are excellent samples to give an idea of the Essays we reproduce them. In the earliest edition, published in 1597, the essay "Of Studieo" reads: —"Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; that is a wisdom without them, and won by observation. Read not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to lie tasted, others to be swallowed, and soma few to be chewed and digested. Reading maketh a lull man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little he had need have a great memory, if he confer little, have a present wit, and if he read little have much cunning to seem to know that he- doth not. Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, morals grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend." It will hardly be disputed that this is a passage to be "chewed and digested." .... In the additions which Bacon afterwards made to the Essays, there is nothing superior in truth or weight to what we have just quoted. But his stylo was constantly becoming richer and softer. The following passage, first published in 1625, will show the extent of the change: "Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer evidence of God's favour. Yet, even in fie Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes: and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. . . . Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth bast discover vice, but adveristy doth best discover virtue." Such passages as these give a good idea of the treasures to be found in the Essays, and show us Bacon's wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering it portable. It is safe to say that theie is not -one of the Essays that does not lend itself to an apt quotation. As Professor Fowler truly says: "Perhaps, excepting Shakespeare's plays, Bacon's Essays furnish more quotations than any other work in the language." Take any essay at random, beginning with the first "Of Truth." How often have we seen quoted its opening words, "What is Truth, said jesting Pilate?" Going on wc find "A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure." "The lie that sinketh in doth the hurt," "The inquiry of Truth, the knowledge of Truth, and the belief of Truth, is the

sovereign good of human nature," "Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in Charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth," "It will be acknowledged, even by those that practice it not, that clear and sound dealing is Uie honour of man's nature." "There \a no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious," "To say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he la brave towards Gori and a coward towards men." Besides beautiful reading, there is here grand wisdom, r,nd what a wealth of it! No one can vise from the perusal of any Essay without pleasure as well as profit. It would be interesting to -go on Quoting, to say something of Bacon •'■imself, and to point out some of the tomarkable coincidences in both thought and expression between Hacon and Shakespeare; but space /ails. We may revert to the subject. Meantime any reader who is led to :ake the library book home will find •//eighty wisdom in the Essays; wonder in the charming romance of the New Atlantis; and enjoyment as well :i the fancy and the ingenuity shown in making the old myths of Greece and Rome yield practical lessons, as in the wit of the apophthegms that form the last fifty rages of the volume.