Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part F (2025)

MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE (28 February 1533 - 13 September 1592), the French statesman and the author who began the genre of essay (‘essai’ in French) in the world literature, fervently declared: “I am the one subject of my essays.” Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 - 27 December 1834), the Prince of English essayists heartily and affluently followed this Montaignian tradition in his romantic essays. But Lord Francis Bacon (Jan. 22, 1561 - April 9, 1626), the glory of his age and nation, the adorner and ornament of learning, and, above all, the Father of English essays, did not follow Montaigne, as the subjects of his essays, unlike the essays of Charles Lamb, are in his own words, “Counsels, Civil and Moral” (Bacon, 1597). His are not the essays that are full with Lambian personal touches, self-revelations, and subjective appeals but they are richly informative, impersonal in nature, profiteering and pragmatic in their objective and didactic in their form written in the tersest of language instead of Lambian poetic tenderness and sensuality. Bacon’s essays, in other words, are meant to ‘guide’ his readers and followers practically in their effort to achieve the worldly success or to occupy higher positions in their life and career, and not to reveal any personal details about the author’s own life. Apparently the two paradigms, ‘the essays of Francis Bacon’ and the notion of ‘humanitarianism,’ seem very paradoxical. One important reason for this is the ruthless approach that Bacon owned to advice his followers through his writings; the other, equally important, reason for this is Bacon’s pithy and stern prose style. But an intimate study of his essays also shows the essential humanitarian approach of Bacon in his “Counsels…” ^__ how Bacon has been fervently humanitarian in guiding and virtually helping his readers in every respect of their lives, so that they can achieve the pinnacle positions in their own careers. The present study, therefore, proposes to justify this essential truth that Bacon’s essays are not merely “good advice for Satan’s Kingdom,” as William Blake has very caustically remarked on Bacon’s “Essays,” but they are equally imbued with the ideas concerning practical utility and modernity aiming at a global humanitarian end.