Bacon's education was grounded in the classical texts of ancient Greece and Rome, but he brought vividness and color to the arid scholasticism of medieval book-learning. Whatever their subject, whether it is something as personal as "Friendship" or as abstract as "Truth," the essays combine a mixture of rhetoric and philosophy; and are perhaps the most complete and rounded examples of Bacon's literary style.

Rather than merely summarizing popular philosophy or producing glib expositions of correct conduct, Bacon attempted to change the shape of the other men's minds. He believed rhetoric, as the force eloquence and persuasion, could incline the mind towards the pure light of reason.