>Write a comprehensive note on Bacon’s prose style. styl e. (P.U (P.U 2008) 200 8) >
Bacon’s style is most remarkable for its terseness. Bacon displays a great talent for condensation. Every sentence in his essays is pregnant with meaning and is capable of being expanded into several sentences. sentences. Many of his sentences appear to be proverbial sayings or apophthegms by virtue of their gems of thoughts expressed in a pithy manner. He can say that most in the fewest words. His essays combine wisdom in thought with extreme brevity. The short, pithy sayings in his essays have become popular mottoes and household expressions. An aphoristic style means a compact, condensed and epigrammatic style of writing. An aphorism is a short sentence expressing a truth in the fewest possible words. An aphorism is like a proverb which has a quotable quality. Bacon excels in this kind of writing. Indeed, his essays are replete with aphorisms. Any number of examples could be given from his essays essays to illustrate illustrate this style of writing. writing. Take the essay, Of Truth. There are a number of aphoristic sentences in this essay. Some of these may be quoted here: “A mixture of a lie doeth ever add pleasure.” Here Bacon wants to convey the idea that the statement of a truth becomes more attractive when a lie is mixed with it. Thus, whenever we want want to defend a lie, we could could quote this sentence sentence from Bacon. Bacon. “But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.” Here Bacon wishes to convey the idea that much harm is caused by a lie that settles down in the mind because such a lie will keep working upon the mind and will have long— long—term effects. A lie that is heard and then forgotten will not cause any any injury to a man. man. “Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in Providence and turn upon the poles of truth.” Here Bacon conveys a valuable moral by the use of the minimum possible number of words. The essay, Of Marriage and Single Life, shows the aphoristic quality of Bacon’s style in a more striking manner. Here are some of the sentences that are eminently quotable. “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune”. The idea here has been expressed most effectively and memorably. “Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants, but not always best subjects.” This is an is an excellent summing-up of the case. “Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age and old man’s nurses.” Here is an aphorism combining wisdom with wit. The essay, Of Great Place, also contains a number of pithy sentences. Here are a few examples.
“It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty: or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man’s self.” “The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains.” “For in evil, the best condition is not to will, the second not to can.” All the three sentences quoted above are excellent examples of Bacon’s terse and epigrammatic style. Here are a few pithy sentences from the Essay, Of Friendship: “For a crowd is not company and faces are but a gallery of pictures.” “Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their hearts.” “For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.” This sentence conveys to us the idea that every man has the highest possible opinion of himself. In other words, every man has his ego, and it is most often a highly inflated ego. “For there is no man that imparleth his joy to his friend, but he joyeth the more: and no man that in parteth his grief to his friend, but he grieveth the less.” This sentence is remarkable for summing up one principal advantage of having a friend. The essay, Of Studies, abounds in aphoristic or epigrammatic sentences some of which have become so famous that they are on the lips of even those men who have never heard the name of Bacon. “Crafty men condemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them.” “Some books are to be tasted, others 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.” His aphoristic style makes Bacon an essayist of high distinction. Aphorisms give to his essays singular force and weight. No one has ever produced a greater number of closely packed and striking formulas, loaded with practical wisdom. Many of them have become current as proverbs Bacon’s essays constitute a handbook of practical wisdom, enclosing in their shortest maxims, an astonishing treasure of insight. It may, however, be pointed out that, on account of extreme condensation, Bacon’s aphorisms occasionally became obscure. For instance, it would be difficult to get the meaning of the following pithy sentence from the essay, Of Truth: “Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief.” The essay, Of Suitors, contains a number of sentences which are short and aphoristic but obscure. For instance: “Secrecy in suits is a great mean of obtaining”. Again: “Suitors are so distasted with delays and abuses that plain dealing in denying to deal in suits at first, and reporting the success barely, and in challenging no more thanks that one hath deserved is grown not only honourable but also gracious.” There is hardly a reader who can understand the meaning of this sentence without some help from a scholar. In fact the whole of this essay offers considerable difficulty to the reader because of its excessive condensation and concentration of thoughts
But such exceptions apart, Bacon’s genius for compression lends much charm to his style. Every aphorism that we come across startles us by its novelty. Every epigram arrests us. Every pithy sentence holds our attention. And they all charm, delight and thrill us because they all clothe weighty and valuable ideas, suggestions, lessons, and so on. And what adds to their appeal is the fact that Bacon does not seem to have made conscious efforts to produce them. The aphoristic style is not “laboured” in the case of Bacon; it is truly spontaneous.
