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 be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.Reading maketh a full 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." We do not believe that Thucydides himself has anywhere compressed so much thought into so small a space.
In the additions which Bacon afterwards made to the Essays, there is nothing superior in truth or weight to what we have quoted.
But his style 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 the 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.We see in needleworks and embroideries it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground.Judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye.Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."It is by the Essays that Bacon is best known to the multitude.
The Novum Organum and the De Augmentis are much talked of, but little read.They have produced indeed a vast effect on the opinions of mankind; but they have produced it through the operation of intermediate agents.They have moved the intellects which have moved the world.It is in the Essays alone that the mind of Bacon is brought into immediate contact with the minds of ordinary readers.There he opens an exoteric school, and talks to plain men, in language which everybody understands, about things in which everybody is interested.He has thus enabled those who must otherwise have taken his merits on trust to judge for themselves; and the great body of readers have, during several generations, acknowledged that the man who has treated with such consummate ability questions with which they are familiar may well be supposed to deserve all the praise bestowed on him by those who have sat in his inner-school.
