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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES 189
considered impossible to do justice to those rhymes in
the language of the old Romans. The Essay contains
innumerable passages corresponding to others in the
dramas, for every reader knows how full the Shake
speare plays are of prophecies and superstitious
sayings. The quintessence of the Essay
is that Bacon
ridicules that sort of thing, referring
it to the realm of
fable and fiction. There, he says, is its proper place ;
and that, as a rule, such things are not spoken
of until
the facts have occurred and are over, when the pro
phecies are invented. That settles the question as to
what the author of Shakespeare thought of " ghosts
and hobgoblins." He did not believe in prophecies
and ghosts.
And now we see a "Witch" appear in the Essay;
we hear a quotation from " Seneca the Tragedian,"
followed by a passage selected from ancient history :
The Daughter of Polycrates
dreamed, that Jupiter bathed
her Father, and Apollo annointed him : And it came to passe,
that he was crucified in an Open Place, where the Sunne made
his Bodie runne with Sweat, and the Raine washed it.
We already hear that the passage describing the
realisation of the dream commences with the same
words as those in the old ballad of " Jephtha's Daugh
ter," which Prince Hamlet makes fun of when speaking
to old Polonius about his daughter Ophelia. The
ballad, the Shakespeare play and the Bacon Essay
afford us a threefold analogy :
Jephtha and daughter,
And
Polonius and daughter, Polycrates and daughter.
in keeping with popular superstition and with the
character and style of the popular ballad, Bacon imi
tated the old-fashioned rhymes, his verses abounding