>What ideas do you form Bacon’s learning and scholarship and political views after your study of his essays? (P.U 2005) OR Bacon’s pragmatism and worldly wisdom temper his philosophy throughout. Elaborate. (P.U 2003) >
There is no doubt that the essays of Bacon are a treasure-house of what is called worldly wisdom. Worldly wisdom means the kind of wisdom that is necessary for achieving worldly success. Worldly wisdom does not imply any deep philosophy or any ideal morality. It simply means the art or the technique that a man should employ to achieve success in his life. It therefore implies .shrewdness, sagacity, tact, foresight, judgment of character and so on. Bacon’s essays are replete with wisdom of this kind. He teaches us the art of how to get on in this world, how to become rich and prosperous, how to rise to high positions, how to exercise one’s authority and power so as to attain good results, how to gain influence, etc. It is true that Bacon is a philosopher and a moralist, but it has rightly been pointed out by critics that, in his essays as in his own career, he treated philosophy and morality as being subordinate to worldly success. It is for this reason that the wisdom of his essays is of a somewhat cynical kind. It is significant that he described this essays as “Counsels, civil and moral”, which means that he intended his essays to provide such guidance to his readers as could help them in attaining success in civil life while at the same time observing certain basic moral laws. Bacon is clearly seen in his essays both as a philosopher and as a moralist. A philosopher is, broadly speaking, a person who is deeply interested in the pursuit of truth, while a moralist is a person who teaches human beings the distinction between what is right and what is wrong and urges them to tread the right path only. Bacon appears in this dual role in many of the essays that he has written. In the essay, Of
Truth, Bacon says that truth is the supreme good for human beings. He describes the inquiry of truth as the wooing of it, the knowledge of truth as the presence of it, and the belief of truth as the enjoying of it. Making an obvious reference to the Bible, Bacon says that the first thing created by God was light and the final thing created by Him was the rational faculty which He bestowed upon man. First God breathed light upon matter or chaos; then He breathed light into the face of man; and afterwards He has always been breathing light into the faces of those whom He chooses for His special favour. Bacon quotes Lucretius who said that the greatest pleasure for a man was the realization of truth and that, standing upon the vantage ground of truth, a man could survey the errors, falsehoods, and follies prevailing in the world. All these, we might say, are the observations of a philosopher-cum-moralist. Bacon’s object in writing this essay is manifestly to instill into the minds of his readers a love of truth. A man’s mind, says he, should turn upon the “poles of truth”. Falsehood brings nothing but disgrace. Quoting Montaigne, he says that, in telling a lie, a man is brave towards God but a toward towards his fellow-men. He warns human beings against the punishment which will descend upon them on the doomsday for the falsehoods which they indulge in or practice. The essay, Of Great Place, contains a large number of moral precepts but these moral precepts, be it noted, are synonymous with worldly wisdom. In seeking power, says Bacon, a man loses his liberty. Men in high positions, he observes rightly, derive much of their happiness only from hearing that other people envy them for the positions they are holding. Like a true moralist, he writes: “In place there is licence to do good and evil, whereof the latter is a curse; for in evil, the best condition is not to well, the second not.” The whole purpose of a man’s efforts should, according to Bacon, be meritorious works. Noble performance, he points out, raises a man almost to the status of God. Bacon also warns men of authority against the vices which are likely to beset them. There is plenty of worldly wisdom in the guidelines of conduct which he lays down for men in high positions. No man in a high position will come a cropper if he follows the advice offered by Bacon. But Bacon teaches no moral idealism and no ideal morality. In fact he is willing to come to terms with morality for the sake of worldly success. For instance, he clearly admits that a man may have to adopt objectionable methods in order to attain a position of high authority. He also approves of a man’s joining a group or a faction in order to enhance his worldly prospects though he suggests that, after a man has achieved the desired end, he should become neutral. This is how he writes in this