SOURCE: Walker, Hugh. “Miscellaneous Essayists of the Seventeenth Century.” In The English Essay and Essayists, pp. 62-6. London: J. M. Dent, 1928.

In the following excerpt, Walker concedes that although the themes of the Resolves were seldom profound, the literary style of the work occasionally does achieve the mastery of Francis Bacon's essays.

While, in the early part of the seventeenth century, the delineation of characters was the most popular exercise of the essayists, it was not the only one. The instrument which Bacon had introduced could be put to many uses, and among the writers of miscellaneous prose there were a few, apart from Jonson, who trod more closely in his footsteps than the artists of charactery. One such was Owen Felltham (1602-1668), author of Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political; a man about the events of whose life little is known, while his opinions are patent to every reader...