...progress of literature and the advancement of learning. " Men began to hunt more after words than matter; more after the choiceness of the phrase and the round...and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet fulling of the clauses, , , . than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument,...

...Ciceronianism as the first vanity in learning, 'for men began to hunt more after words than matter; more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round...and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than...

...well-known passage from The Advancement of Learning, Bacon utters his dissatisfaction with the way "choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures" seemed...

...prejudged, and denounced as a negative turn in the history of Renaissance prose style — a pursuit 'more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence . . . than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention,...

...sought to come to the spirit or heart of the matter. Impatient of nuance, they spoke satirically of "the choiceness of the phrase and the round and clean composition of the sentence" (Bacon in The Advancement of Learning). When you hear them do this, you know that the drama's great...