connection. “All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man’s self whilst he is in the rising, and to balance hi mself when he is placed.” Even when Bacon urges a high official not to speak ill of his predecessor, he does so not in the interests of high morality but because there will be unpleasant consequences for the man who does not follow this advice. In other words, Bacon tries to bring about a compromise between morality and the demands of worldly success. The essay, Of Friendship, is the work of a pure utilitarian. Bacon does not speak of friendship in terms of an emotional bond intimately linking two persons. He makes a purely worldly approach to the subject. He gives us the “uses” of friendship. A friend enables us to give an outlet to our suppressed discontents. A friend clarifies our understanding. The advice given by a friend is most reliable. A friend can speak or act on our behalf in situations in which we ourselves cannot speak or act. There is no idealism
involved in all this. Bacon seems to suggest that we need friends only for our worldly happiness and worldly good. To put it more bluntly, he regards pure selfishness as the basis of friendship. This is an essay that clearly shows that Bacon’s wisdom is of a cynical kind, and that his morality is determined by purely utilitarian considerations. He does not speak of the emotional or moral aspect of friendship at all. Bacon makes a utilitarian approach even to studies. In his essay on this subject he speaks of the “pleasure” of studying only to forget it. Nor does he emphasise learning for its own sake. He wants studies to be supplemented by practical experience so that a man may make the best use of both to attain worldly success. Wise men, according to him, are those who put their studies to practical use. He even recommends the study of books “by deputy” and extracts being made of books by others, though he recommends this practice in the case of only the meaner books. He also points out that different branches of study have different effects on the human mind and speaks of curing different mental defects by means of an appropriate choice of studies. Bacon here becomes almost ridiculous by his reducing the whole thing to a scientific formula as if a man whose wits are wandering could really achieve powers of concentration by being made to study really achieve powers of concentration by being made to study mathematics. Bacon forgets that everybody does not have an “. aptitude for mathematics or for any other particular branch of study. But it is Bacon the man of the world who speaks here, not the true scholar that he really was. He allows his scholarship and his philosophy to be pushed into the background by his worldly enthusiasm. In the essay, Of Marriage and Single Life, Bacon’s wisdom, again, is not of the profound or philosophical variety; it is worldly wisdom, and much of this wisdom is cynical. The very opening sentence of this essay is cynical because Bacon here expresses the view that a married man with children cannot undertake great enterprises: “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.” And he goes on to say, what is certainly not true, that the “best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men.” As in the case of friendship, Bacon forgets the emotional element, and in this case also the passionate element which generally enters into marriage. What could be more utilitarian than the remark that a wife is a mistress when the husband is young, that she is a companion when he enters middle age, and that she is a nurse when he grows old? He wants soldiers to be married because then they will fight better! He thinks that by getting married a dishonest judge will become honest! However, it is the essay, Of Suitors, that completely exposes Bacon. He certainly indulges in a lot of moralising here. For instance, he disapproves of person who undertake suits without any real intention to have them granted; he disapproves of a man giving false hopes to a petitioner whose suit he has undertaken; and so on. But he comes to terms with morality when he suggests that if a patron wants to favour the undeserving of the two parties in a legal case, he should bring about a compromise between the two parties instead of pronouncing the judgment in fav our of the deserving person. Bacon here does not categorically reject, the case of the undeserving person; on the contrary, he wants the undeserving person to be accommodated. Again, he goes on to say that if a patron wants to appoint a less deserving candidate to a post’, he should do so without passing adverse remarks against the character of the more deserving
applicant. Here is a great moralist willingly condoning a patron’s action in appointing a less deserving candidate to a post which lies in his patronage!
