and to look out each of the passages referred to. Again, if an author, in making an extract from some work of his own, gives a reference to it, the caviller will represent him as seeking to puff his own productions: if he omit to give the reference, the same caviller will charge him with seeking to pass off as new what had been published before. And again, a reader of this character, if he meet with a statement of something he was already convinced of, will deride it as a truism not worth mentioning; while anything that is new to him he will censure as an extravagant paradox. For 'you must think this,

look you, that the worm will do his kind."

I chose, then, rather to incur the blame of the fault—if it be one-of encumbering the volume with two or three additional sheets, which, to some readers, may be superfluous, than to run the risk of misleading, or needlessly offending, many others, by omitting, and merely referring to, something essential to the argument, which they might not have seen, or might not distinctly remember.

The passages thus selected are, of course, but a few out of many in which the subjects of these Essays have been treated of. I have inserted those that seemed most to the purpose, without expecting that all persons should agree in approving the selections made. But any one who thinks that some passages from other writers contain better illustrations than those here given, has only to edit the Essays himself with such extracts as he prefers.

To the present edition some additions have been made; one of which—a short Annotation' on Essay XLVI.-has been printed separate, for the use of purchasers of the former editions, and may be had of the Publishers.

1 Antony and Cleopatra, Act v.

BACON'S ESSAYS.

WHAT

ESSAY I. OF TRUTH.

THAT is truth?' said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief-affecting1 free-will in thinking, as well as in acting and, though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth; nor again, that, when it is found, it imposeth3 upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour; but a natural, though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies, where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant, but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily' as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the

1 Affect. To aim at; endeavour after.

This proud man affects imperial sway.'-Dryden.

2 Discoursing. Discursive; rambling.

'We, through madness,

Form strange conceits in our discoursing brains,

And prate of things as we pretend they were.'-Ford.

3 Impose upon. To lay a restraint upon. (Bacon's Latin original is, 'Cogitationibus imponitur captivitas."')

'Unreasonable impositions on the mind and practice.'-Watts.

Daintily. Elegantly.

'The Duke exceeded in that his leg was daintily formed.'- Wotton.

B