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contains a selection from the critical essays of earlier years. These were written in the quiet and leisure of a country parish. They were founded on a thorough examination of the books they attempt to estimate; and they all express what was the writer's honest opinion, unbiassed by any kind of influence. It would have been easy to select smarter essays; but after a few years one looks back with little pleasure on ill-natured writing. Anything of that kind has been excluded from this volume.

A. K. H. B.

March 13, 1865.

THE

CRITICAL ESSAYS

OF A

COUNTRY PARSON.

I.

ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON.*

THIS is in every way aromame the most generally

HIS is in every way a remarkable book. We have

before this volume

popular work of the greatest and meanest man of his time, with a Commentary of Annotations by the man who, of all living authors, approaches in many of his intellectual characteristics nearest to Bacon himself. We find in the writings of Archbishop Whately the same independence of thought which distinguishes the writings of Bacon; the same profusion of illustration by happy analogies which is characteristic of Bacon's later works; the same clearness, point, and precision of style. We do not wonder that the accomplished

*Bacon's Essays: with Annotations by Richard Whately, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin. London: 1857.

B

prelate, accustomed (as he tells us in his Preface) to write down from time to time the observations which suggested themselves to him in reading Bacon's Essays, should have found them grow beneath his hand into a volume; and we cannot but regard it as a boon conferred upon all educated men, that this volume has been given to the world. Nor must we omit to remark,

in this age of readers for mere entertainment, that although the volume be a large one, written by an archbishop, and consisting of comments upon the thoughts of a great philosopher, the book is invested with such an attractive interest, that it cannot fail to prove a readable and entertaining one, even to minds unaccustomed to high-class thought and incapable of severe thinking. The somewhat severe terseness of the Essays is relieved by the lighter and more popular tone of the Annotations. Archbishop Whately's mind is of that nature that it takes up each of a vast range of subjects with equal ease, and apparently with equal gusto; grappling with a great difficulty or unravelling a great perplexity with no more appearance of effort than when lightly touching a social folly, such as might have invited the notice of the author of The Book of Snobs, or when playfully blowing to the winds an error not worth serious refutation. Hardly ever in the range of literature have we observed the workings of an intellect in which nervous strength is so combined with delicate tact. We are reminded of Mr. Nasmyth's steam-hammer, which can smash a mass of steel in shivers, or by successive taps drive a nail through a half-inch plank.

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