O Lord,

And e'er as my worldly blessings were exalted,

so secret darts from thee have pierced me;

and when I have ascended before men,

I have descen

ded in humiliation before thee.

Up to the word "exalted," we must treat the lines as a preparatory introduction, so to speak. But, from the words: "so secret darts," an abundance of perfect rhymes sets in to a rhythm of unexcelled elasticity, and so moulded to the ideas conveyed by the words, as to excite our admiration, while it were difficult to find a passage in literature excelling it. The concluding long line with its internal rhymes, commencing at : "I have descended," may be said to describe in mellifluous tones the self-humiliation of the erstwhile exalted one, whose heart, once filled with worldly thought and pride, now humbly bows in the dust in prayer.

If we emphasise all the inner-rhymes, the principal passage would assume this form:

We may quote a short passage from the Shakespeare dramas, to prove that exactly similar instances

occur in those poetic works; thus in Measure for Measure (iii. 1), in which Isabella persuades her young brother to brave death, as no other choice is left. The whole scene appears to be without rhyme, and the greater part is written in iambic verses of five feet. And yet (I am not aware that any one else has ever noticed, or remarked upon, the fact) in the passage where Claudio shows a childlike, natural fear of death, there occur a number of charming internal rhymes :

CLAUDIO.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot. . . .

The exclamation "Ay," is pronounced and printed "I" in the original. The speaker is supposed to utter the words with a trembling voice, so that all the rhymes shall be heard:

I,

but to die,

and go
we know

not where; to lie

in cold obstruction, and to rot. . .

If the former are "curiously rhymed" psalm-verses, these are "curiously rhymed" stage-verses. They resemble each other as brothers do; the former bearing the name of Bacon, the latter the name of Shakespeare.

Tieck translated the beautiful words leaving out the rhyme :

Ja! aber sterben! Gehn wer weiss, wohin
Zu liegen, kalt und starr, und zu verwesen

Of course, the word "rhymed" does not occur in that passage in the psalm (as Bacon in all his worksexcept in his "Last Will"-carefully, "curiously," avoided the word*), yet the fact remains: we have discovered "curiously rhymed" verses in a Baconian psalm.

The word " curiously," on the other hand, does occur in Bacon's printed works, though not in connection with the word "to rhyme" or "to write," but with the word "to read." In his Essay "Of Studies," Bacon speaks of the manner in which books are to be read. Books should be treated in three manners, according to the value of each. He says literally (in the original edition of 1625):

Some Bookes are to be Tasted, Others to be Swallowed, and Some Few to be Chewed and Digested: That is, some Bookes are to be read onely in Parts; Others to be read but not Curiously; And some Few to be read wholly, and with Diligence and Attention.

The sentence occurs in prose-form along with other prose, exactly as it is reproduced here; but it is profusely rhymed, "curiously rhymed," Bacon would say. "Tasted rhymes with "Digested," Digested," "Swallowed," with "read" (as is so often the case in the Shakespeare works: "solemnisèd," etc.) "Few forms a cesural rhyme with the root of the verb "Chewed," "Chew." Further on we find "Curiously"

Once only does Bacon use the word "rhymes" in his printed works, and that is in "The Advancement of Learning," 1605, where he praises verse as a means of impressing something firmly upon the memory, but he jeers at, and makes fun of, extempore-speaking in "verses or rhymes."

rhyming with "be," and the internal rhyme "Cu" and "Few." Put into verse-form (which is rendered easy by the capital letters indicating the rhymes and sometimes beginning the lines), the sentence would assume this form :

Some Bookes are to be Tasted,

Others to be Swallowed,

and some Few to be Chew'd and Digested.

That is, some Bookes are to be read

Onely in Parts; Others to be read

but not Curiously;

And some Few to be

read wholly,

and with Diligence and Attention.

If we were to change the last word (and we shall see, in another passage, that Bacon wants us to do so), and to substitute the word "slowly" for "Attention," which suits the sense equally well in every respect, the two final verses should also rhyme :

read wholly,

and with Diligence and slowly.

But there is no necessity for us to do so; as the word "Attention" is supposed to be pronounced as having four syllables (as is often the case in the Shakepeare dramas), "on representing a full syllable, and thus rhyming with "wonne, by observatiòn," which words conclude a sentence preceding the one quoted above.

Considering, however, that Bacon advises us, in the above sentence, to read the first-named kinds of books not curiously," surely that means, that the third, the important kind of books must, on the contrary, be read,

not only with diligence and attention, but also curiously." And these are the very books which are "curiously" written, "curiously rhymed." For only he that reads them very carefully, if possible, aloud, only he that listens with the ear of the poet, will detect the concealed, secret rhymes, in the prose.

Here then we have the proof that Bacon wrote, not only the psalms presented to the Marquis Fiatt, curiously rhymed," but that he also "curiously rhymed" a passage in an Essay. Later on, we shall see how frequently the same thing occurs in the same book, viz., wherever Bacon wishes to tell us something of particular importance. In charmingly cunning rhymes he thus draws the reader's attention to the fact that he wrote this Book "curiously," and that he accordingly wants us to read it "curiously."

Do not these new-found facts, testifying to the secretly (curiously) rhyming poetic talent of Francis Bacon, agree excellently with what was discovered by former investigations regarding Bacon? Do they not agree with the fact that immediately after the death of Queen Elizabeth (1603) Bacon calls himself, in an important letter of friendship, a

concealed Poet? (Rawley's "Resuscitatio.")

Do they not agree with the fact that in his " "Apology" (1604) Bacon says that he once wrote a sonnet for the Queen, carefully adding, in brackets, the ambiguous

sentence:

(though I profess not to be a poet) ?

Do they not agree with Rawley's words, which in