Bacon’s Essays are familiar to all lovers of English literature. There is nothing else in literature quite like them.
Bacon felt the form was suitable to receive many thoughts of his mind. Not merely his intellect but his whole disposition made the essay forms valuable to him. That Bacon regarded the essay as a “receptacle for detached thoughts”, is evident both form the essays themselves and from his own words about them. He speaks of them as “dispersed meditations”. He ranks them as mere recreations in comparison with his more serious studies. Yet he is; conscious of, and pleased with, their popularity.