Annotated by Richard Whately; notes & glossarial index by Franklin Fiske Heard

Half leather with leather tips, firm binding, shows corner/edge wear, four raised bands with gold lettering and gold ornamentation on spine. Pages clean and tightly bound with foxing to few pages; edges and end papers with marbled swirling design.

Though Bacon considered the Essays as recreation to other studies, it was given high praise by his contemporaries, even to the point of crediting him with having invented the essay form. Annotated by Richard Whately, an English rhetorician, logician, economist, and theologian who also served as the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin.

I don't know if fine writing is ultimately of any great value, but Bacon's Essays would surely have to be described as remarkably fine writing. "What is truth, said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer". Can there be a better first line for an essay anywhere in English?