Evaluating Bacon as an essayist Legouis writer in A History of English Literature: “It was by his essays that Bacon provides himself great writers of his own language. While Montaigne is copious, familiar, prodigal of confidences, interest in everything, prone to philosophise on whatever related to man, Bacon is curt, almost sibylline, entirely impersonal and averse from the observations he has himself been able to make.