THE LATEST BACON CYPHER.
The Bi-literal Cypher of Sir Francis Bacon. Discovered in his works and deciphered by Mrs. Elizabeth Wells Gallup. Second Edition. (Gay and Bird. 18s.)—Mrs. Elizabeth Wells Gallup's discoveries are of a kind to take a modest man's breath away. To vary the motto of The Yorkshire Tragedy, if "not so true," they are at least "lamentable and new." In the Be Augmentis there is a passage on ciphers in which a bi-literal one is sketched out. Mrs. Gallup, noting the odd mixture of italic and Roman type in many Elizabethan books, was at the pains to apply it to Bacon's first editions, and to the works of some of his contemporaries. Apparently it did apply, and the result is this amazing history. Bacon, so the deciphered stdry relates, was the son of Queen Elizabeth by Leicester, born dbring her confinement in the Tower before becoming Queen, and the elder brother of Essex. He was, therefore, her de jure successor, the unacclaimed Francis I. of England. But he remained in terror of his mother, and confided his story only to ciphers. Incidentally we are told he fell in love with Marguerite of Navarre, Henri IV.'s Queen, and this remained the great passion of his life. As for his literary work, he wrote all Shakespeare's plays, much of Spenser, Peele, Greene, Marlowe and Ben Jonson, not to speak of "The Anatomy of Melancholy.' We have only two comments to make on this production. We have tried the cipher on one of the editions to which Mrs. Gallup refers, and we cannot make it fit. She admits that to detect the two founts of type requires good eyesight; to us it seems to require more, namely, a bias in favour of discovery. We do not doubt her honesty, but we would suggest that, since such speculations about Essex's birth have been thought of before, she may uncon- sciously have allowed the cipher to tell the story she hoped to find. With such a cipher and a little ingenuity we might make Bacon the writer of the Authorised Version, in which case he becomes a sort of synonym for omnipotence. Our second com. ment is that the deciphered story, ingenious and interesting as it is, seems to us to contain many things which Bacon simply could not have written, a slinging about of otiose epithets and a strain of rhetoric which have a strong transpontine flavour. There is no question of the style being cramped by the cipher, for this bi-literal cipher is merely a matter of typography. We notice this book, because its reading may amuse many, and because. though we think the whole Bacon-Shakespeare controversy ridiculous, yet it has undoubtedly tended to encourage the meticulous examination of Elizabethan literature. But we wish it to be understood that under no circumstances can we open our columns to any correspondence on the matter.
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