The all-important statement which reveals the authorship of the plays in the most clear and direct manner (every one of the twenty-seven letters composing the long word being employed and no others) is in the form of a correct Latin hexameter, which reads as follows—
HI LUDI F. BACONIS NATI TUITI ORBI
These plays F. Bacon's offspring are preserved for the
world.
This verse will scan as a spondaic hexameter as under
HI LU |DI F | BACO | NIS NA | TI TUI | TI ORBI
HI One long syllable meaning "these."
LUDI Two long syllables meaning "stage plays,"
and especially "stage plays"
in contradistinction to "Circus games."
(Suetonius Hist:
Julius Caes: 10. Venationes autem Ludosque
et cum collega et separatim edidit).
F, One long syllable. Now for the first time
can the world be informed why the sneer
"Bome boon for boon prescian, a little
scratcht, 'twil serve" was inserted on lines
14, 15, page 136 of the folio of 1623. Priscian
declares that F was a mute and Bacon mocks
him for so doing. Ausonius while giving the
pronunciation of most letters of the alphabet
does not afford us any information respecting
the sound of F, but Quintilian xii. 10, s. 29,
describes the pronunciation of the Roman F.
Some scholars understand him as indicating
that the Roman F had rather a rougher sound
than the English F. Others agree with Dr.
H.J. Roby, and are of opinion that Quintilian
means that the Roman F was "blown out
between the intervals of the teeth with no
sound of voice." (See Roby's Grammar of
the Latin language, 1881, xxxvi.) But Dr. A.
Bos in his "Petit Traite de prononciation
Latine," 1897, asserts that the old Latin manner
of pronouncing F was effe. Even if Dr.
A. Bos is correct it is not at all likely that effe
was a dissyllable, but most probably it would
be sounded very nearly like the Greek "[Greek: phi],"
that is as "pfe." In any case (even if it
were a dissyllable) F would, with the DI
of LUDI, form two long syllables and scan
as a spondee. The use of single consonants
to form long or short syllables was very
common among the Romans, but such appear
mostly in lines impossible to quote.
But the Great Author was well acquainted
with such instances, and in this same page 136,
in lines 6, 7, 8, he gives an example, shewing
that the letter "B," although silent in debt,
becomes, when debt is spelled, one of the four
full words—d e b t, each of which has to be
counted to make up the number "151."[6]
This, which is an example of the great value
and importance of what, in many of the plays,
appears to be merely "silly talk" affords a
strong additional evidence of the correctness
of the "revealed" and "revealing" sentence
which we shew was intended by the author to
be constructed out of the long word. Bacon
therefore was amply justified in making use
of F as a long syllable to form the second
half of a spondee.
BACONIS Three long syllables, the final syllable
being long by position. Pedantic grammarians
might argue that natus being a
participle ought not to govern a genitive
case, but should be followed by a preposition
with the ablative case, and that we
ought to say "e Bacone nati" or "de
Bacone nati." Other pedants have declared
that natus is properly, i.e., classically, said
of the mother only, although in low Latin,
such as the Vulgate, we find 1 John v. 2,
"Natos Dei," "born of God." But the
Author of the plays, who instead of having
"small Latin and less Greek" knew "All Latin and very much Greek," was well aware
that Vergil, Aeneid i. 654 (or 658 when the
four additional lines are inserted at the
beginning) gives us "Maxima natarum
Priami," "greatest of the daughters of
Priam," and in Aeneid ii. 527 "Unus natorum
Priami," "one of the sons of Priam." There
exists therefore the highest classical authority
for the use of "Nati" in the sense of "Sons"
or "offspring" governing a genitive case.
"F. Baconis nati," "Francis Bacon's offspring,"
is therefore absolutely and classically
correct.
NATI Two long syllables. A noun substantive
meaning as shewn above "sons" or "offspring."
