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was the rule. The essays are enriched with maxims and proverbs. He supports his ideas
and arguments with innumerable quotations, allusions and analogies which prove his
wide knowledge and learning. The aptness of the similes, the witty turn of phrases and
the compact expression of weighty thoughts are evidence enough of the brightness of his
intellect.
Suspicions among thoughts are like bats among birds.
Money is like much, except it be spread.
Virtue is like precious adours --- most fragrant, when they are incensed or crushed.
Moreover, the precise and authentic turn of sentences and the condensation of thoughts
in them have been enhanced by the antithetical presentation. Such as:
A lie faces God and shrinks from man.
The ways to enrich are many and most of them are foul.
It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty.
Through indignation, men rise to dignity.
Thus with the tool of antithesis, Bacon made his argument many times stronger and
influential than a simple sentence. He created so much wit and strength in such precise
writings that they are still valid and famous. No man individually did provide such
strength and simplicity to the English language than Bacon. Bacon tried to reach the
readers mind by a series of aphoristic attacks. Therefore he is considered as the pioneer
of modern prose. There is hardly any equal of him for clear, terse and compact writing.
Now, it appears to be an irony of nature that a man with such a tremendous intellect and
wisdom had such a mean character. Bacon was not mean in the sense of being a miser. He
was indeed reputed to be a very generous. The manner in which Bacon betrayed his
friends, especially Essex, proved him most ungrateful and ignoble man. He made
friendship and uprightness subordinate to his success. He always kept his eye on the main
chance, worshipping the rising sun and avoiding of the setting one.
His marriage was also a marriage of convenience. He did not hesitate to take part in
political intrigues in order to promote his ambition. His letter to the king and queen were
also full of flattery that it was hard to believe that they came from the pen of such an
intellectual man.
Though he was wise yet he showed certain incapacity of emotions and this trait can also
be witnessed in his essays. He took the purely personal and domestic matters of a man
like marriage, friendship, love etc in terms of pure utility. Such as:
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.
And
Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own heart.
In short, Bacon was a man of the world worldly wisdom and worldly convenience. He
had a great brain but not a great soul. His complex and contradictory characters will
continue to be a psychological enigma for the readers to understand. So, he was definitely
the wisest, brightest and meanest of mankind.