FRANCIS BACON’S BI-LITERAL CIPHER.
Baconiana, London.
Before these lines are printed, Mrs. Gallup’s very important work on “The Biliteral Cipher of Francis Bacon”[1] will have been for two months in the hands of the public. Since it is probable that there may be due discussion of its wonderful contents, it seems desirable to say a few words, not by way of review or mere expression of personal opinion (in such a case valueless), but in order to draw attention to certain points which, if not at present capable of absolute verification or contradiction, yet surely demand and are worthy of the closest investigation. Questions of this kind must naturally arise, “Is this cipher such as any person of ordinary intelligence can follow? Is it provably correct? Has any one besides Mrs. Gallup succeeded in depihering by the same means, and with similar results?”
These questions may without hesitation be answered in the affirmative. With the explanation given by the great inventor himself, anyone can master the method described in the De Augmentis (Book VI.). Ordinary patience and contrivance enable us to arrange two different alphabets of Italic letters and to insert these in the printed type, forming cipher sentences one-fifth in length of the “exterior” sentence or passage. Thus to bury one story within another is easy enough. To unearth it is another matter, and more difficult.
In the first place, there is nothing which particularly invites the decipherer to discriminate between the two forms of Italic letters which are essential to this typographical cipher; or, if differences or deformities in letters are observed, we have been required to believe them “errors,” defects in printing, carelessness of the compositor, or anything else which may explain them away. Be not deceived; there is no error, but consummate skill and subtle contrivance, all helping towards the cryptographer’s great ends.
Before beginning the work of deciphering, it is needful thoroughly to learn by heart the Biliteral Alphabet given by its Inventor in the De Augmentis. Here we see that the letters of the common Alphabet are formed by the combination of the letters A and B in five places, these two letters (A and B) being represented by two distinct “founts” of Italic type. To discriminate between these two founts, is the initial difficulty; but observing that, in the Biliteral Alphabet, A’s preponderate, and that no combination begins with two B’s, we judge that the most frequent forms of Italic letters are almost certain to be A’s. A decision is best arrived at by repeatedly tracing and drawing out the various letters; and the decipherer must have keen eyes and powers of observation to detect the minute differences. For our Francis would not make things too easy. He speaks of “marks” and “signs” to be heeded, and Roman letters are often interspersed. It is also patent (and was found by Mrs. Gallup, and independently by others) that, in every biliteral alphabet, letters are here and there intentionally exchanged, as a device to confuse and confound the would-be decipherer.
In many cases we find alphabets suddenly reversed—A becoming B, and B, A, a change hinted by some “mark” or “sign,” as a tiny dot. These changes seem to occur most frequently in very small books, where the limited space makes it the more needful to set snares and stumbling-blocks at every turn. Such things show that, besides the good eyes and keen wits required for successful deciphering, there must be no small amount of that “eternal patience” which Michael Angelo honored with the title of “genius.”
Let us contemplate the goodly volume presented to us by Mrs. Gallup, and try to realize the fact that every one of those 350 pages of deciphered matter was worked out letter by letter; that each ONE letter in this deciphered work represents FIVE letters extracted from the deciphered book—say, Shakespeare, or Spenser, Burton, or any of the eight groups of works indicated in the cipher. Not only should such reflections cause us highly to respect the “endless patience,” perseverance, and skill of the cryptographer to whose labors we are so deeply indebted, but they should warn us from depreciating or discrediting statements or methods which we ourselves are incapable of testing. “Disparage not the faith thou dost not know,” is a good, sound principle to begin upon, and Francis (“cunyng in the humours of persons”) had evidently observed the tendency of the human mind to fly from things troublesome, or to take refuge in disparagement and ridicule. His notes teem with reflections on this matter. “Things above us are nothing to us”—“just nothing.” “Many things are thought impossible until they are discovered, then men wonder that they had not been seen long before.” On the other hand, he continually encourages himself with thoughts, texts and proverbial philosophy, which we find him instilling into his disciples. “Everything is subtile till it is conceived.” “By trying, men gained Troy,” and so forth. But we must “woorke as God woorkes,” wisely, quietly, with persistent patience and unremitting care, and “from a good beginning cometh a good ending.”