>With Bacon does the new era of English prose start. Elaborate with reference to his essays. (P.U 2006) >
English prose owes a good deal to Bacon’s way of writing. A critic rightly points out that Hooker and Bacon did really great thing for the development of English prose. When alliteration, antithesis, similes from “unnatural natural history” were rampant, these two men showed that English was as capable as the classics of serving the highest purposes of language. They showed that it was possible in English also to express the subtleties of thought in clear, straightforward, and uninvolved sentences and, when necessary, to condense the greatest amount of meaning into the fewest possible words. Bacon shows himself in his essays to be a consummate rhetorician. He made for himself a style which, though not quite flexible and modern, was unmatchable for pith and pregnancy in the conveyance of his special kind of thought. When the bulk of English prose was written in loose sentences of enormous length, he supplied at once a short, crisp and firmly knit sentence of a type unfamiliar in English. He rejected the conceits and overcrowded imagery of the euphuists, but he knew how to light up his thought with well-placed figures, and give to it an imaginative glow and charm upon occasion, contrasting strongly with the unfigurative style of Ben Jonson who represents in his prose the extreme revulsion from euphuism. For the students of expression, Bacon’s essays are of endless interest and profit: the more one reads them, the more remarkable seeo$ their compactness and their nervous vitality. They shock sluggish attention into wakefulness as if by an electric contact, and though they may sometimes fail to nourish, they can never fail to stimulate. Emerson is the one modern writer with whom Bacon may be fairly compared, for their method is much the same. In each case, we have a series of trenchant and apparently disconnected sayings, where the writer tries to reach the reader’s mind by a series of aphoristic attacks. Comparing Bacon with his predecessors (Sidney, Lyly, Ascham), it will be seen how widely he departs from the prolix methods of the day. In rhetorical power, musical cadence, quaint1-turns of speech, he is equalled by many of his contemporaries, excelled by a few: but for a clear, terse, easy writing, he has no peer save Ben Jonson, and even today his essays are models of succinct, lucid prose. This is how an eminent English critic speaks about Bacon’s contribution to the development of English prose: “Bacon took, one of the longest steps ever taken in the evolution of English prose style. English prose was already rich and sonorous. Hooker
still ranks as one of our greatest stylists. So does Raleigh. But while these writers have majesty and strength, it cannot be said that they were masters of a style suited to all the purposes which prose must subserve. It was admirable for great themes and for moments of elevation, but ill-adapted to the pedestrian passages which must link such themes and moments one to another. The sentences were inconveniently long, and even in the hands of the most skilful writers were frequently involved and obscure. Parentheses were extremely common. The same is true of Bacon himself in his larger and more sustained works. But in the essays he did set the example, he did furnish the model. By the very plan and conception, almost of necessity, the sentences had to be short. With shortness came lucidity. The essays of Bacon have to be read slowly and thoughtfully, not because the style is obscure, but because they are extremely condensed. The grammatical structure is sometimes loose, but it is rarely ambiguous. With shortness came also flexibility. The new style of Bacon fitted itself as easily to buildings and gardens, or to suitors and ceremonies, as to truth and death. It could be sunk to the familiarity of likening money to muck, not good unless it be spread, or rise to a comparison between movements of the human mind and the movements of the heavenly bodies. To Bacon, in short, we are largely indebted for making good that which had hitherto been the chief defect of English literature. Till the closing years of the sixteenth century except in translations, no one had shown a mastery of the principles of prose. Then Bacon showed such mastery, and Shakespeare in even higher degree than Bacon.” Terseness of expression and epigrammatic brevity are the most striking qualities of Bacon’s style in the essays. Bacon possessed a marvellous power of compressing into a few words an idea with ordinary writers would express in several sentences. Many of his sentences have an aphoristic quality. They are like proverbs which can readily be quoted when the occasion demands. Only Bacon could have written the following sentences which are remarkable for their condensation and brevity: “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.” (Of Marriage and Single Life) “For in evil, the best condition is not to will, the second not to can”. (Of Great Place) “Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their hearts.” (Of Friendship) “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” (Of Studies) “A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.” (Of Truth) His aphoristic style makes Bacon an essayist of high distinction. Aphorisms give to his essays singular force and weight. Bacon achieves this terseness of style often by avoiding superfluous words and by omitting the ordinary joints and sinews of speech. Occasionally, it must be admitted, Bacon even becomes obscure because of extreme condensation but, as a rule, his brevity is matched only by his lucidity and clearness. Another important quality of Bacon’s style is his recurrent use of figurative language. In the essay, Of Truth, for-instance, he gives us very vivid and apt similes and metaphors in order to illustrate his ideas. He compares truth to a naked open daylight which does not show the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world as half so grand and
