Could I submit to make thy word my law;
To others thy commands; seek not to me
To dicate, for I follow thee no more.”
It is true that the presence of the bi-literal cipher in any work does not prove authorship, being merely a matter of typography which can be incorporated in any printed page, as it was in fact in Ben Jonson’s writings, for Bacon’s purposes. But when it is worked out, and its chief purpose is found to be to teach the word-cipher, and that the latter produces practicable results such as given above, the confirmation of both ciphers is unmistakable. On the other hand, the word-cipher is a complete demonstration of the fact that the author of the interior work was the author of the exterior.
I am not infrequently asked, and it is a very natural question, why should Bacon put translations of the Iliad and Odyssey in his works, when neither required secrecy? I quote a sentence from the Bi-literal Cypher (p. 341), deciphered from Natural History:
“Finding that one important story within manie others produc’d a most ordinarie play, poem, history, essay, law-maxime, or other kind, class, or description of work, I tried th’ experiment of placing my tra’slations of Homer and Virgil within my other Cypher. When one work has been so incorporated into others, these are then in like manner treated, separated into parts and widely scatter’d into my numerous books.”
In this connection I will add another extract from Advancement of Learning (original edition, 1605, p. 52):
“And Cicero himselfe, being broken unto it by great experience, delivereth it plainely: That whatsoever a man shall have occasion to speake of (if hee will take the paines), he may have it in effect premeditate, and handled in these. So that when hee commeth to a particular, he shall have nothing to doe, but to put too Names, and times, and places; and such other Circumstances of Individuals.”
In other words, Bacon first constructed, then reconstructed from the first writing, such portions as would fit the “names and times and places, and such other Circumstances of Individuals,” about which he wished to build a new structure of history, drama, or essay. The first literary mosaic, containing dangerous matter, as well as much that was not, was transposed—the relative position of its component parts changed—to form the one we have known. The decipherer’s work is to restore the fragments to their original form.
As intimated at the beginning, the value of anything I could say upon the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy resolves itself into a question of fact—Have I found a cipher, and has it been corectly applied?