Francis Bacon once wrote, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. . . ." This is a book to be chewed and digested, and these essays make as satisfying a meal today as when the first edition was published in 1597. Indeed, the present-day reader is amply rewarded for the effort of taking in the old-fashioned English and peeking at the back of the volume for translations of the Latin quotations sprinkled liberally throughout.
Most of Bacons Essays are as relevant as ever; others offer windows into a social order now gone but somehow familiar from its influence on our own. This is a book of moral instruction, a book that distills the wisdom of European civilization, and a book that reminds us that people are people, no matter when they lived. All of this is wrapped in prose showing flashes of brilliance lit by an authorial voice that is authoritative and often kind.