The publisher of this book utilises modern printing technologies as well as photocopying processes for reprinting and preserving rare works of literature that are out-of-print or on the verge of becoming lost. This book is one such reprint.

This document, called, like the orisons or psalms of the Last Will, a Prayer or Psalm and covering only two-thirds of a folio page, is printed in prose, but is couched in noble poetic language and betrays a rhythmical, eloquent, flowing style. In said document occur two highly important passages, important, as Bacon speaks therein of the secrets of his heart and of his talents, which passages are treated in the same style as those lost orisons, i. e., they are curiously rhymed, for they are indeed richly, skilfully and euphoniously rhymed. The learned investigators, however, have hitherto never noticed those curiously rhymed passages. And that for two reasons-the one, because most of them carelessly overlooked or ignored this documentthe other, because the verses are rendered irrecognisable owing to the manner in which they are printed for they are not set in verse-lorm, but are printed as prose along with the rest of the prose-text. And so that is what Bacon means by curiously rhymed. Wherever the adjective curious or the adverb curiously occurs in the Shakespeare works, it is not intended to convey the idea or admixture of anything funny or ridiculous, which the word does nowadays, but is synonymous with careful, accurate, scrupulous, elegant, nice CA Alexander Schmidts Shakespeare-Lexicon, and the old English-Latin Dictionary by Adam Littleton, of the seventeenth cqtury the Latin adverb curiose being derived frqm cura, to which the English word care is relbted, both as to sound and derivation. In Ko rco and J d i e t i. 4 the expression curious eye occurs Lord, And eer as my worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts from thee have pierced me and when I have ascended before men, I have descended in humiliation before ihee. 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 sel f-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 SO se cret darts from thee three rhymes on a long e. have pierced me and when I have ascended before men, four rhymes on en. I have descended in humi-two rhymes on a short i. liation be fore thee...