Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/82

Rh Bacon was a Latinist, and Latin is the one language, ancient or modern, that can say the most in the fewest words.

The Roman Atticist who most affected Bacon's style is his favorite philosophical historian, Tacitus. As stylists the likenesses and differences between Tacitus and Bacon are of interest. Both writers were keen observers of men and things, the minds of both were naturally analytic, both possessed the faculty of crystallizing psychological or ethical or general truths in pointed epigrams or well-balanced antitheses. Bacon is fond of quoting from Tacitus the brief and telling sentences in which he summed up the character of a man, or the tone of an era. On the other hand, Bacon carefully avoided the rhetorical faults which lay Tacitus's style open to the charge of occasional obscurity. Bacon did not coin words, neither did he put new meaning into old words, nor use rare and uncommon expressions. He has no tricks of singularity. His is an art so bare and open that it even suggests no art, stylelessness. Instead of the labored obscurity here and there in Tacitus, Bacon's style is illuminated by the play of a great imagination, which suggested to him now a picturesque word, and now a striking comparison. Finally, Tacitus lived in the decline of an era, and his prevailing tone is gray and pessimistic. Over Bacon's style there rests the serenity of philosophic calm. The English Tacitus was born in a great age, and he was a lover of his fellow-men.

As to specific points of style, the most casual Rh