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

by Elizabeth Wells Gallup

Inspiration.

It is strange how an inadvertent word or phrase, in the hands of those who choose to pervert, will return to plague one. In an article in Baconiana, I enumerated the requirements for the work of deciphering as “eyesight of the keenest and perfect accuracy of vision in distinguishing minute differences in form, lines, angles, and curves of the printed letters ... unlimited time and patience, persistency and aptitude, love for overcoming puzzling difficulties, and I sometimes think inspiration.” Any one who has worked long in an absorbing and difficult field, will know that the word in this connection meant only the light that breaks upon one’s mind, in the solution of some difficulty as the result of earnest effort; and for a critic to make from this a charge that I allege the cipher work to be one of inspiration on my part is such a misuse of terms as to be wholly unjustifiable. I think I have the right to complain when the word so used is made the basis of sneering attack through the public press. The word was used by me in no other connection, and as my critics must know, in no other than this very harmless and allowable sense. This is particularly in reply to a lengthy editorial in the Times, which assumed that I made claims to “inspiration.”

Those who have read my book carefully will recall some of the difficulties recounted on page 11 of the Introduction, relating to a subject that has puzzled many students—i.e., the wrong paging of the Folio and some of the other old books. It is told in few words in the book, but they are totally inadequate to describe the strain upon eyes and nerves in those days of alternating struggle and elation as one by one the difficulties were overcome. I think my readers will pardon a careless, perhaps irrevelant use of the term, “I sometimes think inspiration”—may have prompted me to make one more trial.

Mr. Lang and Mrs. Gallup.

I am also desired to refer to the writings of Mr. Lang, who, on several occasions, has made the Bi-literal Cypher the theme of much ironical pleasantry, more especially in the Monthly Review. Mr. Lang is one of those happy individuals possessed of a large vocabulary and of a vivid imagination that like Tennyson’s babbling brook “goes on for ever,” but he prefers the interrogation to the period—questions more than he asserts.

In the Monthly Review he cites again, from his Morning Post article (August 1901), some of the reasons for considering Bacon a lunatic. He has, however, omitted one query then made regarding “the new Atlantis men sought beyond the western sea:” “Was Bacon ignorant of the fact that America was discovered?” The question was not repeated after I called attention to the fact that in New Atlantis Bacon said, “Wee sailed from Peru.”

The Alpha and Omega of his article—since it appears on the first page and the last—is Mr. Sidney Lee’s declaration that the cipher cannot exist in the books in which I know it does exist. I pointed out in a recent communication to the Times that Mr. Lee had not even understood the elementary principles of the cipher. This is betrayed in his statement: “Italic and Roman types were never intermingled in the manner which would be essential if the words embodied Bacon’s biliteral cipher”—for that is not the manner of its incorporation. Mr. Lang goes no farther than this very arbitrary decision in his examination of the cipher itself.

He says: “The consistency of Mrs. Gallup next amazes us. Greene, Peele, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, resemble each other in style (or so she says), because 'one hand wrote them all’ (i., p. 3). But Bacon (deciphered) avers, 'I varied my style to suit different men, since no two show the same taste and like imagination.’ (i., p. 34).... Bacon 'let his own [style] be seen.’” Mr. Lang should have quoted an additional line—“yet should [let] my owne bee seene, as a third o’ warpe in my entire fabricke,” and it would explain why there are both resemblances and differences in the style of those dramatic works, which have been commented upon by numberless writers as giving evidence of collaboration or of plagiarism.

The Wifehood and Motherhood of Elizabeth.

Mr. Lang thinks the idea of the wifehood and motherhood of Elizabeth originated in Mr. Lee’s articles in the Dictionary of National Biography cited as corroborating the cipher. The facts set forth in Mr. Lee’s work are very good circumstantial evidence. Assuredly the statments in the word-cipher and in the bi-literal should accord, for in Bacon’s design the principal use of the one was to teach, and assist in deciphering, the others Mr. Lang quotes: “He learned from the interview and subsequent occurrences,” and exclaims, “how Elizabethan is the style!”