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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES 165
More than two-thirds of those fifty pages contain
new work added in 1625. Five Essays are quite
new, the other four are, more or less, supplemented
and re-cast. The first
Essay is written in praise of
truth blended with the poet's lie ; it eulogises theatrical
art, in glowing words culminating in rhymed verse.
Further on, and also
it
in rhymed verse, the Essay calls
a pleasure to watch the tempests of the sea, and the
tempests of human passions, thus pointing to the first
drama contained in the large Shakespeare edition
that had appeared shortly before, to The Tempest.
In the part added to the Essay, " Of Death," we find
it confessed that Bacon excelled the others in art, and
had reason to fear their jealousy that is
; passage also
written in
rhymed verse. In the Essay " Of
Revenge," Bacon plays the "part" of a pardoning
prince and we find the idea of a hurled ;
dart, a shaken
spear (Shakespeare) used as a metaphor for cutting
words. The " punning Essay, Of Adversitie," admits
(which was practically already done before), that the
principal confessions in the Essays attach to the
"
verse. The Essay praises the Security of a
Guardian Spirit," of a " Deus," " Nomen," "nom de
guerre," of a pseudonym. The quotations point to
the fact that that name is connected with " velamentum
" (curtain), and with "telum " (hurling spear,
Shakespeare). All this is
immediately followed up
with a defence of the art of such dissimulation, an
exact and detailed treatise explaining what conceal
ment, dissimulation and simulation are, together with
a commentary on the tragedy of Hamlet with striking
parallels drawn between the names of the principal
characters in Essay and Drama. Th e " Dissimula-