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1 88 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
Nor can the Latin Essay abstain from rhyming.
It opens with a perfect fanfare of rhymes :
Suspiciones inter cogitationes, sunt ut inter avesVespertiliones
(Suspicion is to thought what a bat is to a bird).
Written in verse-form :
Suspictones
inter cogitattones,
sunt ut inter aves Vesperti/tbw^s.
As regards the Essay, " Of Discourse," which con
tains a large number of pleasant rhymes, we would
but mention the funny conclusion :
To use too many Circumstances, ere one come to the
Matter, is Wearisome ;
To use none at all, is Blunt.
Who would suspect rhymes here, at first sight?
And yet there they are, only somewhat concealed.
The first is a two-syllabled rhyme between the words
" ere-one-come " and "Wearisome " we don't detect
;
the second until we pronounce the final words as they
were intended to be pronounced, then "noneVand
" Blunt
"
form a rhyme :
To use too many Circumstances, ere one come
to the Matter, is Wearisome ;
To use non't
all is Blunt.
As witty as an anecdote-rhyme
! First we have the
long lines with their ;
dragging pedantic rhyme then
the two short lines with their smart rhymes tumbling
over each other, as it were.
The " Essay, Of Prophecies," a new one added in
1625, shows such an abundance of specifically English
rhymes that it was not translated into Latin. It was