TUITI Two short syllables and one long syllable,
which last is elided and disappears before the
"o" of orbi. Tuiti which is the same word
as tuti is a passive past participle meaning
saved or preserved. It is derived from
tueor, which is generally used as a deponent
or reflexive verb, but tueor is used by Varro
and the legal writers as a passive verb.
ORBI Two long syllables. The word orbi may
be either the plural nominative of orbus
meaning "deprived" "orphaned," or it may
be the dative singular of Orbis meaning "for
the world." Both translations make good
sense because the plays are "preserved for
the world" and are "preserved orphaned."
The present writer prefers the translation
"for the world," indeed he thinks that to
most classical scholars "tuiti orbi," "preserved
discarded," looks almost like a contradiction
in terms.
Note on Honorficabilitudinitatibus
BACONIS.—On page 131 is shewn a photogravure of the title page of Bacon's "De Augmentis," 1645, which is in fact a pictorial representation of an anagram "Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi." On this title page we find "Baconis" used as the genitive of Bacon's name in Latin. Baconis is also found in XIII th century manuscript copies of Roger Bacon's works, where the title reads "Opus minus Fratris Rogeri Baconis," and in 1603 there was published in 12° at Frankfurt "Rogeri Baconis ... De Arte Chymiae."
TUITI.—Pedanticgrammarians such as Priscian whom the author mocks at in the line "Bome boom for boon precian, a little scratcht, 'twil serve," falsely tel us that there is a passive verb "tueor" with a past participle "tutus." As a matter of fact it is the same verb "tueor" that is used both as a passive and as a deponent, and "tutus" or "tuitus" may be used indifferently at the pleasure of the writer. Sallust uses "tutus," not "tuitus," as the past participle of the deponent verb.
Opposite to the next page is shewn a type transcript of the cover or outside page of a collection of manuscripts in the possession of the Duke of Northumberland, which were discovered in 1867 at Northumberland House. Three years later, viz., in 1870, James Spedding published a thin little volume entituled "A Conference of Pleasure," in which he gave a full size Facsimile of the original of the outside page which is here shewn in reduced type facsimile. He also gave a few particulars of the MSS. themselves.
In 1904 Mr. Frank J. Burgoyne brought out a Collotype Facsimile of every page that now remains of the collection of MSS. in an edition limited to 250 copies I a fine Royal Quarto at the price of £4 4s. 0d. O f the MSS. mentioned on the cover nine now remain, and of these, six are certainly by Francis Bacon; the first being written by him for a masque or "fanciful devise" which Mr. Spedding thinks was presented at the Court of Elizabeth in 1592.
The list of contents was written upon this outside page about 1597, and
among those original contents which are now missing were Richard II. and
Richard III. Mr. Spedding was satisfied that these were the so-called
Skakespearean plays. There are also the tiles of various other works to
which it is not now necessary to allude, but the reader's attention
should be especially directed to the (so-called) scribblings. Mr.
Spedding says: "I find nothing either in these later scribblings or in
what remains of the book itself to indicate a date later than the reign
of Elizabeth." The "scribblings" are therefore written by a contemporary
hand. For the purpose of reference I have placed the letters
a, b, c, d, e, outside of the facsimile.
(a) "honorificabilitudine." This curious long word when taken in
conjunction with the words "your William Shakespeare." which are also
found upon this page, appears to have some reference to the same curious
long word which is found in the ablative plural in "Loves Labour's
lost," which appeared I 1597, and was the play to which Shakespeare's
name was for the first time attached, and, as I shew, in Chapter X., p.
84, it was placed there in order to give with absolute certainty a key
to the real authorship.
(b) "By Mr ffrauncis William Shakespeare Baco"—with ffrauncis
written upside down over it and your/yourself written upside down
at the commencement of the line. Baco would require Baconis as
its genitive.
(c) "revealing day through every crany peepes." We think that this
is an accurate statement of the revelations here afforded.
[Illustration: Modern Script Facsimile of MS Folio 1 Reduced to about one-third the size of the original]