So much, then, for the “biliteral” itself. Another crop of inquiries springs up when we attempt briefly to rehearse the wonderful revelations now before us, and which it is within our power to examine and essay to prove.
Elizabeth, when princess, and prisoner in the hands of Mary, secretly married Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Of this secret marriage two sons were born. Francis the elder would have been “put away privilie” by the wicked woman whom he never could bring himself to think of as “mother.” Lady Anne Bacon, however, saved his life, and under an oath of secrecy adopted him as her own son. The scene when these facts came to his knowledge, and again when they were tearfully confirmed by his “deare,” “sweete mother,” Lady Anne, are graphically described in the cipher narrative extracted from the “History of Henry VII.” (Ed. 1622). Further details of the same extraordinary episode are, as may be remembered, introduced in the “word cipher,” discovered, and in part published, by Dr. Owen, some seven years ago. From the disclosures made in the books deciphered, “it is evident,” says Mrs. Gallup, “that Bacon expected the biliteral cipher to be the first discovered, and that it would lead to the finding of his principal or word cipher which it fully explains, and to which is intrusted the larger subjects he desired to have preserved. This order has been reversed, in fact, and the earlier discovery by Dr. Owen becomes a more remarkable achievement, being entirely evolved without the aids which Bacon had prepared in this for its elucidation.”
But to return to our story.
Francis was now sent abroad by Elizabeth’s orders (not, as has been declared by his biographers, because Sir Nicholas Bacon wished him to see the wonders of the world abroad, but) in order to get him out of the way at the time when he had been the unwitting cause of a Court scandal. He left England in the suite of Sir Amyas Paulet, the English Ambassador. We know a little, and surmise more, concerning his travels, and the places which he visited, or where he stayed studying and writing. The sad story of his ill-fated love for “My Marguerite” is briefly touched upon, rather as a thing understood to the reader than as a record, and of this more will be related in a future volume. The present extracts are from the undated 4to. of Romeo and Juliet, where we may read:
“This stage-play, in part, will tell our real love-tale. A part is in the Play previously nam’d or mention’d as having therein one pretty scene acted by the two. So rare and most briefe the hard-won happinesse, it affords us great content to re-live in the Play all that as mist, in summer morning did roule away. It hath place in the dramas containing a scene and theame of this nature, since our fond love interpreted th’ harts o’ others, and in this joy, th’ joy of heaven was faintlie guessed.”
In the closing lines of King John are these instructions:
“Join Romeo with Troy’s famous Cressida if you wish to know my story. Cressida in this play with Juliet b——,” which, says the Editor,[2] “ends the cipher in King John with an incomplete word. Turning to Romeo and Juliet (p. 53), the remainder of the word and of the broken sentence is continued, being a part of the description of Marguerite, and the love Francis entertained for her.”
This love never faded from his heart, although before he married, at the age of 47, he had, he says, hung up, as it were, the picture of his love on the walls of memory. We remember the calm and uneffusive fashion in which he then imparted to his friends the news that he had found “a handsome maiden who pleased him well.” The tones in which he bewailed his lost love are pitched in a different key.
“It is sometimes said, no man can be wise and love, and yet it would be well to observe many will be wiser after a lesson such as wee long ago conn’d. There was noe ease to our sufferi’g heart til our yeares of life were eight lustres.[3] The faire face liveth ever in dreames, but in inner pleasances only doth th’ sunnie vision come. This will make clearlie seene why i’ the part a man doth play heerein and where-ere man’s love is evident, strength hath remained unto the end—the want’n Paris recov’ring by his latter venture much previouslie lost.”
