Of Ambition and Of Masques and Triumphs
By Francis Bacon
The Renaissance was a great Pan-European movement of freedom from the bondage of
Christian dogma and obscurantism practiced during the middle ages. As a renaissance
humanist Francis Bacon by his scholarly works which were intensely absorbed in the
Renaissance spirit of humanism contributed significantly to England’s advancement.
Renaissance Humanism represented a shift from ‘contemplative life’ to ‘active life’. The
middle ages led a life of contemplation and religious devotion away from the world to slowly
stepping into the era of Renaissance where the highest cultural values are well associated
with active involvement in public life, in moral, political and military action and in service to
the court. The traditional religious values still coexisted with the new secular values.
Francis Bacon a ‘Renaissance Man’ refers to an individual who in addition to participating
actively in the affairs of public life; possesses knowledge and skill in many subject areas
which in turn inspired people teaching on how to participate and rule a society. Bacon’s
engagement with different aspects was seen to be associated with parliament, a lecturer of
law, council to Queen Elizabeth, an intellectual reformer, a philosopher and the father of
Modern Science can be traced from (1561-1626). “All knowledge as his province” claimed
by Bacon who dedicated himself to a wholesale revaluation and restructuring of traditional
learning. To take the place of the established tradition of a miscellany of scholasticism,
humanism and natural magic, he proposed an entirely new system based on empirical and
inductive principles and the active development of new arts and inventions, a system whose
ultimate goal would be the production of practical knowledge for the use and benefit of men
and the relief of the human condition. At the same time that he was founding and promoting
this new project for the advancement of learning, Bacon was simultaneously moving up the
ladder of sate service. While serving as a Chancellor, he was charged on bribery and forced to
leave public office. He then retired to his estate where he devoted himself full time to his
continuing literary, scientific and philosophical work.
Emile Legouis states explaining the nature of Bacon’s writing, - “It is a product of the free
spirit of thought, which adventures in new path discovered by itself”. Bacon’s humanism
reflects in his philosophic and scientific spirit, his essays were first published in 1597 as
‘Essayes’, ‘Religious Meditation’, ‘Places of Perswasion and Disswasion’, ‘Seene and
Allowed’, there were only ten essays in this version and a much enlarged second edition
appeared in 1612 with 38 essays. Another collection under the title ‘Essayes or Councels,
Civill and Morall’ was published in 1625 with 58 essays. For Bacon knowledge was the
ultimate and his vision of the ideal is embodied in his unfinished utopian novel ‘New
Atlantic’ with other books like ‘Novum Organum’ where a more scientific approach was
experimented in understanding the natural world and ‘The Advancement of learning’.
Bacon considered the essays “but as a recreation of my other studies” and demonstrate
extensively his readings of past literature of Europe both classical and medieval, drawing
attention on previous writers such as Michel de Montaigne and Aristotle. In ‘Of Ambition’,
, Bacon’s allusion to the shadowy Roman history when Emperor Tiberius employed Macro to
smash the evil designs of Sejanus is based on his reading of the Roman historian Tacitus.
Further the influence of classical culture on Bacon is seen in his use of Latinisms.
(Bacon’s Prose Style)
Bacon being a product of English Renaissance experimented with the English Language
during his time as a mode for the best literary expression. The flush of the renaissance revival
of classical learning influenced Ciceronian prose style of writing which was highly rhetorical
and greatly influenced the Latin writers of the time. Marcus Tullius Cicero popularised the
oratical and forensic style of prose in ancient Latin. Ciceronian language was extravagant and
excessively formalised, putting all the emphasis on the expression and little emphasis on the
thing expressed and had as its practitioners and clientele the privilege few. In ‘Advancement
of Learning’, Bacon condemned Ciceronanism as the distemper of language in which words
were given more value than matter. He advocated that English literary prose needed sharp
words and pointed sentences concised, a style in short that may be called ‘turned’ rather than
fused. His ideal prose style therefore must be ingenious and lofty, intense yet also profound,
acute, realistic revealing but at the same time somewhat grave and mysterious. Baconian style
in the ‘Essays’, thus is an important aspect of anti-Ciceronian movement and the intensely
positivistic and inductive channels of the progressive ideas and thoughts of the later stages of
the Renaissance Movement. It is a popular Baconian criticism that Bacon’s Aphoristic style is
modelled after Seneca’s Epistle’s; he objected that Senecan style is full of ‘vain show’.
