But it contains some of his finest writing.
In the _Essays_ he writes as a looker-on at the game of human affairs, who, according to his frequent illustration, sees more of it than the gamesters themselves, and is able to give wiser and faithful counsel, not without a touch of kindly irony at the mistakes which he observes.
In the _Advancement_ he is the enthusiast for a great cause and a great hope, and all that he has of passion and power is enlisted in the effort to advance it.

The _Advancement_ is far from being a perfect book.

As a survey of the actual state of knowledge in his day, of its deficiencies, and what was wanted to supply them, it is not even up to the materials of the time.

Even the improved _De Augmentis_ is inadequate; and there is reason to think the _Advancement_ was a hurried book, at least in the later part, and it is defective in arrangement and proportion of parts.
Two of the great divisions of knowledge--history and poetry--are despatched in comparatively short chapters; while in the division on "Civil Knowledge," human knowledge as it respects society, he inserts a long essay, obviously complete in itself and clumsily thrust in here, on the ways of getting on in the world, the means by which a man may be "_Faber fortunae suae_"-- the architect of his own success; too lively a picture to be pleasant of the arts with which he had become acquainted in the process of rising.

The book, too, has the blemishes of its own time; its want of simplicity, its inevitable though very often amusing and curious pedantries.