Bacon: As an #Essayist

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Bacon: As an #Essayist
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As a man of letters, Bacon is popularly
known for his #prose style. His way of writing
shares, no doubt, a number of qualities with
that of Elizabethan and Jacobean writers;
but it have, at the time, some special
features of its own. Thus, it remains for the
main part of the aphoristic--- with the result
that #Bacon is the most quotable writer of the
world. His essays are remarkable for their
brevity. His sentences are short and rapid
but they are forceful. In other words, as Dean
Church observes “They come down like the
strokes of a hammer”.
Bacon
evolved
a prose
style that
proved
for the
first time
that
English
can also
be used
to express fine thoughts in simple
sentences. Bacon, in fact, wrote more than
one style and suits his style to his subject.
In his first collection of “Essays” he
illustrates the definition of essay as
“#meditative” but in his later essays he
acquired blood and flesh. The stylistic
changes are to bring the greater clarity. In
his earlier essays his sentences are sketchy
and in incomplete manner but in later essays
there is warmth and clarity. Most of his
words are read like proverbs:
~~~~~~~~~
“For a lie faces God and shrinks from man”.
(“#Of Truth”)
“It is strange desire to seek power and loss
liberity
or, to seek power over other and to loss
power over
a man’s self” (“Of Great Pleasure”)
~~~~~~~
Thus, there is not even a single essay which
does not contain such wisdom of human
heart. His sentences ore over packed with
meaning and they are often telegraphic in
nature.
But the aphoristic statement of his essays
depends on such expression--- such as
“balance” and “antithesis” which marked the
structure of his sentences. In his essay “Of
#Studies” there is threefold balances:
~~~~~~~
Thus, his style is clearly rhetorical; and he
has the power to attracts its readers even
thought he cannot convince them.
In this sense, one has to study another
feature of Bacon’s style--- his extensive use
of images, metaphors, similes. Bacon draws
his imagery even from the human life or
from the common facts of nature. He gives
striking metaphors and similes to prove his
point. As he says in “Of Studies”: “……
distilled books are like distilled water flashy
things”. His similes are most of the time apt,
vivid and different. Classical mythology,
biblical, astronomy, philosophy, natural
observation, domestic aspects etc are
pressed to communicate with the meaning.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Certainly it is heaven upon earth, to have a
man’s mind
move in charity, rest in providence,
and turn on the poles of truth”.
~~~~~~~~~
Bacon’s words are without wit and #humour---
in ordinary sense of meaning--- but he is
capable of creating humour to please his
readers:
~~~~~~~~
“By pains man comes to greater
pain”. “Through indignities man can rise to
dignities. (Of Great Palace)
~~~~~~~
Though Bacon’s style is heavy in learning yet
it is flexible. Bacon, on the whole, is not
difficult at all. Though there are some
Latinism words in his essays but which are
difficult to follow yet they does not lead to
obscurity. Bacon’s style bears the stump of
Bacon, the man, who is not only the widely
studied essayist but one, who wrote with
great care permitting nothing superfluous in
it. What, Johnson says of Bacon the speaker,
is equally true of Bacon the writer:
~~~~~~~~
“No man ever wrote with care, or #suffered
less emptiness,
less idleness n what he said………. He
hearers what
should cough or took a side from him
without loss”.
~~~~~~~~
In conclusion, Bacon’s style bears the stamp
of its own, though there is some controversy,
whether he wrote one style or two. Bacon’s
essays cover a span of 28 years and within
this short period these essays were
published. Bacon’s style is not a personal, or
the chatty style of Montaigne or Lamb. His
essays are distinctive and aphoristic full of
learned quotations and allusions. But what is
important about his style is his brevity. One
may put forward the point, Bacon was,
indeed, a great artist who expresses his
thoughts and feelings in his style.