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

by Elizabeth Wells Gallup

{	abab	abab	abab	abab	abab	abab
	AAaa	BBbb	CCcc	DDdd	EEee	FFff
{	abab	abab	ababab	abab	abab	abab
	GGgg	HHhh	IIiijj	KKkk	LLll	MMmm
{	abab	abab	abab	abab	abab	abab
	NNnn	OOoo	PPpp	QQqq	RRrr	SSss
{	abab	ababab	abab	abab	abab	abab
	TTtt	VVvvuu	WWww	XXxx	YYyy	ZZzz

Now to the interior letter which is bi-literate, you shall fit a bi-formed exterior letter, which shall answer the other, letter for letter, and afterwards set it downe. Let the exterior example be, Manere te volo, donec Venero.

An Example of Accommodation.

F	U	G	E
aabab	. baabb	. aabba	. aabaa
Maner	etevo	lodon	ecven	[ero]

From this short example Bacon then proceeds to a longer one. He takes an entire page from one of Cicero’s letters, and so prints it in italics from two founts, similar to those in the alphabet just given, that it infolds an interior letter from a Spartan general, 'Sent once in a scytale, or round cypher’d staffe.’ The quotation from Cicero it is unnecessary to give here. It is sufficient to say that, as printed by Bacon, the ordinary reader would detect nothing out of the common in it; but when once his eye is made alert by the knowledge that its characters are drawn from two different founts of type, he can, by the aid of the alphabets supplied by Bacon, easily decipher for himself the Spartan message infolded in it.

It is the above passage, occurring in Bacon’s own work, which has led to the alleged discovery set forth in the volume with which we are now dealing; and the history of the discovery, as we there find it, is curious. For a considerable time an American student, Dr. Owen, had been working at the elucidation of another cypher altogether, also alleged to be Bacon’s, and to exist in the Shakespearian plays. This is the word-cypher. With its details we need not here concern ourselves. It is enough to say that an American lady, Mrs. Gallup, was his assistant. The above passage from Bacon arrested her attention, and she became convinced that the Bi-literal Cypher had been described by its inventor with special ulterior purpose and might possibly be found co-existing in Shakespearian plays with the others. She was fortified in this idea by the well known and unexplained peculiarities in the printing of the first folio to which I have already alluded, and she claims that on examining this volume she found her suspicions correct. The result has been the book under review. After its publication Mrs. Gallup came to England, her sole object being to examine certain rare old books which could not be procured in America and find if possible the first inception of the cypher writings, and in this she claims to have been successful.[8] Before going farther I will direct the reader’s attention once again to the bi-literal cypher itself, and endeavor to make the nature of it clearer to him than it will probably have been made by Bacon’s own, somewhat clumsy, exposition of it.

In the first place it should be observed that Bacon’s own name for it—'bi-literal’—is essentially inaccurate and misleading. He means by the word 'bi-literal’ that the letters of his second alphabet are all formed out of two—that is to say, 'a’ and 'b,’ by arranging them variously in so many groups of five. But the letters 'a’ and 'b,’ when used for this purpose, are properly speaking not letters at all. They have no phonetic value, they are simply arbitrary signs. Their function would be fulfilled equally well or better by dots and dashes (. and —), or else by the longs and shorts (- and °) which are familiar to every schoolboy as symbols of prosodical quantity. The cypher is a cypher of two signs, not of two letters. It is, in fact, merely a species of Morse Code. Let the reader look back to the bi-literal code or alphabet, as formulated by Bacon himself; and, for an example, let him take four letters—a, b, e, and l—which I choose merely because several different words can be spelt with them. He will see that for 'a’ the symbol is five 'a’s (a a a a a), for 'b’ four 'a’s and a 'b’ (a a a a b), for 'e’ two 'a’s, a 'b’, and two 'a’s (a a b a a), and for 'l’ two consecutive 'a b’s and one 'a’ (a b a b a). Let him rid himself of these 'a’s and 'b’s, and substitute dots and dashes; let every 'b’ be a dash, and every 'a’ a dot. The result will be just the same, and his mind will most likely be clearer. His code signs for these four letters will be as follows: A .....; B ....—; E ..—..; L .—.—. Now let him write, in this code, 'ale,’ 'all,’ 'ball,’ 'bell,’ 'Abel.’ No exercise could be easier. 'Ale’ will be ..... .—.—. ..—..; 'All’ will be ..... .—.—. .—.—.; 'Ball’ will be ....— ..... .—.—. .—.—.; 'Bell’ will be ....— ..—.. .—.—. .—.—.; and 'Abel’ will be ..... ....— ..—.. .—.—. Now we come to the next part of our problem. Having written 'ale,’ 'all,’ 'ball,’ 'bell,’ and 'Abel’ in dots and dashes—which constitutes, we will suppose, some message which we wish to convey—our next task is to hide this in a series of words with which, seemingly, our message shall have no connection. For the moment, instead of adopting the precise method of Bacon, let us take a much cruder one, which will be at once grasped by everybody. Let us make every capital letter signify a dot in our code, and every small letter a dash; and let us arrange the code symbols of our five words in a line, thus:

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