Cicero the Orator, and Hermogenes the Rhetorician, 
     besides his own books of Periods and Imitation, and the 
     like. Then did Car of Cambridge, and Ascham with their 
     lectures and writings almost deify Cicero and 
     Demosthenes, and allure all young men that were 
     studious, unto that delicate and polished kind of learning. 
     Then did Erasmus take occasion to make the scoffing 
     Echo: decem annos consumpsi in legendo Cicerone ; and 
     the Echo answered in Greek, qne Asine. Then grew the 
     learning of the schoolmen to be utterly despised as 
     barbarous. In sum, the whole inclination and bent of 
     those times was rather towards copie than weight.

     There in a page or so Bacon renders a detailed image of 
the literary struggles and fashions of his day. Like his idea of 
scientific methods, his idea of the literary scene is rooted in