Book Description

This book was written "To furnish to the English student the best practicable substitute for that classical training which is ordinarily obtained through the study of Latin and Greek ... We have many valuable works about the English language, and literature, and enough of instruction how to interpret what we read. To give a higher value to these, we need critically to read and interpret more good English in our schools ... For the purposes named above, no book seems better adapted, as a foundation, than Lord Bacon's Essays--abounding in classical learning, in occasional great felicities of style, in solid, weighty, and ingenious thought; also in forms of expression antiquated, obsolete and obscure; in sentences sometimes elegant, sometimes decidedly the reverse, and these, in many instances, not well arranged as to length or structure, or distribution into paragraphs of suitable length. On these, and other accounts, these Essays are admirably adapted for critical purposes, for the culture of judgment and taste, for the comparison of older forms of expression with those approved at the present day, and as a preparation for the intelligent and appreciative reading of the great English authors of the seventeenth century, so rich in thought, in learning, and in genius ... In preparing this work, a free use has been made of Archbishop Whately's edition, and especially of his learned and sensible Annotations ... The Sketch of the Life and Character, and of the Philosophical Writings of Bacon, has been chiefly derived from Macauley's brilliant and learned article on Montagu's Edition of his Works; from Dr. Kuno Fischer's able work on the Philosophy and Times of Bacon; in part also from Devey's Introductory Essay, Hallam's Literature for Europe, and Craik's and MacFarlane's History of England."--Introductory