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

by Elizabeth Wells Gallup

The interest it has excited has been considerable, varying in its expression from more or less good-natured doubts as to my sanity and veracity, from those who are satisfied with first impressions; to the careful examination by such writers as Mr. Mallock and some others who have regarded it as worthy of serious consideration.

For myself, I have been satisfied to wait for the verdict. It will be that I have at great cost put before the public a most detailed and elaborate hoax—or worse; or that Francis Bacon was a cipher writer and the most extraordinary personage in literature the world has yet known.

Assuming for the moment the cipher as a fact, what are the claims made in it for himself? Briefly, but startlingly stated, they are: That he was the author of the works attributed to Edmund Spenser, and those of Greene, Peele, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, a portion of those published by Ben Jonson, also the Anatomy of Melancholy known as Burton’s, besides the works to which Bacon’s name is attached; that these, instead of being in fact the outpourings of literary inspiration, are literary mosaics, the repository of other literature—much of it then dangerous to Bacon to expose—made consecutive by transposition, and gaining in literary interest by the new relations. The bi-literal cipher gives the rules by which the constituent parts of these mosaics are to be reassembled in their original form by the “word-cipher,” so called, a second system permeating the same works and hiding a larger and more varied literature than the first. It is also asserted that Bacon was the true heir to the throne of England, through a secret marriage between the Earl of Leicester and Elizabeth, which took place prior to her accession, while both were confined in the Tower of London; that for obvious reasons of state the marriage could not be announced before the coronation, and that the Queen afterwards refused to acknowledge it publicly; that the unfortunate Essex was in fact his younger brother, and the otherwise inexplicable rebellion was undertaken by Essex to compel from the Queen recognition of his descent, with expectation of the throne if denied to, or not claimed by, Francis.

The personal matter, scattered in the bi-literal cipher through the numerous volumes, is repeated in different forms many times—evidently in the hope that the claims asserted to the throne and the events of his life would be detected and deciphered, from some, if not from all his works, at some future time.

The book itself contains about 385 pages of deciphered matter, written in the old English of the Elizabethan period, and relating to men and things, literary and historical, then existing. It affords the most ample and serious materials for what may be called “the higher criticism”; and such criticism is very cordially invited, for reasons more important than anything concerning my own abilities or personality. The most sceptical will admit industry, and some sort of capability, in producing a work of the kind. It is due to the public that in a presentation of this kind I should offer a prima-facie case.

The question most nearly related to the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, from a literary standpoint, is: Was Bacon’s imagination, fancy and ability, equal to the production of such poetic and dramatic literature as is embraced in the Shakespeare plays and other works named? The dicta obtainable from mere comparisons of style are scarcely final. Individual judgments, in this field, are far from conclusive or satisfactory. There is as much difference in style between the laboured, interminable sentences of Bacon’s philosophical works and the polished sentences of the Essays as there is between the Essays and the epigrams of the Plays.

Bacon has been somewhat out of fashion of late. His philosophy, once strong and new, has been developed into the daily practice of these forceful and effective times, and is now interesting principally to the curious. His life,—reduced by Pope to the inconclusive epigram, “the wisest, brightest, and meanest of mankind,”—ending in his disgrace, does not now attract the average reader, while the compactness of the Essays deters many from a second reading. It is well, therefore, to refresh our minds concerning the man, and the estimation in which he was held before the present-day rush for new things had become so absorbing.

Briefly, the well-considered opinions of those best fitted to judge are, that his abilities were transcendent in every field. Lord Macaulay tells us that Bacon’s mind was “the most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed upon any of the children of men”; Pope, that “Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any other country, ever produced”; Sir Alexander Grant, that “it is as an inspired seer, the prose-poet of modern science, that I reverence Bacon”; Alexander Smith, that “he seems to have written his Essays with the pen of Shakespeare.” Mackintosh calls his literature “the utmost splendour of imagery.” Addison says, that “he possessed at once all those extraordinary talents which were divided among the greatest authors of antiquity ... one does not know which to admire most in his writings, the strength of reason, force of style, or brightness of imagination.” Mr. Welch assures us: “Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm which satisfies the sense, no less than the superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect.” While H. A. Taine, a Frenchman, recognising throughout the differences of language the force of the poetic thought, gives us this in his English Literature:—

“In this band of scholars, dreamers, and inquirers, appears the most comprehensive, sensible, originative of the minds of the age—Francis Bacon, a great and luminous intellect, one of the finest of this poetic progeny.... There is nothing in English prose superior to his diction.... His thought is in the manner of artists and poets, and he speaks after the manner of prophets and seers.... Shakespeare and the seers do not contain more vigorous or expressive condensations of thought, more resembling inspiration.... His process is that of the creators: it is inspiration, not reasoning.”

Again, Lord Macaulay tells us: “No man ever had an imagination at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. In truth, much of Bacon’s life was spent in a visionary world, amidst things as strange as any that are described in the Arabian tales.”—“A man so rare in knowledge of so many several kinds, endued with the facility and felicity of expressing it all in so elegant, significant, so abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing array of words, of metaphors and allusions, as perhaps the world has not seen since it was a world,” said Sir Tobie Mathew.