In The Advancement of Learning , which is itself shaped as 
a public oration, Bacon prefers, on intellectual grounds, the 
scholastic technique of aphorism to the Ciceronian method of 
explicit spelling out of information in the form of continuous 
prose:

          Another diversity of Method, whereof the 
     consequence is great, is the delivery of knowledge in 
     Aphorisms, or in Methods; wherein we may observe that it 
     hath been too much taken into custom, out of a few 
     axioms or observations upon any subject, to make a 
     solemn and formal art, filling it with some discourses, and 
     illustrating it with examples, and digesting it into a 
     sensible Method.

          But the writing in aphorisms hath many excellent