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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES 89
psalms are written is the frequent employment of
alliteration, a playful repetition of initial letters, also
met with in the Shakespeare works. The final words
of " "
The Passionate Pilgrime (1599) are :
These are certain signes, to know
.Faithful friend from /lattering foe.
In the Bacon psalms
:
As Flames of Fire his Anger they fulfil . . .
The shady Trees along their Banks do spring,
In which the .Sirds do build, and sit and sing.
What could be more charming than the delicious
contradiction in the following dainty simile :
The Moon, so constant in Inconstancy ?
There is nothing of the kind in the Bible, but all
the more in the plays
; thus, for example,
in the lovescene
between Romeo and Juliet.
Another instance :
The greater Navies look like Walking Woods.
The Bible says nothing about "walking Woods,"
but Macbeth does.
Over and over again, we come across the word
" " Will written with a capital W. The word " Will '
is
constantly cropping up, and being put to ridicule, in
English literature. This is the word played upon in
the 1
36th Shakespeare sonnet (puns being made on
will and Willy, William). Even the same rhyme
which plays a principal part in that sonnet, the rhyme
" "
Will
" fulfil," occurs again in this very form in one
of the psalms.
But that is not all !
When,
in the translation of the
9Oth Psalm, the metre of " Venus and Adonis " is