[Original]
Only a considerable knowledge of Emblems and Emblem books enables me to inform my readers what this very curious object represents. It is absolutely certain that what she holds above Bacon's head is a "bridle without a bit," which is here put for the purpose of instructing us that the future age is not to curb and muzzle and destroy Bacon's reputation. This emblem tells us that, as the ages roll on, Bacon will be unmuzzled and crowned with everlasting fame. How do we know so much as this? In February, 1531, the first edition of the most important of all Emblem books, viz., "Alciati's Emblems," was published, and in that book there is shewn a hideous figure of Nemesis holding a bridle in which is a tremendous "bit" to destroy "improba verba," false reputations. A little more than a hundred years later, viz., in 1638, Baudoin, who had translated Bacon's essays into French, also published a book of Emblems, a task which, he tells us in the preface, he was induced to undertake by "Alciat" (printed in small letters) and by BACON (printed in capital letters). In this book of Emblems Baudoin puts opposite to Bacon's name a fine engraving of Nemesis, but which is, in fact, a figure of Fame holding a "bridle without a bit," of exactly the same shape as that shewn in the title page of "Henry VII.," which is now under the reader's eyes. I may perhaps here state that I possess books that must have belonged to a distinguished Rosicrucian who was well acquainted with Bacon's secrets, and that in my library there is a specially printed copy of Baudoin's book in which this figure of Fame that is put as the Nemesis for Bacon, is purposefully printed upside down; I do not mean bound upside down, but printed upside down, the printing on the back being reversed and so reading correctly. Other books which I possess have portions similarly purposefully printed upside down to afford revelations of Bacon's authorship to those readers who are capable of understanding symbols. This particular upside down drawing of the Nemesis placed opposite to Bacon's name in Baudoin's book is so printed in order to emphasise the author's meaning that the Nemesis for Bacon is to unmuzzle him and spread his fame over all the world. This "specially printed" copy of Baudoin's book is also "specially bound"—in contemporary binding—with Rosicrucian Emblems on the back.
The figure which turns the wheel turns it with her "left" hand, while with her right hand she holds over Bacon's head what the reader now knows to be the emblems of Wisdom and of Fame. Streaming from her head is a long lock of hair which is correctly described as "the forelock of time," and this is to teach us that as time goes on so will Bacon's reputation continually extend farther and farther.
Bacon in his will declared that he bequeathed his "name and memory... to foreign nations and the next ages." * Bacon knew that much time must elapse before the world would begin to recognise how much he had done for its advancement, and there is considerable evidence that he fixed upon the year 1910, which is 287 years after the year 1623, in which the Folio edition of the immortal plays, known as Shakespeare's, first appeared.
* Note.—The following story, related by Ben Jonson himself,
shows how necessary it was for Bacon to conceal his identity
behind various' masks:—"He [Ben Jonson] was dilated by Sir
James Murray to the King, for writing something against the
Scots, in a play Eastward Hoe, and voluntarly imprissonned
himself with Chapman and Marston who had written it amongst
them. The report, was that they should then [have] had their
ears cut and noses. After their delivery, he banqueted all
his friends; there was Camden, Selden, and others; at the
midst of the feast his old Mother dranke to him, and shew
him a paper which she had (if the sentence had taken
execution) to have mixed in the prisson among his drinke,
which was full of lustie strong poison, and that she was no
churle, she told, she was minded first to have drunk of it
herself." This was in 1605, and it is a strange and grim
illustration of the dangers that beset men in the Highway of
Letters.
With respect to Bacon's remarkable reference to foreign nations, we must remember that the title pages here shown and numerous other striking revelations of his authorship of the plays were never printed or published in England, but appear only in editions printed in foreign countries. I will once more repeat that the title page of the "De Augmentis" clearly tells us that Bacon has secretly with his "left hand" placed his great work, the "Immortal plays," "the Mirror up to Nature," in the hands of a mean actor, and that the title page of "Henry VII." repeats the same "lefthanded" story, and tells us that, while the history of Henry VII. is written in prose in Bacon's own name, his other histories of the "Kings of England" are set forth at the Globe Theatre by the Shakespeare actor, concealed behind whom Bacon stands secure. In other words, that Bacon's other histories of England will be found in the plays to which is attached the name of his pseudonym, the doubly "lefthanded" and masked dummy, "William Shakespeare."