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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES 97
Bacon might also do. For, as the preface goes on to
say :
They are mucrones verborum, pointed speeches. They
serve to be interlaced in continued speech. They serve to be
recited upon occasion of themselves. They serve if you take
out the kernel of them, and make them your own.
Weighty importance, however, attaches to the
marginal note added to said preface by his secretary
Rawley, as the editor of the later editions :
This collection his Lp. made out of his Memory, without
turning any Book.
In other words, Bacon was so familiar with those
anecdotes, as to be able to dictate them one after the
other to his clerk a proof not only of the extraordi
of the vein of
nary memory of the man, but, above all,
humour he possessed. For, we must remember : the
collection contains no fewer than 280 anecdotes !
And Bacon relates them all, without the aid of a book !
How often, before he had them written down, must
Bacon have recounted these miniature stories with
their humorous points, to the delight of his friends.
This argument
is
fully borne out by his secretary
Rawley, a regular guest when Bacon had his friends
around him, who says in the short essay
:
" The
Life of Francis Bacon," 1657: "His Meals were
Refections of the Ear as well as of the Stomach, like
the Nodes Attica " (that is the title of a book by
Gellius, the great Roman essayist and recounter of
anecdotes).
"And I have known some," Rawley continues, "of
no mean Parts, that have professed to make use of
their Note- Books, when they have risen from his