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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES 105
ta'en-men," finally "ly-by, can-man." The rhymes
one another without a
of the point follow close upon
break.
The whole event and the scorn of the Lacedae
monian could never have been described in verses of
uniform length, so vividly as in Bacon's masterly
manner of varying the length of the lines.
Bishop Latimer said, in a sermon at court ;
That he heard
great speech that the King was poor and many ways were pro
pounded to make him rich : For his part he had thought of one
way, which was, that they should help the King to some good
office, for all his officers were rich.
These words the Bishop aimed at English functionaryism,
whose grasping, covetous spirit
he would
scourge. The actual words of the speech (beginning
in this case with " That he heard"), as always in the
" Apophthegmes," are printed in italics. Nor is the
colon omitted, but is,
as we have so often seen, so set
as to divide the sentence into two halves, where the
principal rhyme
is heard. The manner of rhyming is
somewhat burlesque. The
" quadruple rhyme speechrich-which-rich,"
runs like a red tape through the
whole poem. Lines i, 2, 3 and lines 4, 6 5, may be
treated as constituting two long lines, "mer-serwere
" then appearing as internal rhymes. Trans
lated into verses, the lines would run thus :
Bishop Latimer
said, in a ser
mon at court ;
That he heard great speech
that the King was poor (rhyme ?)
and many ways were
propounded to make him rich :