A second son was born to Elizabeth, and named Robert, after his father, the Earl of Leicester. Robert was “made ward” of Walter Devereaux, Earl of Essex, who “died” conveniently and unexpectedly, when Robert was old enough to succeed to his title and estates. At what period the brothers became aware of their kinship has not yet been told in the cipher. Francis describes the personal beauty, gallantry, and boldness of his brother, and says that for these qualities Robert was a great favorite with the Queen, who thought that he resembled herself. The tale is still incomplete; but enough has already been disclosed to give us a firm sketch of the miserable outline. We see Robert taking advantage of the Queen’s doting fondness for him, and Francis endeavoring to keep his ambition within bounds, and to smooth matters with his irascible mother when, as was often the case, she became irritated beyond endurance by his arrogant audacity. The aim of Essex was, not only in the future to supplant his elder brother, but even in the Queen’s lifetime to seize the crown, and rule as king. It is a dark and painful page in history, and the more we read the less we marvel at the efforts made by Elizabeth to destroy or garble the records of her own private life, and of the times in which she lived. Having spoilt and indulged Essex so long as she believed him devoted to herself, she turned upon him “in a tigerlike spirit” when his treachery became patent, and because Francis had spoken strongly on his brother’s behalf, and had endeavored to shield him from the wrath of the Queen, she punished him by forcing him, under pain of death, to conduct the case (in his official capacity) against Essex, whom she had foredoomed to execution. An allusion is made to the ring which the Queen expected Essex to send her, but which miscarried. This story has been held doubtful, but it seems as though we may find it true.
The sentence passed upon Essex was just; but the horror of the trial and the circumstances connected with the execution, haunted Francis for the rest of his life, his tender and sensitive nature, and his highly strung imagination continually reviving, whilst they shrank from, the recollection of the horrible details of which hereafter we shall have to read. Although Francis speaks in affectionate terms of his “deere” and cruelly used brother, we cannot but think that the tenderness grew out of a deep pity; for Robert had long ago proved himself a most selfish and unsatisfactory person, and a perpetual thorn in his brother’s side, but, however this may have been, the gruesome tragedy remained imprinted on his soul, and clouded and embittered his whole life. “His references to the trial and execution of Essex, and the part he was forced to take in his prosecution, are the subject of a wail of unhappiness and ever-present remorse, with hopes and prayers that the truth hidden in this cipher may be found out, and published to the world in his justification.
“O God! forgiveness cometh from Thee; shut not this truest book, my God! Shut out my past—love’s little sunny hour—if it soe please Thee, and some of man’s worthy work; yet Essex’s tragedy here shew forth; then posterity shall know him truly.”[4]
The Queen commanded Francis to write for publication an account of the Earl of Essex’s treasons, and he did so. But the report was too lenient, too tender for the reputation of the Earl to satisfy his vindictive mother. She destroyed the document and with her own hand wrote another which was published under his name, and for which he has been held responsible. Such matters as these were State secrets, and we cannot wonder that Elizabeth should have taken care by all means in her power to prevent them from becoming public property by appearing in print. We may well believe that, as the cipher tells us, all papers were destroyed which were likely to bring dark things to light. Nevertheless much must have gradually leaked out through the actors themselves, and more must have been suspected, and only through dread of the consequences withheld from general discussion. “See what a ready tongue suspicion hath”; in private letters and hidden records the value of which is perhaps now for the first time fully understood, evidence is forthcoming to substantiate statements made in the deciphered pages of Mrs. Gallup, and her forerunner, Dr. Owen.
The matter gathered from the deciphered pages is not limited to personal or political history. For instance, speaking of the “Anatomy of Melancholy” (edition, 1628), the Editor says:—“The extraordinary part is that this edition conceals, in cipher, a very full and extended prose summary—argument, Bacon calls it—of a translation of Homer’s Iliad. In order that there may be no mistake as to its being Bacon’s works, he precedes the translation with a brief reference to his royal birth, and the wrongs he has suffered.... In the De Augmentis is found a similar extended synopsis of a translation of the Odyssey. This, too, is introduced with a reference to Bacon’s personal history, and although the text of the book is in Latin, the cipher is in English.
“The decipherer is not a Greek scholar, and would be incapable of creating these extended arguments, which differ widely in phrasing from any translation extant, and are written in a free and flowing style.”[5]
Readers must not expect to find in this book which we are noticing, a complete and shapely narrative explaining everything, and pouring out before us the true story of our wonderful “concealed man” from beginning to end. The cipher utterances are, for the most part, nothing if not fragmentary. The writer himself says so, and adds that his objects in thus trusting his secrets to the care of his friends and to the judgment of time were, First, that he might hand down to the future age the only faithful account of himself and his history, which would ever be allowed to reach them. Secondly, he proposed to link his unacknowledged works one with another in such a way that hereafter his sons of science should from the hints given in one work be led on to another, and so to another, until the vast mass of books, Historical, Scientific, Poetical, Dramatical, Philosophical, which he wrote, should be connected, welded together like an endless chain, and the true history of the Great Restauration and of the English Renaissance fully revealed.
