Page 139 - DENG105_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_II

Elective English–II

Notes These late productions represented the capstone of a writing career that spanned more than
four decades and encompassed virtually an entire curriculum of literary, scientific and philosophical
studies.

Literary Works

Despite the fanatical claims (and very un-Baconian credulity) of a few admirers, it is a virtual
certainty that Bacon did not write the works traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare.
Even so, the Lord Chancellor’s high place in the history of English literature as well as his
influential role in the development of English prose style remain well-established and secure.
Indeed even if Bacon had produced nothing else but his masterful Essayes (first published in
1597 and then revised and expanded in 1612 and 1625), he would still rate among the top
echelon of 17th-century English authors. And so when we take into account his other writings,
e.g., his histories, letters, and especially his major philosophical and scientific works, we must
surely place him in the first rank of English literature’s great men of letters and among its
finest masters (alongside names like Johnson, Mill, Carlyle, and Ruskin) of non-fiction prose.
Bacon’s style, though elegant, is by no means as simple as it seems or as it is often described.
In fact it is actually a fairly complex affair that achieves its air of ease and clarity more
through its balanced cadences, natural metaphors, and carefully arranged symmetries than
through the use of plain words, commonplace ideas, and straightforward syntax. (In this
connection it is noteworthy that in the revised versions of the essays Bacon seems to have
deliberately disrupted many of his earlier balanced effects to produce a style that is actually
more jagged and, in effect, more challenging to the casual reader.)
Furthermore, just as Bacon’s personal style and living habits were prone to extravagance and
never particularly austere, so in his writing he was never quite able to resist the occasional
grand word, magniloquent phrase, or orotund effect. (As Dr. Johnson observed, “A dictionary
of the English language might be compiled from Bacon’s works alone.”) Bishop Sprat in his
1667 History of the Royal Society honoured Bacon and praised the society membership for
supposedly eschewing fine words and fancy metaphors and adhering instead to a natural
lucidity and “mathematical plainness.” To write in such a way, Sprat suggested, was to follow
true, scientific, Baconian principles. And while Bacon himself often expressed similar sentiments
(praising blunt expression while condemning the seductions of figurative language), a reader
would be hard pressed to find many examples of such spare technique in Bacon’s own writings.
Of Bacon’s contemporary readers, at least one took exception to the view that his writing
represented a perfect model of plain language and transparent meaning. After perusing the
New Organon, King James (to whom Bacon had proudly dedicated the volume) reportedly
pronounced the work “like the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”

The New Atlantis
As a work of narrative fiction, Bacon’s novel New Atlantis may be classified as a literary
rather than a scientific (or philosophical) work, though it effectively belongs to both categories.
According to Bacon’s amanuensis and first biographer William Rawley, the novel represents
the first part (showing the design of a great college or institute devoted to the interpretation
of nature) of what was to have been a longer and more detailed project (depicting the entire
legal structure and political organization of an ideal commonwealth). The work thus stands in
the great tradition of the utopian-philosophical novel that stretches from Plato and more to
Huxley and Skinner.
The thin plot or fable is little more than a fictional shell to contain the real meat of Bacon’s
story: the elaborate description of Salomon’s House (also known as the College of the Six Days

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