PREFACE.
In preparing this edition of Bacon's Essays, I have had two objects in view. In the first place I have endeavoured to provide the general reader with information which shall enable him to understand the Essays, and in the second place I have endeavoured to convey the information in such a form that he may read them with enjoyment. It is only the advanced scholar who can understand Bacon without the aid of threefold explanations,—explanations of the language, of the thought, and of the allusions. With regard to Bacon's language, Mr Reynolds says that 'almost every page of the Essays bristles with difficulties, some of them the more likely to mislead because even a careful reader, not familiar with the language of Bacon's age, might fail to detect them for what they are.' I have therefore added footnotes which explain these verbal difficulties and furnish an English rendering of the numerous Latin quotations. From these footnotes the reader can obtain the interpretation of Bacon's language without repeatedly turning the pages to hunt for words in a Glossary. Interruptions of this sort inevitably rob a book of much of its charm, and one aim of this edition is to make it possible, as we said, for Bacon to be read with enjoyment.