attractive as candle-lights show them. He compares falsehood to an alloy in a coin of gold or silver. The alloy makes the metal work the better, but it lowers the value of the metal. Here is another excellent example of Bacon’s figurative style: “Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.” In the essay, Of Marriage and Single Life, he tells us that some men so exaggerate the value of freedom that they “will go near to think their girdles and garters to be bonds and shackles.” He also aptly states the case against a clergyman’s marrying: “For charity will hardly water the ground where it must first” fill a pool.” Here is the use of figurative language in the essay, Of Friendship: “For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a^ tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.” “Those that want friends to open themselves.unto are cannibals of their own hearts.” In fact these two sentences illustrate at once his aphoristic style and his use of figurative language. There are some more similes and metaphors in this essay. For instance: the world is a wilderness without true friends; advice from a person who is not fully acquainted with our minds and circumstances is like the prescription of a physician who is not well-acquainted with our bodies; the last fruit of friendship is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels; a friend is like the philosophers’ stone that worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good and benefit of nature. In the essay, Of Studies, he gives us a very appropriate simile when he compares “distilled books” to “common distilled waters”. The essays of Bacon are full of illustrations, allusions, and quotations, some of these quotations being from Latin sources. These allusions and quotations show Bacon’s love of learning. In the essay, Of Truth, we have allusions to Pilate, Lucian. Lucretius, and Montaigne with quotations from the last two. He also gives us a quotation from the Bible in this essay. These allusions and quotations enrich this essay and make it more interesting. In the essay, Of Marriage and Single Life, we have a reference to Ulysses and a quotation from Thales, an ancient Greek philosopher. In the essay, Of Great Place, there are allusions to Tacitus, Galba and Vespasian. The essay, Of Friendship, contains a large number of allusions which illustrate Bacon’s argument that even great men, who haye strong and firm minds, need friends to whom they can open their hearts. There are a number of allusions to philosophers also in the same essay. His love of quotations too is also seen here. He quotes Aristotle, Cominius, Themistocles, Heraclitus. Indeed, allusions and quotations seem to be at his finger’s tips. These allusions and quotations lend to his ideas greater weight and serve to make his style more scholarly.
>Nowhere is Bacon so fascinating, so incisive, so personally involved as in his ‘Of Studies’. Elaborate. (P.U 2007) >
Bacon’s style is most remarkable for its terseness. Bacon displays a great talent for condensation. Every sentence in his essays is pregnant with meaning and is capable of being expanded into several sentences. Many of his sentences appear to be proverbial sayings or apophthegms by virtue of their gems of thoughts expressed in a pithy manner. He can say the most in the fewest words. His essays combine wisdom in thought with extreme brevity. The short, pithy sayings in his essays have become popular mottoes and household expressions. This essay deals with some of the uses of study, and offers some sound ideas relating to this theme. The uses of studies are classified by Bacon under three heads —the use of studies for delight; the use of studies for ornament; and the use of studies for ability. Bacon also gives us some excellent advice as to why and how one should read. Furthermore, he tells us that different studies have different effects on the human mind. Various mental defects or shortcomings, says Bacon, can be remedied by various kinds of studies. The need of experience to supplement and perfect studies has duly been emphasised in the essay. Bacon would not be satisfied with mere bookish knowledge. The wisdom won by experience is as necessary as the wisdom gained from books. But it is not the ideas that are so important in this essay. This essay is a wonderful illustration of that condensed style of which Bacon was a master. We find Bacon displaying his talent for using the maximum economy of words in order to express his ideas. This essay is a masterpiece of brevity and terseness. Some of the sentences read like proverbs. Here are a few examples of Bacon’s epigrammatic and aphoristic style: (i) “Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.” (ii) “Crafty men condemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them.” (iii) “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” (iv) “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man and writing an exact man.” Here is a sound precept in the same terse style: “Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.” Bacon’s essays abound in very appropriate and original simil es. We have one such simile here when Bacon says that “distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things”. We get another appropriate simile when Bacon compares the effects of various physical exercises on bodily diseases with the effects of different studies on mental defects. There is hardly an essay by Bacon in which he does not introduce a Latin expression or a Latin quotation. We have two Latin quotations in this short essay to enhance its scholarly quality. We could say, without any exaggeration, that it is one of the finest essays in English prose. It gives us a number of-sound maxims and a number of sentences that we can use as quotations when occasion demands. Some of the sentences, indeed, cling to our memory without any mental effort on our part to memorise them. That is one reason why it is one of the best-known essays from the pen of Bacon
