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reader cannot but notice Bacon's manner of introduction. It is that of a practised debater. Bacon is a good opener. Many of the opening sentences arrest attention at once, as it was undoubtedly intended they should. Sometimes the thought is expressed in an aphoristic figure, as, "Revenge is a kind of wild justice," Of Revenge. Sometimes it is an apt quotation, like "What is truth? said jesting Pilate," Of Truth. Sometimes it is a great thought inimitably set in speech. "God Almighty first planted a garden," is the jewel-like sentence that opens the essay Of Gardens. When the weary wayfarer sees that legend shining resplendent over the gate of an oldtime garden, he must needs enter in to refresh his spirit.

As has been said, Bacon's model for brief and pointed expression is Tacitus, whom he had read "wholly, and with diligence and attention." Tacitus more than any other author contributed to the swiftness and philosophic range range of Bacon's thought, and the other classical writers who helped to make him "a full man," stand, after Tacitus, probably in this order, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Livy, Vergil, Ovid, the two Plinies, Suetonius, Lucretius, Lucian, Caesar, Lucan, Plautus, Terence, Horace, Martial, Plato, Homer, Herodotus and Aristotle. The Greeks make way for the Romans in this list, both in number and in frequency of quotation.' Plutarch was a favorite Greek author with Bacon, as he was with Shakspere and the other Elizabethans. There are two reasons for the popu

larity of Plutarch at that time. The active and inquiring minds of the Elizabethans enjoyed Plutarch as an all-round man. He satisfied their intellectual curiosity on many points. Besides, Plutarch was the most fortunate of the Greeks in contemporary translation. Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, from the French of Jacques Amyot, was called The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, and came out in 1579, with a dedication to Queen Elizabeth. It was written in simple, idiomatic, picturesque prose, the best English prose that had been written up to that time. As is well known, North's Plutarch was Shakspere's storehouse of classical learning. Page after page of the 'lives' of Caesar, Brutus, Antony, and Coriolanus in Shakspere is simply the noble English of North's narrative animated with the life and play of dialogue. North's masterly manner in prose was to develop into Bacon himself and into the translators of the Authorized Version of the Bible. Bacon read Greek and may have quoted the Plutarch's Lives from that reading, but it is more than likely that he used one of the four editions of North's translations that appeared during his lifetime. He was certainly familiar with The Philosophie, commonly called the Morals, written by the learned philosopher Plutarch, and translated from the Greek, in 1603, by Philemon Holland, with a dedication to James I.

In general reading, Bacon quotes of the Fathers, St. Augustine, Of Truth, and St. Bernard, Of Unity in Religion and Of Atheism. Of French

men, he alludes to Rabelais as "a master of scoffing" in Of Unity in Religion. The story of Charles the Bold in Of Friendship Bacon took from Thomas Danett's admirable English translation, The Historie of Philip de Commines, Knight, Lord of Argenton, which was published in 1601, but is dedicated to his uncle, Lord Burghley, under date "1 Nov. 1596." Elsewhere in the Essays, Bacon shows acquaintance with Comines's 'History of Louis XI,' a serene, dispassionate, philosophical account of that Machiavellian prince. Comines, who has been described as "as humane as the ancients and almost as wise as Tacitus himself," was a historian after Bacon's own heart. Besides the 'pretty' saying about truth and his title, Bacon adopted from Montaigne the idea of popularizing moral philosophy. Montaigne had discoursed delightfully of the philosophy of common things for Frenchmen. He would do the same for Englishmen, and he did it, but the French and English manner differ as the poles. Montaigne's reflections on life centre in his own individuality. Fortunately, it was a great and original individuality, disciplined by the conduct of affairs, and cultivated by books and society and travel. With that equipment, Montaigne tells us from his tower what he thought of life. He is garrulous, he is personal, painfully personal at times, he is familiar, "the intimate friend of us all," as Sainte-Beuve said. Bacon's philosophy of life is nearly as impersonal as Shakspere's; it is brief, almost blunt; it has a remote air, as if Seneca had indeed inspired it.

The love of classical learning, breadth of view, benevolence, and wit are qualities which distinguish alike the essays of Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon.

Montaigne observes of the moral insensibility of Francesco Guicciardini, his cold, passionless manner of depicting a great national tragedy, the decline and fall of his own country after the French invasion of 1494, "among the many motives and counsels on which he adjudicates, he never attributes any one of them to virtue, religion, or conscience, as if all these were quite extinct in the world." Bacon had doubtless read Montaigne's opinion of Guicciardini, in the second book of his Essais. He had undoubtedly read Guicciardini's L'historia d'italia, either in the original, or what is more likely, in the translation of Geoffrey Fenton, The Historie of Guicciardin (1579). Fenton's Guicciardini was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, and was a popular translation from the Italian, running to three editions during her reign and one in King James's time. There is a certain likeness between Guicciardini and Bacon in both career and character. Benedetto Varchi, his contemporary and fellow-historian, writes of Guicciardini,"Messer Francesco, besides his noble birth, his riches and his academical degree, and besides having been Governor and Viceroy of the Pope, was highly esteemed and enjoyed a great reputation; not only for his knowledge, but for his great practical acquaintance with the affairs of the world and the actions of men. Of such he would dislxxviii

course admirably, and his judgment was sound. But his conduct did not tally with his speech; being by nature proud and curt, he was swayed sometimes by ambition, but oftener by avarice, in a manner unbecoming to a well-bred and modest man.' Bacon was proud, but not curt, nor was he avaricious, though the love of what money can buy was strong in him. Otherwise, Varchi's character of Guicciardini might do for Bacon set down in Italy. Like Bacon, Guicciardini was keenly observant, he had the habit of recording his impressions of men and things, and it was his mental turn to record them in the form of aphorisms. But Guicciardini's view was narrow, as Montaigne says, and he had not the ability to relate and combine facts on broad general principles; his history is therefore rather the memoranda and maxims of a statesman, scientifically arranged, than a philosophical summing up of human affairs. Nor had Guicciardini a literary style. He is more of a thinker than an author.

In the essay Of Superstition Bacon quotes from the Historia del Concilio Tridentino, by the Venetian, Fra Paolo Sarpi, probably from the contemporary translation of Sir Nathaniel Brent, but the Italian whom Bacon knew best was Machiavelli. Though the great Florentine is quoted but four times, three times only by name, yet many of the Essays should be read in connection with Machiavelli's Discorsi sopra La Prima Deca di T. Livio. The last essay, Of Vicissitude of Things, was clearly suggested by Book II, Chapter 5,