ARITHMETICAL PUZZLES.
Mr. Candler is also inaccurate in his arithmetic. He has not carefully read pp. 66 and 67, where it is explained that Latin letters, called by us Roman, were used in a few dedications, prologues, etc. I did not find these employed until the publications of 1623—in the folio and Vitæ et Mortis. I have also shown elsewhere that, at the end of short sections that did not join with other works, there were occasionally a few letters more in the exterior passage than were required for the enfolded portion. These are nulls and not used. Mr. Candler gives the number of letters in the catalogue of the plays as 850 and says the portion extracted required 860. Both numbers are wrong. The cipher enfolded required 855 letters, and that is the exact number of letters in the catalogue when the Roman type is included and the diphthongs and digraphs are regarded as separate letters.
GEOGRAPHY.
Just what Mr. Candler would have us understand by referring to the incorrect geography in the plays is not quite clear. It has no relevance to the cipher nor does it determine whether Bacon or Shakespeare would suffer most from the criticism. The same may be said of the next paragraph under “Proper Names,” for it was, and is, at least poetic license to change the pronunciation in that manner; and as to the spelling of Iliad on page 176 of the Bi-literal, we have in Troilus and Cressida a parallel in, “as they passe toward Illium.” Neither spelling nor pronunciation were well defined arts in Bacon’s day or in Bacon’s books.
BACON’S POETRY.
The quoted verse of this “concealed poet” speaks for itself, and on this point I may well be silent, except to say the particular poetry Mr. Candler condemns is said to have been written on a sick bed at the age of sixty-two.
It is amusing to see how many plans are made for Bacon by these critics, how many things are pointed out that he might, or should have done. Their long experience in surmising what Shakespeare may, can, must, might, could, would, or should have done in order to reconcile asserted facts has given them the habit of “guessing.”
Mr. Candler adds some footnotes, in one of which he quotes: “'Mrs. Gallup, when challenged, failed to point out the cipher, an easy matter if it really existed; and now avows that without extraordinary faculties and a kind of “inspiration,” none, save herself, need expect to perceive it.’” And adds, “It should be understood that the President and Council of the Baconian Society enter a formal caveat that nothing in Mrs. Gallup’s interpretation can be said to have been satisfactorily proved.”
I remember very well the evening to which the extract from Baconiana refers, when, upon the invitation of a member of the legal profession, my sister and myself explained to two prominent Baconians the method and scope of our work. In theory, they accepted—or seemed to accept—what is unmistakably true, that for different sizes of type,—pica, small pica, English, etc. Bacon arranged different alphabets. It was shown that one size of ornamental capitals belonged to the 'a fount,’ in another size the ornamental letters belonged to the 'b fount.’ This was admitted as very possible, even probable; yet when this was applied to practical demonstration of what Bacon did, they exclaimed: “Impossible!!” “Bacon never would have done that! etc., etc.” This could not be thought a receptive frame of mind, and just how they knew what Bacon would not have done I cannot tell.
Afterward I showed them which letters belonged to the 'b fount,’ in a number of lines of the Dedicatory Epistle of Spenser’s Complaints, in no single instance varying from the marking of the manuscript from which my book was printed. This was candidly admitted, yet, when this interview was reported, it read as above quoted.