THE BACONIAN CIPHER[6]—I.
By Fleming Fulcher.
The Court Journal, London.
Dr. Rawley, “his Lordship’s first and last chaplain,” relates in his Life of Lord Bacon that “when his History of King Henry the Seventh was to come forth, it was delivered to the old Lord Brooke to be perused by him, who, when he had dispatched it, returned it to the author with this eulogy: 'bid him take care to get good paper and inke; for the work is incomparable.’” We think “the old Lord Brooke” would have been justified in sending this message (with a change of pronoun) to the authoress of The Biliteral Cipher of Sir Francis Bacon (for in its own way it is incomparable), and we think he would have been satisfied with the result.
The book is divided into two parts, the first containing introductory chapters, portraits, and facsimiles, while the second, rather more than three-quarters of the book, consists entirely of the story deciphered. The introductory chapters are short, pithy, and well-written, and are full of literary interest. The first chapter, from the pen of Mrs. Gallup herself, tells how she came to discover the existence of the cipher in certain books, and gives a brief account of her work, a work, to quote her own words, “arduous, exhausting and prolonged”; and shows how, though her discovery “may change the names of some of our idols,” we are gainers, not losers, by the change. If we can find a fault in this chapter, it is that there is only enough of it to whet our appetite for more details of the progress of her work. Perhaps we may hope that she will satisfy us in this respect on a future occasion when her work becomes widely known and read, as it deserves to be. After Mrs. Gallup’s “personal” chapter there follows the introduction to the first edition—printed for private circulation only. It gives a short summary of the principal facts of the cipher story, and touches on points of interest in connection with the cipher, two of which we will briefly allude to here. It shows how the cipher explains the reason for the extraordinary mispaging of the original editions, carefully adhered to in all the copies, and of which no one had previously been able to offer a satisfactory explanation; and it touches on the curious history of The Anatomy of Melancholy, which for nearly three centuries has been attributed to Burton, but which the British Museum catalogue shows to have been first published under another name when Burton was about ten years old, and of which in the cipher story Francis Bacon claims the authorship. The preface of the second edition, the one we are now considering and the first given to the public, shows the cogent reasons Bacon had for using the cipher. “Two distinct purposes,” says the author, “are served by the two ciphers. The Biliteral was the foundation which was intended to lead to the other, and is of prime importance in its directions concerning the construction of the Word Cipher, the keys, and the epitome of the topics which were to be written out by its aid. It seems also to have been * * * a sort of diary * * * * and, as in many another diary, we find the trend of the mind as affected by the varying moods—sometimes sad and mournful—again defiant and rebellious—and again despondent, almost in despair, that his wrongs might fail of discovery, even in the times and land afar off to which he looked for greater honor and fame, as well as vindication.
“Chafing under the cloud upon his birth, the victim of a destiny beyond his control, which ever placed him in a false position, defrauded of his birthright, which was of the highest, he committed to this cipher the plaints of an outraged soul. * * * To the decipherer, he unbends—to the rest of the world maintains the dignity which marked his outward life. * * * It is a wonderful revelation of the undercurrents of a hidden life.”
“Some Notes on the Shakespeare Plays,” and a reprint of an article on Shorthand in the days of Elizabeth from the able pen of Mrs. H. Pott, whose clear and logical mind, no less than her deep research into the literature of Bacon’s time, makes her writings always welcome; and lastly a brief sketch of the outlines of Bacon’s life, complete the original portion of Part I. While the importance of these introductory chapters lies for our immediate purpose in their application to the Biliteral Cipher of Sir Francis Bacon, it would be difficult to overestimate their intrinsic merit, literary and historical. We owe a debt of gratitude to the authoress and publishers for their liberality in the matter of facsimiles by which they enable us not only to follow the deciphering but also to familiarize ourselves with the style and appearance of the original editions of many old favorites, a privilege hitherto almost confined to those who have time and opportunity for visiting the great libraries. In this part are comprised Bacon’s description of his Biliteral Cipher, with examples and double alphabet; the frontispiece and preface to the Novum Organum, preceded by a table of the double alphabet, by means of which the cipher is unfolded; the Droeshout portrait and all the introductory pages of the famous 1623 folio of the Shakespeare plays; and the title pages of several other of the deciphered works. The preface to the Novum Organum is also given in modern type, the two founts being marked a and b respectively, thus enabling the reader to follow in extenso the method of deciphering.
