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FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES 27
contain at least five times as many letters as the piece
to be disguised.
A favourite and frequently quoted saying of Bacon's,
is the line from " "
Solomon's Proverbs" (xxv. 2)
: It
is the glory of God to conceal a thing
;
but the honour
of kings to search for matter." But Bacon alters the
wording and addresses the proverb in a passage
directly to King James, when he " says The
;
glory
of God is
to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king
is to find it out." Thus in " The Advancement ol
Learning." In the Latin edition of that work, how
ever, in " De Augmentis Scientiarum," the proverb
undergoes a still greater change in the same place,
having assumed this form : " Gloria Dei est celare
verbum, et gloria Regis investigare sermonem " (The
glory of God is to conceal a word (or a name, for
" verbum " also means that),
and the glory of the
King is to investigate speech.)
In his work "De SapientiaVeterum" ("The Wisdom
of the Ancients") Bacon seeks to fathom the deepest
meaning of the Greek primitive fables, to solve their
mystery. The old French edition of the seventeenth
century shows right on the title of the book the
version : "la Sagesse mysterieuse des Anciens."
In order, however, to show clearly how much
mystery attaches to Bacon's works and to everything he
did and said, let us briefly examine one of his books,
the complete edition of the " Essays " (1625).
There are few works of the kind, in which men of
thought, poets and proverbs are so frequently quoted.
Here we find quotations from Aristophanes, Virgil,
Horace, Lucrece, Seneca, Rabelais, Montaigne, Machiavelli,
from Solomon and other biblical authors, we