Long before I had more than a passing and superficial knowledge of Bacon’s Bi-literal Cipher, I had observed what all careful students of Elizabethan literature have noted and remarked upon in the original editions, that the Italic letters in some of the books were in two or more forms. Later, when an original De Augmentis came into my hands, I saw there a clear explanation and elaborate illustration of a cipher that required simply a biformed alphabet. Bacon there speaks of the time of its invention as in his youthful days while in Paris. It is first mentioned in his Advancement of Learning, published in 1605, with a hint of its importance. This was twenty-five years after its invention. Eighteen years later still, in 1623, we find it fully elaborated, at no small cost and pains, this still further emphasizing its value after forty-three years of time. These facts, in themselves, would suggest that the originator had tested its practicability. The discovery of its application to the Italic letters in differing forms in the original editions of Bacon’s works, has proved that it was made the medium (in no “spiritualistic” way) for the transmission of those secrets concerning Bacon, without the revelation of which many things in his life seemed obscure and paradoxical.
Seven years of time have I given to the study of Bacon and his ciphers—not as a dilettante, desultorily, as a means of recreation or use of spare moments—but as a student in the hardest, most conscientious sense of the word. A study which has been a weariness to the brain and destructive to eyesight. Has Mr. Dana given seven days, or even hours, to real research?
As Bacon said in his History of King Henry VII. “We shall make our judgment upon the things themselves, as they give light one to another, and (as we can) dig truth out of the mine.”
Spurred on by the fascination of an important discovery, and by its development, as the concealed story was unfolded, letter by letter, word by word, revealing the hidden life, the secret thoughts and emotions of that great mind and personality, concerning which but the half has been known, I have examined over seven thousand pages of rare and priceless old original editions, placed at my disposal by the courtesy of private collectors in this country and in England, or found in our public libraries, and in that greatest of all receptacles of literary treasures, the British Museum. Every Italic letter on those seven thousand pages has been set down in its proper group, classified according to the rules of the Cipher, and the peculiar characteristics of each letter studied until they became as familiar as the face of a friend. The results of the deciphering so far published fill three hundred and sixty-eight pages of the book under discussion. It would be a vivid imagination, indeed, that could create an historical narrative such as the Cipher reveals. I have earned the right to speak with confidence of what this research has brought to light. I here repeat a paragraph of the personal preface to the First Edition:
I appreciate what it means to ask strong minds to change long-standing literary convictions, and of such I venture to ask the withholding of judgment until study shall have made the new matter familiar, with the assurance meanwhile, upon my part, of the absolute veracity of the work which is here presented.... I would beg that the readers of this book shall bring to the consideration of the work, minds free from prejudice, judging of it with the same intelligence and impartiality they would themselves desire if the presentation were their own. Otherwise the work will, indeed, be a thankless task.
In conclusion, and I speak from knowledge gained at fearful cost, I say with the utmost positiveness, that there is no more doubt as to the existence of both the Word Cypher, and the Bi-literal Cypher, in the works of Francis Bacon, nor as to his authorship of the Shakespeare Plays, and certain other works accredited to other names, than there is as to the existence of stars which only students of astronomy have known.
So long as the “Baconian theory” remained a matter of literary opinion merely, all had a right to their own, but no one has the right to place his prepossessions against facts which he has not properly investigated, and then charge that the result of the careful investigations of others leads to “stupendous misrepresentations” and to “mattoidal products.”
Elizabeth W. Gallup.