Even he is error-driven,
If yet he lives, and sees the light of heaven.
Id., ib. xx. 323.
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i. sc. 1.
The characters of signs and erring stars.
Marlowe, Faustus, sc. 3.
Essay. There is no particular modesty now in calling a treatise or dissertation an ‘essay;’ but from many passages it is plain that there was so once; which indeed is only agreeable to the proper meaning of the word, an ‘essay’ being a trial, proof, specimen, taste of a thing, rather than the very and completed thing itself.
To write just treatises requireth leisure in the writer, and leisure in the reader; and therefore are not so fit neither in regard of your highness’ princely affairs, nor in regard of my continual service; which is the cause which hath made me choose to write certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called Essays. The word is late, but the thing is ancient.—Bacon, Intended Dedication of his Essays to Prince Henry.