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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
Two lines of one metrical foot, then two lines of two
feet -one long line of five feet, concluding with a line
of one foot. They all rhyme, the first being a onesyllabled,
the second a three-syllabled, the third a
two-syllabled rhyme. The two final lines furnish a
counterpart to the manner of rhyming noticeable in
the melancholy poem, "The world's a bubble." The
two-worded rhyme "fed it "-"bred it" challenges
comparison with the well-known "fit it "-"hit it"
from Love's Labour s Lost. Those that prefer to do
so, may treat the whole as consisting of two Shake
spearean long lines interspersed with abundant inter
nal rhymes, such as we repeatedly meet with in the
plays :
He said he had feeding swans and breeding swans ;
But for malice, he thanked God, he neither fed it
nor bred it.
And now to the anecdotes which Bacon himself
dictated to his clerk and had printed in 1624/1625,
with his name to them, They must, of course, have
originated long before that ;
they were words of wit
and humour with which he had already delighted the
guests at his table, when he was still at the height of
his reputation as chancellor. Rawley tells us so, and
we may take his word for it.
Now, these " Apophthegmes " were printed in prose
throughout, as we already saw in the simile of the
swans. Yet many, even most of them, betray rhythm
and rhyme. At times the rhyme does not flash out
till the end, when the point comes. And then the
author is
very fond of concluding with a short rhyme,
as here with " neither fed
it nor bred it? Or else the