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120 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
book in question is
entitled " Les Oevvres Morales et
Politiques de Messire Fran9ois Bacon, Grand Chancelier
d'Angleterre. De la Version de I. Baudoiiin.
A Paris. 1633."
In this book also many of the anecdotes are beauti
fully rhymed, and, doubtless, in that form, they did not
fail to produce the wonted effect upon the guests
present at Bacon's merry entertainments.
Before proceeding to give samples of the great
English humorist's talent for rhyming in French verse,
we would ask the reader kindly to remember that
those witty rhymes were written before the time of
Corneille, Racine, and Moliere, that it was an English
man who set himself the task of rhyming in French,
and that the rhymed verses are not printed as such,
do not claim to
but in modest prose-form, so that they
be classic works, though, from the humoristic point of
view, they must be so termed. They are rhymes such
as Bacon recited for the delectation of others, calculated
chiefly to satisfy the ear (as every rhyme and
is)
not
written for the eye (though, strange to say, the French
man of to-day attributes so much importance to the
orthography of a rhyme). In most cases, the point
also here flashes up in a short rhyme, and, as in the
original, the rhyme does not set in until the questioning
and answering begin.
Should any one, however, object to the varying
length of the French verses, we would refer him to
the poems by the great poet La Fontaine, author of
the French Fables, and also to certain poems of
Victor Hugo and others. Even La Fontaine affords
many a sample of irregular grouping of the rhymes.
And the very short lines with their quick succession