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94 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
the Shakespeare plays. With the suggested altera
tion,
the opening sentence of the dedicatory
the volume of psalms would run thus :
The pains, that it
pleased you to take, about
words to
some of my Writings, I cannot forget :
which did put me in minde, to Dedicate
to you, this poor Exercise of my Gout (Bacon's Sickness).
So that not only in the psalms dedicated to Marquis
Fiatt (lost to us), but right here in the psalms openly
written in verse-form, in the very
first
place that
offered itself,
concealed in the preface written in proseform,
we discover a verselet " curiously rhymed " in the
very
first sentence of the book.
Besides the psalms, two short poems discovered
later are said to have been written by Bacon, and
have lately been added to the complete
edition of his
works. One is cast in Alexandrines, the other in a
mellifluous form of iambic verse, the lines varying
from five to two feet. The first stanza of the secondnamed
poem runs thus :
The world's a bubble, and the life of man
less than a span ;
In his conception wretched,
so to the tomb.
from the womb
Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years
with cares and fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns the water, or but writes in dust.
41 The world's a bubble " whom does that not
remind of certain passages in the Plays ? " Frail
"
the very word conjures up Hamlet. " But writes in
dust " who can help recalling the line in Henry the
Eighth : " Their virtues we write in water ? " I am