It is urged that the Cipher disclosures do not accord with history. This is a field for the investigators. I can only record what I find as I find it. “The facts of history” is an elastic term and the deductions drawn from public records of the earlier ages vary greatly. The conviction is growing that much of interest was not recorded and it is certain that sources of information are too diverse and greatly scattered to be all brought together into an exact statement of facts. If the Cipher had a purpose, it was to record that which was being suppressed. It would have been a work of supererogation to put into Cipher the open records of the day.
Many inquiries have reached me asking “How is the Cipher worked?” and expressing disappointment that the writer had been unable after some hours of study, to grasp the system or its application.
It would be difficult, and hardly to be expected that an understanding of Greek or Sanscrit could be reached with the aid of a few written lines or with a few hours study. It is equally so with the Cipher. Deciphering the Bi-literal Cipher as it appears in Bacon’s works will be impossible to those who are not possessed of an eyesight of the keenest and perfect accuracy of vision in distinguishing minute differences in form, lines, angles and curves in the printed letters. Other things absolutely essential are unlimited time and patience, and aptitude, love for overcoming puzzling difficulties and, I sometimes think, inspiration. As not every one can be a poet, an artist, an astronomer or adept in other branches requiring special aptitude, so, and for the same reasons, not every one will be able to master the intricacies of the Cipher, for, in many ways it is most intricate and puzzling, not in the system itself, but in its application, as it is found in the old books. It must not be made too plain, lest it be discovered too quickly, nor hid too deep lest it never see the light of day, is the substance of the thought of the inventor, many times repeated in the work. The system has been recognized since the first publication of De Augmentis, but the ages since have waited to learn of its application to Bacon’s works; and yet the idea seems to be prevalent that “any one” should be able to do the work, once the bi-literal alphabet is known. This is as great a mistake as it would be to reject the translations of the character writings and hieroglyphics of older times which have been deciphered because we could not in a few hours master them ourselves. Ciphers are used to hide things, not to make them clear.
BI-LITERAL CYPHER OF FRANCIS BACON.
A REPLY TO CERTAIN CRITICS.
BY ELIZABETH WELLS GALLUP.
Pall Mall Magazine, May, 1902.
To the March number of the Pall Mall Magazine Mrs. Gallup contributed a preliminary paper on the controversy which has so stirred the literary world. We now place before our readers a second article in which Mrs. Gallup deals specifically with a number of points which have been raised by certain individual writers during the progress of the controversy. This Mrs. Gallup has not been able to do before, because, as we have already stated, the criticisms were not in her possession when her first contribution left America. In sending us her second contribution Mrs. Gallup wishes us to point out that the articles to which she is now replying occupied considerable space in the magazines publishing them, and the answers, to be at all full and correspondingly valuable, require much greater space than was placed at her disposal by the Pall Mall Magazine. In fairness to Mrs. Gallup we think it right to precede her paper with this explanation.
Ed. P. M. M.
I gladly avail myself of the opportunity of replying to some of my critics in the Pall Mall Magazine, as discussions in the daily press sometimes become acrimonious and detrimental to real study and calm judgment, while a presentation of the subject in the pages of a fireside companion can be enjoyed in the hours of leisure and recreation.