HAMLET. For thou dost know, O Damon dear, By Jove himself; and now reigns here (From the Tauchnitz Edition., Whereupon Horatio says: rhymed." "You might have "Dear and "here" do rhyme; the metre is clearly heard; at the end of the fourth line, Horatio (and every English ear) expects a rhyme to the final word of the second line: "was." That rhyme is "ass" and no other, but we hear the word "pajock" instead. Hamlet has spoken in verses terminating in a vexingrhyme, i.e., in verses with the final word purposely altered. If we go to the bottom of the matter, i.e., if we substitute the right word at the end of the final line, the verses would run thus: For thou dost know, O Damon dear This realm dismantled was By Jove himself; and now reigns here Schlegel's translation of these verses is indeed a failure: HAMLET. Denn dir, mein Damon ist bekannt Dem Reiche ging zu Grund Ihr hättet reimen können. For, since he leaves not only lines two and four, but also one and three, unrhymed, Horatio's clamouring for a rhyme is without motive. And yet how easily Schlegel might have rhymed by simply altering one word, thus: Denn dir, mein Damon, ist bekannt, Dem Reiche ging zu Grund In place of "ass," expected in the original, Horatio in the German translation, of course, imagines he hears "Hund" (hound, dog). So much on the peculiarity of the rhymes in the Shakespeare Plays. We were bound to dwell upon them at some length, as we shall actually find, that, on comparison, the concealed Bacon-rhymes show a great affinity to every point in question. We shall then be posted, and need only refer back to matter with which we have become familiar. VII THE RHYMES IN FRANCIS BACON'S PSALMS As long as Life doth last, I Hymns will sing. the 104th Psalm." As we intend to speak of such of Bacon's rhymed verses as are signed with his name, we must, of course, begin with the poetry which he published in undisguised verse-form, with the "Psalms." In December 1624, with the year 1625 printed on its title-page, i.e., a year and a quarter before his death, Francis Bacon published "The Translation of Certain Psalms, into English Verse," and set his full name to the book. It is the only book of poems that bears his name, and contains no more than seven psalms consisting in all of only three hundred and twenty verses. The psalms selected by Bacon are Nos. 1, 12, 90, 104, 126, 137 and 149. The shortest (No. 126) consists of twenty, the longest (No. 104) of one hundred and twenty lines written in verse form. All the verses (with one single exception, as we shall see) are rhymed. One of the psalms is in four-lined, two are in eight-lined stanzas. Three of the psalms are written in the same form as the Shakespeare epic "Venus and Adonis," published in the year 1593, i.e., in six-lined stanzas. One psalm rhymes from line to line and is written in heroic verse (like certain passages in the Shakespeare Plays). And what is the quality of the verses written by that man, then sixty-four years old, and published under his name as his first attempt, as it were, at poetry? They are verses with a poetic ring to them and such as only a man thoroughly versed in languages could have written; but, certainly, never could have been conceived by any one who had not written many, a great many verses before in his life. The first thing that strikes us is the fact that they are all rhymed. Would it not have been the most natural thing for a man who had never had any practice in rhyming, to have translated the psalms into the form in which we are accustomed to see them, in blank verse? But if he must rhyme, would a man, who had had little or no practice at all in verse-writing and rhyming, not have at least preferred to write the seven poems in the same metre or in the same form of stanza? Bacon did not do so; as becomes an experienced poet, he chose for each psalm that form which suited it best. We now offer the reader a few specimens: Both Death and Life obey thy holy lore, Or as a Watch by night, that course doth keep, Thou carriest Man away as with a Tide; Then down swim all his Thoughts, that mounted high; But flies before the sight of waking Eye; Or as the Grass, that cannot term obtain, To see the Summer come about again. Psalm xc., stanzas 2 and 3. The passage in the Bible reads thus: 3. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. 4. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. 5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. The " Summer," the "mocking Dream" are Bacon's own additions, and he seems to have had the following thought in his mind: The life of man is brief as the mocking dream of a Midsummer Night. Nor is the expression "term obtain" taken from the Bible; it is a purely legal term, And we vainly search the Hebrew psalm for the thought so beautifully expressed in the second verse of the second stanza : Then down swim all his Thoughts, that mounted high. The 104th Psalm begins thus : Father and King of Powers, both high and low, Of Christal Light, Mother of Colours all. The corresponding passage in the Bible is worded thus: 1. Bless the Lord, O my soul, O Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty. 2. Who covereth thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain. |