Question- Describe Bacon's contribution to English Prose.

Or
What are the contributions of Bacon to the development of English essay?
Or
Analyse Bacon's contribution to English prose.

Answer -

The position of prose during the Elizabethan period was much less decided than either poetry or drama, although hardly less important considerable experiment was still needed before it could be made contempt to cope with the or rush of new expression caused by the new learning. The period of exploration for new style, new form and new technique was not over. It was during this period that first attempts were made in the prose novel and literary criticism as also the essay-essay in its strict sense. The literary prose of the beginning of this time is represented by the writings of Roger Ascham. He uses vocabulary "in which native and borrowed terms mingle without the slightest embarrassment", and he commands a varied style which by turns becomes quiet, quick, racy and slack. He moreover retains the use of alliteration and antithesis, unconscious of their inefficacy in prose.

He put aside the elaborate affectations of Lyle, and while not free from mannerism, struck a happy compromise between the straight forward simplicity of Ascham and highly coloured complexity of Enphuism. His prose is simple and melodious, strong and sweet, not unmixed with an occasional drift into ornate and mannered expression. Bacon wrote English prose in an age when conversational ease and colloquial expression was at a discount. Prose had to be extraordinary, and had to be raised above the level of the common speech. Bacon, therefore,had to do the work of craftsman, modelling, chiselling, and polishing the language as best as he could. He did treat prose as a craft and made it compact, sonorous and later on to a certain extent poetical. He is a writer of periods which can be controlled, their extension can be made intensive, and they can back more meaning within their limits than may be found in a string of simple sentences. His periods are carefully chiselled and well rounded up. His essays, as also his other English works have a fair sprinkling of Latin quotations, and he frequently goes back to his favourite Latin writers to make his point. His partiality for the language is too well-known to be repeated, and it was this language through which he sought immortality as a writer and philosopher.

Referring to the contribution of Bacon to the development of English prose Hugh Walker has observed in his book, The English Essay and Essayist. "Bacon did more than introduce a new literary form. He took one of the longest steps ever taken in the evolution of English prose style, a style which set that style on the road which it travelled, though not without divagations, down to the days of Swift and Addison. English prose was already, before Bacon, or independently of him, rich and sonorous. Hooker, the last book of whose Ecclesiastical Polity was published in the same year with Bacon's earliest essays, still ranks as one of our greatest stylists. So does Raleigh, who had written several things before that date, though his history of the world did not appear till seventeen years later. But while these writers have majesty and strength, while in their hours of inspiration they were able to write as few have written since, while Raleigh's apostrophe to death remains absolutely unsurpassed, 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 skilled writer were frequently involved and obscure. Parentheses were extremely common. These faults were characteristic not only of scholars, and there is no need to go for illustration to the Euphuists. Even men who, like Richard Hakluyt, were primarily simple men of action, fall into similar vices, because no model of a style consistently simple and clear had yet been set. The same is true of Bacon 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. They are so even in the later essays. 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 and the thought is profound. The grammatical structure is sometimes loose, but it is rarely ambiguous.

"With shortness came flexibility. The older style was cumbrous, it could rise, but it could not easily sink, to adapt Goldsmith's jest about Johnson, it might befit the mouths of whales, but hardly those of little fishes. The new style of Bacon fitted itself so easily to buildings and gardens, or to suitors or ceremonies, as to truth and death. It could sink to the familiarity of likening money to much, not good unless it be spread, or rise to a comparison between the 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 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. The Bacon showed such mastery."

Referring to Bacon's contribution to English prose Compton-Rickett has observed in his book, A History of English Literature, "Although Bacon had no great respect for the English language, holding that these modern languages will at one time play the bankrupt with books', yet no man individually did more to give strength and simplicity to our tongue than he. So far, the great defect in English prose had been its prolixity and diffuseness. Bacon put an end to this. His scientific training helped him here, its suggested clarity."

Referring to Bacon's place among the prose-writers of England Legouis has written in the book, History of English Literature. "Bacon, who opened up new horizons to the understanding of his fellow- countrymen, who broke with the middle ages and made so bold a step forward into modern times was chained to the past by his languages will at one time or other play the bankrupt with books', and he entrusted his philosophy to Latin. His capital work Instauratio Magna is written in Latin, as are the numerous scientific and philosophic pamphlets appended to it. Even when he wrote in English his essays, which soon became popular, it was the Latin translation of them, being in universal language', which might, he judge, last as long as books last.'

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