The portraits of Bacon, two in number, to which we have alluded, are the well-known one in which he is seen in his Chancellor’s robes, and the exquisite miniature of Hilyard surrounded by the noblest halo that ever adorned a human portrait—“Si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem” (“If it were possible to have a canvas worthy, I had rather paint his mind”).
Of the second part, because it is the most important, we shall say least. The story it tells is startling, fascinating, strange. As fiction it would be unique; as history, though truth is proverbially stranger than fiction, it is unparalleled. Nothing that can give interest to a book is wanting. There is the excitement of discovery; the triumph of hidden truth brought to light, of error refuted; the romance of a great prince, robbed of his birthright, who finds his consolation in winning a nobler realm—the kingdom of the mind; the tragedy of a younger brother, a wild though generous spirit, seduced by misdirected ambition into the thorny path of rebellion that leads to the question and the block; the pathos of a noble soul torn by the pangs of remorse for the part he was forced to take in that brother’s death by the inexorable power of the loftiest sense of justice—that power which impelled Lucius Junius Brutus to “call his sons to punishment,” Marcus Brutus to robe his dagger in the imperial purple of liberty drawn from the veins of his “best lover”; while the one note wanting to complete the full chord of romance is struck in the tale of a fruitless passion for the fair Queen of Navarre. Besides the story of Bacon’s own life and times, or rather of that part of his life and times hitherto unknown to history, the deciphered story gives directions for working out his “Word Cipher,” and summaries of those noble poems of Homer, the Illiad and Odyssey, with some passages translated into blank verse, which we think will compare favorably with any previous translations.
A few words must suffice as to the style. As we have already quoted, the book is a diary; and the exigencies of secrecy necessitate much repetition. For, as Bacon himself notes in the cipher story, he could not tell what book might be lost, or in which of those that survived, his decipherer would first light on the discovery. Yet in parts the writing rises to a great height of eloquence. We cannot resist the temptation to quote two passages from the cipher which seem to us, each in its own way, eminently beautiful. The first, though it refers only to the difficulty of constructing the Word Cipher can, we think, hardly be surpassed for happiness of metaphors or grace of diction. “’Tis the labour of years,” says Bacon, “to provide th’ widely varied prose in which the lines of verse have a faire haven, and lye anchor’d untill a day when th’ coming pow’r may say: 'Hoist sayle, away! For the windes of heav’n kisse your fairy streamers, and th’ tide is afloode. On to thy destiny!’”
The second is the cry of a soul in anguish.
“O Source infinite of light, ere Time in existence was, save in Thy creative plan, all this tragedy unfolded before Thee. A night of Stygian darknesse encloseth us. My hope banish’d to realms above, taketh its flight through th’ clear aire of the Scyences unto bright daye with Thyselfe. As thou didst conceale Thy lawes in thick clouds, enfolde them in shades of mysterious gloom, Thou didst infuse from Thy spirit a desire to put the day’s glad work, th’ evening’s thought, and midnight’s meditation to finde out their secret workings.
“Only thus can I banish from my thoughts my beloved brother’s untimely cutting off and my wrongfull part in his tryale. O, had I then one thought of th’ great change his death would cause—how life’s worth would shrinke, and this world’s little golden sunshine be but as collied night’s swifte lightning—this had never come as a hound of th’ hunt to my idle thoughts.” Mrs. Gallup’s claim to have discovered the existence of Francis Bacon’s Biliteral Cipher in many of the works of his time is one which, in view of the story deciphered, will, if substantiated, oblige us to rewrite a page of history and to tear a mask from many an idol before which we have bowed for three centuries. We shall, therefore, require the most convincing proofs of the bona fides of the discovery. The discussion of this question, however, we leave to a future article.