Bacon’s style is rather individualistic, a blending of ‘Traditional and Individual Talent’. His
essays are generally written in aphoristic style. The word ‘aphorism’ is derived from a Greek
word ‘aphorismos’ meaning the defining of boundary. It is a short, pithy sentence, a precept
or principle expressed in few words and in a detached manner with enjoyable wit and
glistening with dry humour. His essays filled with councels, civil and moral and with naked
facts of observation fit to light one’s path. Essays like ‘Of Death stand as a testimony to
Bacon’s believe in embracing the pragmatic values. Bacon like an empiricist states “it is
natural to die as to born”. Bacon’s rhetorical method, the similes and metaphors he uses are
often drawn from nature and physical sciences likely used in ‘Of Truth’ where he compares
“falsehood with alloy coins”. The ideal in his essays is countered by the pragmatic and a
reach for the elusive truth by steering between extreme positions and decisive statements.
(Thematic Analysis: Utilitarianism)
Francis Bacon, an Elizabethan erudite who has the competence to assimilate fetched
knowledge and converts it into wisdom. It is a renaissance exposure to the multiple horizons
of literature. Man to be confident of his own power and potentially to be bold and eager to
extend the boundary of knowledge by applying his own faculties to the end demonstrated one
of the significant features of Renaissance Humanism. Bacon’s desire to serve mankind by his
ceaseless search for truth was the best tradition of Renaissance Humanism.
Bacon writes a set of “Of Essays” each ‘of’ addressing an aspect of life. We can locate
strategies, optimism, truth, practicality, explanation, allusions, straightforward morality and
didacticism in his essays. Bacon is versatile and universal in utilitarianism of his essays to
By Francis Bacon
The Renaissance was a great Pan-European movement of freedom from the bondage of
Christian dogma and obscurantism practiced during the middle ages. As a renaissance
humanist Francis Bacon by his scholarly works which were intensely absorbed in the
Renaissance spirit of humanism contributed significantly to England’s advancement.
Renaissance Humanism represented a shift from ‘contemplative life’ to ‘active life’. The
middle ages led a life of contemplation and religious devotion away from the world to slowly
stepping into the era of Renaissance where the highest cultural values are well associated
with active involvement in public life, in moral, political and military action and in service to
the court. The traditional religious values still coexisted with the new secular values.
Francis Bacon a ‘Renaissance Man’ refers to an individual who in addition to participating
actively in the affairs of public life; possesses knowledge and skill in many subject areas
which in turn inspired people teaching on how to participate and rule a society. Bacon’s
engagement with different aspects was seen to be associated with parliament, a lecturer of
law, council to Queen Elizabeth, an intellectual reformer, a philosopher and the father of
Modern Science can be traced from (1561-1626). “All knowledge as his province” claimed
by Bacon who dedicated himself to a wholesale revaluation and restructuring of traditional
learning. To take the place of the established tradition of a miscellany of scholasticism,
humanism and natural magic, he proposed an entirely new system based on empirical and
inductive principles and the active development of new arts and inventions, a system whose
ultimate goal would be the production of practical knowledge for the use and benefit of men
and the relief of the human condition. At the same time that he was founding and promoting
this new project for the advancement of learning, Bacon was simultaneously moving up the
ladder of sate service. While serving as a Chancellor, he was charged on bribery and forced to
leave public office. He then retired to his estate where he devoted himself full time to his
continuing literary, scientific and philosophical work.
