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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES 181
laies," may be drawn across to the next verse, and
treated, with it, as one long
line. The words " himthem
" are also rhymes, and " when " probably rhymed
with the word " Men " (?) suppressed. How delight
fully Bacon plays with the rhyming lines " Cat in the
" That which a Man'' which are, moreover, so
Pan "
perfectly in keeping with the character of what the
words depict
: we actually see the " Cat" being tossed
"in the Pan." Rendered into German, the beginning
run thus:
lines might
Eine List gibt's, die man in England heisst :
1
Das Wenden der Katz
in der Pfann' ;
wenn man den Saiz,
den ein Mann
sagt, einem andern wagt, in den Mund zu legen, als
kam' er von ihm.
Must we not take it that in those lines Bacon is
alluding to his relationship to his " Instrument " ?
He certainly does, and pointedly so, for, in the very
next sentence of his Essay, he "
says It :
is a way that
some men have, to glaunce and dart at Others." In
Latin the allusion to the hurling-spear, in other words
to " Shake-speare " is still clearer " : Est artificium in
"
usu, ut quis in alios spicula quaedam oblique torqueat
An (" artifice is resorted to, in which one person con
cealed aims darts figuratively speaking at others ").
Which statement he immediately follows up with the
words :
Tales and
" Some have in readinesse, so many
Nothing, they would insinuate, but
Stories, as there is
they can wrap it into a Tale " (we must not forget
that " Tale " also means a dramatic story, see The
Winter s " Tale "),
the concluding sentence giving the