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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
swerve from the object aimed at,
cluding words following up the prayer
lating king :
as shown in the con
of the dissimu
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below :
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
The king's words soaring to heaven miss their mark.
"
The second disadvantage
: that it pusleth and
perplexeth the Conceits of ;
many that perhaps would
otherwise co-operate with him." Had Hamlet con
fided in them, he would have won his friend Laertes
and Ophelia, whom he loves, over to his side. But
he deems it essential to simulate madness also in her
presence ; he
distracts the mind of Ophelia,
till she
really goes mad, and he makes a bitter enemy
friend Laertes.
The third :
disadvantage simulation and dissimula
of his
tion deprive a man of the chief instrument of action,
of self-reliance, as shown in Hamlet's words accusing
himself of unmanly irresolution.
None of the thick volumes written on Hamlet
explains the character of that prince better than the
few sentences in Bacon's Essay. And for a good
reason : it is the poet himself whom we hear speaking.
" "
They come !
But the cry
is still :
Other authorities on Bacon have repeatedly drawn
a parallel
between a passage
in the Essay and the
tragedy of Hamlet, although it is but of secondary
importance, namely, the passage
in which the words of
the carefully-written commentary come nearest those
of the tragedy. Bacon says
:
It is a good shrewd Proverbe of the Spaniard, Tell a lye,
and finde a Troth.
by Simulation.
As if there were no way of Discovery, but