Emile Legouis states explaining the nature of Bacon’s writing, - “It is a product of the free
spirit of thought, which adventures in new path discovered by itself”. Bacon’s humanism
reflects in his philosophic and scientific spirit, his essays were first published in 1597 as
‘Essayes’, ‘Religious Meditation’, ‘Places of Perswasion and Disswasion’, ‘Seene and
Allowed’, there were only ten essays in this version and a much enlarged second edition
appeared in 1612 with 38 essays. Another collection under the title ‘Essayes or Councels,
Civill and Morall’ was published in 1625 with 58 essays. For Bacon knowledge was the
ultimate and his vision of the ideal is embodied in his unfinished utopian novel ‘New
Atlantic’ with other books like ‘Novum Organum’ where a more scientific approach was
experimented in understanding the natural world and ‘The Advancement of learning’.
Bacon considered the essays “but as a recreation of my other studies” and demonstrate
extensively his readings of past literature of Europe both classical and medieval, drawing
attention on previous writers such as Michel de Montaigne and Aristotle. In ‘Of Ambition’,
, Bacon’s allusion to the shadowy Roman history when Emperor Tiberius employed Macro to
smash the evil designs of Sejanus is based on his reading of the Roman historian Tacitus.
Further the influence of classical culture on Bacon is seen in his use of Latinisms.
(Bacon’s Prose Style)
Bacon being a product of English Renaissance experimented with the English Language
during his time as a mode for the best literary expression. The flush of the renaissance revival
of classical learning influenced Ciceronian prose style of writing which was highly rhetorical
and greatly influenced the Latin writers of the time. Marcus Tullius Cicero popularised the
oratical and forensic style of prose in ancient Latin. Ciceronian language was extravagant and
excessively formalised, putting all the emphasis on the expression and little emphasis on the
thing expressed and had as its practitioners and clientele the privilege few. In ‘Advancement
of Learning’, Bacon condemned Ciceronanism as the distemper of language in which words
were given more value than matter. He advocated that English literary prose needed sharp
words and pointed sentences concised, a style in short that may be called ‘turned’ rather than
fused. His ideal prose style therefore must be ingenious and lofty, intense yet also profound,
acute, realistic revealing but at the same time somewhat grave and mysterious. Baconian style
in the ‘Essays’, thus is an important aspect of anti-Ciceronian movement and the intensely
positivistic and inductive channels of the progressive ideas and thoughts of the later stages of
the Renaissance Movement. It is a popular Baconian criticism that Bacon’s Aphoristic style is
modelled after Seneca’s Epistle’s; he objected that Senecan style is full of ‘vain show’.
Bacon’s style is rather individualistic, a blending of ‘Traditional and Individual Talent’. His
essays are generally written in aphoristic style. The word ‘aphorism’ is derived from a Greek
word ‘aphorismos’ meaning the defining of boundary. It is a short, pithy sentence, a precept
or principle expressed in few words and in a detached manner with enjoyable wit and
glistening with dry humour. His essays filled with councels, civil and moral and with naked
facts of observation fit to light one’s path. Essays like ‘Of Death stand as a testimony to
Bacon’s believe in embracing the pragmatic values. Bacon like an empiricist states “it is
natural to die as to born”. Bacon’s rhetorical method, the similes and metaphors he uses are
often drawn from nature and physical sciences likely used in ‘Of Truth’ where he compares
“falsehood with alloy coins”. The ideal in his essays is countered by the pragmatic and a
reach for the elusive truth by steering between extreme positions and decisive statements.
(Thematic Analysis: Utilitarianism)
Francis Bacon, an Elizabethan erudite who has the competence to assimilate fetched
knowledge and converts it into wisdom. It is a renaissance exposure to the multiple horizons
of literature. Man to be confident of his own power and potentially to be bold and eager to
extend the boundary of knowledge by applying his own faculties to the end demonstrated one
of the significant features of Renaissance Humanism. Bacon’s desire to serve mankind by his
ceaseless search for truth was the best tradition of Renaissance Humanism.
Bacon writes a set of “Of Essays” each ‘of’ addressing an aspect of life. We can locate
strategies, optimism, truth, practicality, explanation, allusions, straightforward morality and
didacticism in his essays. Bacon is versatile and universal in utilitarianism of his essays to
