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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
to find that there the same O-sound plays a leading
part.
We refer to the O !-cries of the martyred king.
We may, however, rest assured that the prose form
in which the anecdote is now printed in the Collection
of Apophthegms is not that in which it was originally
written. I am convinced that the following comes
nearer the form and wording of the original
:
When King Edward the Second was
amongst his torturers',
who hurried him to
and/ro,
that no man should know where he was,
they set him down upon a bank :
and one time, the more to disguise his face,
shav'd him and wash'd him with water that stank :
(!)
The King said ; Well, yet I will have warm water for
my hairs. (!)
And so shed abundance of tears.
The final word "tears" must rhyme
with the final
syllable of the word "torturers'" above, and probably
also with the substitute for "beard," i.e., "hairs" in
the last line but one. The original rhyming words
"with water that stank," were evidently suppressed by
Bacon, as sounding too vulgar, and were substituted
by "with cold water of a ditch by." The colon after
" bank " and the corresponding one after " by " clearly
indicate that originally those words had rhymed.
Thus we see rhymes between the final words to
lines i, 4, 6 ;
to 5 and 7 and to 2, 8, 9. For the
final rhyme to refer to a word very far back, is of
frequent occurrence in English poems, and is even
more common among later poets (Herbert, Cowley,
"
and others). The rhymes who-to-fro-no-know,"
following so close upon one another, are, as we said