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6 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
This document, called, like the
"orisons or psalms"
of the Last Will, a " Prayer or Psalm" and covering
only two-thirds of a folio page, is printed in prose, but
is couched in noble poetic language and betrays a
rhythmical, eloquent, flowing style.
In said document
occur two highly important passages, important, as
Bacon speaks therein of the secrets of his heart and of
his talents, which passages are treated in the same
style as those lost " orisons," i.e., they are " curiously
rhymed," for they are indeed richly, skilfully and
euphoniously rhymed.
The learned investigators, however, have hitherto
never noticed those "curiously rhymed" passages.
And that for two reasons the one, because most of
them carelessly overlooked or ignored this document
the other, because the verses are rendered irrecognisable
owing to the manner in which they are printed ;
for they are not set in verse-form, but are printed as
prose along with the rest of the prose-text.
And so that is what Bacon means by
"
curiously
rhymed."
Wherever the adjective
" " curious or the adverb
" "
curiously occurs in the Shakespeare works, it
is not intended to convey the idea or admixture of
anything funny or ridiculous, which the word does
nowadays, but is synonymous with careful, accurate,
scrupulous, elegant, nice (cf.
Alexander Schmidt's
Shakespeare- Lexicon, and the old English- Latin
Dictionary by Adam Littleton, of the seventeenth
cejntury) ; the Latin adverb "curiose" being derived
from "cura," to which the English word "care" is
related, both as to sound and derivation. In Romeo
and Juliet (\. 4) the expression "curious eye" occurs