Concerning the bi-literal cypher of Francis Bacon discovered in his works

by Elizabeth Wells Gallup

Mr. Marston, in the Nineteenth Century, continues an argument first put forth in the Times, and further illustrated in the Publishers’ Circular, attempting to prove that, because certain fragments of the Iliad, in the Bi-literal Cypher, deciphered from the Anatomy of Melancholy of 1628, are similar to Pope’s version of the same passages, the whole long story comprising 385 pages—about 300 of which relate to matters entirely foreign to the Iliad—must be a conscious fraud, and that “bold lie” is the key to the whole matter. It was hardly a courteous expression, and I have every confidence that Mr. Marston will, after more careful investigation, retract it.

Any statement that I copied from Pope, or from any source whatever, the matter put forth as deciphered from Bacon’s works, is false in every particular.

It will be noted that Mr. Marston makes no attempt to prove the cipher, but bases his convictions regarding the book upon this one point of similarity, in an insignificant portion of it, to Pope’s translation of the Iliad.

As it chanced, I had read Pope to some extent in the rhetorical studies of my school days, but had never re-read his Homer until Mr. Marston called attention to it. I now see a similarity in some expressions, and in the arrangement of names, in that portion devoted to the catalogue of the ships. Bacon’s directions for writing out the Iliad (by the word-cipher, p. 170), suggest that at that time he had not made as full preparation for writing out the catalogue as for the remainder of the work, and this seems significant.

I do not find any striking resemblances in the other parts, and, as I stated in a recent communication to the Times, in an examination of six English translations and one Latin, I found that each might with equal justice be considered a paraphrase of Pope, or that he had copied his predecessors. Why, among several translations of the same Greek text, two having both resemblances and differences should be classed together, and one should necessarily be a copy of the other, is not clear to me. Knowing that Pope’s was considered the least correct of several of the English translations, yet, perhaps, the best known for its poetic grace, it is hardly reasonable to suppose that I should have copied his, had I been dependent upon any translation for the deciphered matter.

Bacon says his earliest work upon the Iliad was done under instructors. There were Latin translations extant in his day, which were equally accessible to Pope a century later. A similarity might have arisen from a study by both of the same Latin text. George Chapman, in 1598, complained vigorously that some one had charged him with translating his Iliad from the Latin, and abusively replied. Theodore Alois Buckley, in his introduction to Pope’s Iliad, says he was “not a Grecian” and that he doubtless formed his poem upon Ogilby’s translation, besides consulting friends who were better classical scholars than himself.

But all this is of small importance, for it is inconclusive. The question is, did I find this argument of the Iliad in differing founts of Italic type in the text of the Anatomy of Melancholy?

I have had set up by our printers from my MS. two sections of the Anatomy of Melancholy, from which were taken some passages Mr. Marston quotes. Modern Italic type has to be used, of course, and the two founts will be easily distinguishable. They are so marked as unmistakably to indicate how the differing forms are used. A reference to an original copy of the Anatomy of Melancholy (1628), which may be seen in the British Museum, or in the fine library of Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, will quickly show whether or not I have used all the Italic letters in the text, whether they are of differing forms as marked in this, whether they have been properly grouped, and, when the bi-literal cipher is applied, whether they produce the results I have printed. If the types are of differing forms, are properly grouped, and produce, by the bi-literal method, the results printed, the question of identities or similitudes is eliminated from the discussion.

I am aware that in offering this evidence in this way, I am at a serious disadvantage. The true classification of the types was determined after days of examination and comparison of hundreds of the old letters, until every shade, and line, and curve of those I marked was familiar, and as thoroughly impressed upon my memory as the features of a friend, while to those making this comparison the letters themselves will be new, the number examined probably limited to those in a few sentences, and by eyes entirely unskilled in this kind of examination.

Mr. Marston refers to my use of an edition of the Anatomy of Melancholy, published after Bacon’s death, as evidence that I may be wrong. The edition I used was that of 1628, published by Dr. William Rawley. Concerning this and Rawley’s work, I had found in deciphering Sylva Sylvarum, the following statement from Rawley himself: