Bacon’s style

Without any shred of doubt Bacon is a father of English essay. But besides being the
father of the essay, Bacon is also the father of English prose. Hugh Walker is his
famous book “The English Essay and Essayist ’ remarks, “Bacon had more than
introduced a new literary form. He took one of the longest steps over taken in the
evaluation of English prose style – a style which set that style on the road which is
traveled not through deviations, down to the days of Swift and Addison. Bacon certainly
gave guidance to the successive generation that followed him.”

Prose before Bacon was rich and sonorous. Hooker and Raleigh were great stylist
but their prose sentences were long and obscure ,they were full of parenthesis .The
diction was highly Latinized. The Style prevalent was heavy. To speak in the words of
Dr. Johnson: “Their language might befit the mouth of whales but it was highly
unsuitable for little fishes”

In other words it was not the prose style of everyday life .Bacon departed from this
prolix style. He avoided many of the common defects of prose style of this age. He
adopted a style which was suitable for all type of subjects. He wrote many ordinary
domesticated things as well as on philosophical themes like truth and death.

His style is aphoristic in nature. An aphorism is a short sentence expressing the truth in
a fewest possible words. It means compact , condensed and epigrammatic style of
writing. It is like a proverb which has quotable quality. The other quality of his essay is
terseness of expression and epigrammatic brevity. In rhetorical power and musical
cadence he was excelled by none. He set up a new method of prose which was simple,
rhetorical , musical and condensed.

Below are given some examples of the aphoristic style :

 Studies serve for delight , for ornament and for ability.

 Wives are young men’s mistress, companions for middle ages, and old man;s
nurses.
 Revenge triumphs over death, love slights it, honour aspireth to it , grief flieth to it
, fear pre-occupateth it.
 Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark .
 The virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity in fortitude.
 Tell a lie and find a truth.
 Some books are to be tasted, other to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digested.
 Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
 A mixture of lie doth ever add pleasure.
 Certainly it is a heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in
providence and turns upon the poles of truth.
 For in evil the best condition is not to will second is not to can.
 It is a strange desire to seek the power and lose liberty.
 The rising unto power is laborious and by pains man comes to greater pains.
 He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.
 Unmarried are best friends, best friends, bet masters, best servants, but not
always best subjects

Bacon shows two different styles in his essays. In the first edition of his essays
(1597) he used a style which was in keeping with the conception of the essays
which he had that time. When he wrote the first edition, he thought that essays
were merely ‘brief jotting, dispersed meditations’. That is, stray, casual or
scattered thoughts. It was an attempt on the subject, and it was something
incomplete. So it must carry with it its ‘unfinished condition’ .
Naturally these brief was jotting pull down on short hand the paper in almost
telegraphic style. The sentences were short, pithy, curt and stenographic. Eiyen
if a sentence had three or four clauses, there were no connectives in the various
clauses. Each laus stands by itself. E ach clause can be turn into independent
sentence. Not only this, each sentence if developed fully on the bases of ideas
and thought it contains, wopid run into a paragraph. It is the connected
expression of weighty thoughts. The statements that each sentence of bacon’s
essays contains matter of a paragraph of an ordinary writer is very true. This
style of bacon can be called in one word ‘aphoristic style’.
In the second and third edition we find a gradual change in bacon’s style. The
abrupt and abstract nature of the early sentences is replaces by un find
sentences. In other words we can say that from curt stenographic and aphoristic
style bacon had move to a comparatively looser , colorful and persuasive style.
The sentences are enriched by metaphors and smilies. The following abstract
will make this point clear:- “ prosperity is the blessing of the old testament;
adversity is the blessing of the new, which carrieth the greater condition and the
clear revelation of God’s favour.”