The Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (Oxford World's Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Recommended reading, but footnotes excessive in this edition
Review: Francis Bacon was an observant and insightful student of human society and human nature, as reflected in most of the essays here. The perspective *is* a bit bourgeois, but I guess Bacon can't help having been a nobleman. A lot of the later essays in the book seem to be along the lines of "how to put people to good use." Included also in this volume is a quite detailed biographical sketch at the beginning, and some extra material with aphoristic sketch-like versions of a few of the essays, plus the "Antitheses of Things," which is quite interesting.

The language is essentially Shakespearean, which I always enjoy reading, as it gives one the sense of watching as phrases and words are coined before your eyes (Shakespeare coined INNUMERABLE words and phrases in his works, and Bacon does a few here too, actually, according to the Explanatory Notes); a refreshing change from modern language, where we basically speak in cliches. The problem is, this edition (Oxford's World's Classics) has SO MANY "translational" footnotes explaining his 17th-century word usage, that it's quite distracting and unnecessary. One has to learn to basically ignore them most of the time. The Explanatory Notes collected at the end are quite indispensable for dealing with Bacon's penchant for endless streams of Latin quotes and likely-obscure-to-the-modern-reader classical references, but the footnotes are just ridiculous. I'd guess one could reasonably assume that anyone who'd pick up this book in the first place would not need to be told that "contrariwise" means "on the contrary," "mark" means "observe," "magnanimity" means "noble, generous feelings," "overlaid" means "burdened"... I could go on and on. I don't know if other editions have as thorough Explanatory Notes as this, though; if they do I'd go with that over this edition.

Rating:
Summary: Essential
Review: There are few writers I have read in my entire life who have taught me more than Francis Bacon. These essays are simply essential.