The Essayes: or, counsels, civill and morall. With a table of the colours, or apparances of good and evill, and their degrees, as places of perswasion, and disswasion, and their severall fallaxes, and the elenches of them.

London: Printed by John Beale,, 1639. To be chewed and digested Early edition of what has always been Bacon's best-known and most widely read work, perhaps the greatest essay collection in the English language. Bacon first published his Essayes in 1597, in a slim octavo containing ten essays. He continued to add and revise, with the final lifetime edition of 1625 including 58 essays, the text of which is here followed. "Some of the essays deal with policy for princes and men in high position... A number, however, are written from the viewpoint of those seeking advancement in life. Bacon proffers concise advice and judgements on civil business, situations, conduct, and the weighing of character and motives. The work's appeal is due to the pragmatic intelligence and knowledge informing its observations, which are expressed in a style employing striking images, apt examples, and quotations, and pithy aphorisms" (Zagorin, p. 141). The Essayes include the famous pronouncement that "Some Bookes are to be Tasted, Others to be Swallowed, and some Few to be Chewed and Digested" (p. 293). Small quarto (184 x 140 mm). Contemporary calf, rebacked, spine gilt in compartments with red morocco label. With initial and final blanks. Armorial bookplate of Albert Kirby Fairfax, 12th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1870- 1939), neat early date notation to title page. Slight chips to a few page edges without loss, tear at foot of last few leaves affecting border, central closed tear to terminal blank, sheet 2B with additional leaves apparently as two sheets were mistakenly put through the press. A very good copy. ESTC S100372; Gibson 17. Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon, 1999.