"Bancon's Essays A Selection" Taken from the flap of the book:

Bacon wrote his Essays in the full tide of the Renaissance. These essays resulted from the classical wisdom and practical experiences of an Elizabethan scholar. They present him as “the moralist, the statesman and the man of the world'. Coleridge appreciated him as the British Plato' and Spedding viewed him as an ‘indispensable' author. However, Pope dubbed him the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind'. Similarly, Blake found in his essays ‘good advice for Satan's kingdom'. In spite of all these, people still read his essays and will keep on reading because his essays make them aware of the crooked go of the world.