“Simply and plainly, the ingenious means of writing
Without creating suspicion;”
and he goes on to explain that the decipherer can, by changing
“The words from one end to another, make it read aright.”
Bacon heartens his timorous decipherer with the words, “Be thou not, therefore, afraid of greatness”—the greatness that he will attain as the reward of his decipherations. “Some,” he assures the unknown, in the memorable words, “have greatness thrust upon them,” and he further reminds him that
“There is a tide in the affairs of man,
Which taken at the flood,
Leads on to glorious fortune.”
“Nature and fortune joined to make you great,” Bacon tells his decipherer, from the text of King John, and one can almost imagine Dr. Owen blushing with conscious pride, as he translated this borrowed gem. He implores the modest unknown to free his (Bacon’s) name from the disgraceful part he had in the death of the Earl of Essex, and cries—
“Oh, if I could
I would make a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon your soul within the house....
You should not rest
Between the elements of earth and air,
But you should pity me——”
Words full of passion and beautiful imagery when spoken by Viola, on behalf of Orsino, to the haughty and unresponsive Lady Olivia, but sheer drivel when taken as Bacon’s exhortation to the discover of his wrongs.
But one travels in this precious cipher from foolishness to foolishness—from destruction to damnation, in quick, long strides. In the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth receives and answers the ambassadors of the King of Spain in the words that Henry V. employs in parley with the messengers of the Dauphin. She proclaims her physical superiority to her sister in the braggart language of Faulconbridge before King John beginning
“An’ if my brother had my shape....
If my legs were two such riding rods,”