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126 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
The ear detects all the rhymes, however they may be
printed.
But, for the eye, an arrangement of the verses
in the following manner were perhaps to be preferred
:
. . . vne marastre dans la maison ?
Nenwy, respond// Caton,
au contraire, ie vous ay tousiours treu^
tellement a mon gr,
qu'a 1'aduenir ie seray bien aise d'engendrer beaucoup
d'enfans telle que vous.
Does it seem credible that these wanton merry
anecdote-rhymes, just as delightfully funny in French
as they are in English, should have emanated from the
same mind as the serious rhymes in the psalms,
as the
deeply melancholy poem, "The world's a bubble?"
And yet
it is so ;
for both books bear the same author's
name, " Francis Bacon," and both books were pub
lished in the same month and in the same town.
If the English of to-day, more especially if the
philological world, knew nothing more of these con
cealed rhymes, I if I
apologise should have offended
anybody through my German ear having re-detected
those rhymes. They are there, nobody can deny that
fact any longer. And that they were also heard by
Bacon's contemporaries is proved by Rawley's words,
"Et quod tentabat scribere, Versus erat." In the
course of time, so much becomes forgotten, so much is
ovefnear d, which was once known and heard. And
those\ tnat still read Bacon, and not only of him, or only
extract^ from his works and translations, are, relatively
speakinX'. ^ew anc* ^ar between. Not only his concealed
verse Baci^n himself "wants re-discovering to the world.
All that \\ ve nave so far dwelt upon is merely ?
lude to that V^hich the Essays
are to reveal to us.
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