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

by Elizabeth Wells Gallup

Under the caption, “Shakespeare and Bacon. Writers about them are not exactly lunatics—their cypher essentially a mattoid product.”—Mr. Charles L. Dana gives what purports to be a review of a book recently published, “The Bi-literal Cypher of Francis Bacon.”

This cipher I had the fortune to discover, as it exists in the original editions of the works of that great author, and I have deciphered and given to the public what is contained in the volume referred to, hence come under the classification which the gentleman seems to impose upon a very considerable number of students and fellow-writers.

I hope Mr. Dana does not intend to be rude, but it seems to me that he has unnecessarily gone out of his way in applying epithets to people who differ from him in certain literary conclusions, and as the class, which he condemns for such differing opinion, is a large and growing one, and embraces names and persons even in his own city—judges, lawyers, newspaper men, etc.—the peers of Mr. Dana in intelligence, whom he would not dare personally to face with such aspersions as he indulges in print, he shows himself inconsistent as well as reckless. As a specimen of inconsistency, I quote from his opening paragraph: “The question (Bacon vs. Shakespeare), however, continued to be agitated or, rather, advocated, because few scholars regarded it seriously. Some men of note, if not of learning, took it up, and Lord Palmerston is said to have been a convert.” Certainly this is eminently respectable company.

Near the close of the article, speaking of those who believe that Sir Francis Bacon produced a much larger part of the literature of the world than is accredited to him, and dare offer evidence of it, he says: “They are not exactly lunatics, for the characteristic of lunacy is weakness.” I suppose we should be thankful, therefore, that, by the gentleman’s saving grace, we are not “lunatics, characterized by weakness.”

Mr. Dana goes on to say: “Such people have received the scientific name of mattoids”—a word apparently borrowed from the Italian alienist, Lombroso, as it is not found in many dictionaries or encyclopedias. If euphemistic, a critic like Mr. Fisk, uses the expression “eccentric”; if addicted to slang, another would say, “cranks.” The use made, in the article, of this term “mattoids,” is to designate those who have “obsessions”—doing things “under the domination of an idea, which is, as a rule, foolish”—in Mr. Dana’s estimation.

There can hardly be an “obsession” greater than to declare things do not exist, because the individual is unable to comprehend their presentation.

“Your opinion, my opinion, any man’s opinion, is the measure of his knowledge.” If a man’s knowledge is ample and accurate, his opinions are entitled to consideration. Mr. Dana’s knowledge of the bi-literal cipher is evidently neither ample nor accurate. The fact is that the presentation in the book he criticises is by fac-simile pages from the original Latin edition of De Augmentis Scientarium, published by Bacon in 1624, and by a verbatim reproduction of the first English translation of the work, published in 1640. This cipher is explained for the first time in 1623 Latin edition, though invented by Bacon in 1579, and used during the remainder of his life. The explanation is Bacon’s own, and this cipher has been the basis of the most important cipher systems that are in use in the world today.

Another thing that strikes me as inconsistent in the writer, and that lays his article open to his own characterization of “weak logic, stupendous misrepresentation, and erratic conduct,” is this: The value of a critique is in telling something of the subject criticised that will be of value to readers. Mr. Dana fails to make a single quotation, controvert a single proposition which the book contains or give a special reason for disbelief in the historical facts that have come to light through the Cipher. It is simply his ipse dixit that the Cipher does not exist except in the imagination of the decipherer.

Is it profound criticism which exhausts itself in hurling anathemas and vituperation? The creed of space writers in the newspapers, when attacking things Baconian, seems to be that, as with the first man, Adam, sin came upon all mankind, the insanity of Delia Bacon, who was the first Baconian, was transmitted to all her successors, and that is the end of the argument.

I think it only fair to the readers of the Times that something should be said on the subject, and of the book itself, which has led to the discovery of “mattoids” among the authors of things not to Mr. Dana’s taste, first saying that, personally, I have to confess to mature years, and no little experience in educational work, preliminary and preparatory to which was quite a thorough course of educational training in our own country, supplemented by a considerable period of study, in France and Germany.