Ciphers

We know that Walsingham, the Queen’s Minister in Paris, once ventured to leave his post, and journey on foot to London, to communicate personally with Elizabeth, as he was unwilling that her decipherers should know what he desired to say to her. Spedding says that Francis and Anthony Bacon employed a number of writers, “receiving letters which were mostly in cipher,” and that these passed through the hands of Francis “to the Earl of Essex deciphered.”

In one of Anthony’s letters directed to Francis at Court, September 1593, he says that his servant Edward Yates having lost his letters, it was impossible for him to recover his cipher that night. 1 Spedding’s allusion to writers employed by the Bacons in their Scriptorium, begun at Gray’s Inn, and later removed to Twickenham, we have mentioned before as much like the typewriting office of today. It was convenient for their official and literary work, and served also to increase their income.

Bacon speaks of six ciphers, in a manner which implies that he made use of them, of which the bi-literal seems to have been the principal one, and for several years students of ciphers have been attempting to discover and apply them to his works, especially, the Shakespeare Works.

The first author to deal with this was Ignatius Donnelly, who endeavoured to elucidate one of them. His work is a marvel of patient study, and has attracted wide attention. That he was perfectly honest in his application of his theory, and fully believed in it, no one can reasonably doubt. Unfortunately, he died without leaving sufficient data to enable any one, thus far, to continue his work, and we now hear little about it except abuse.

Dr. Orville W. Owen claims to have discovered Bacon’s word-cipher, and by it has “translated” from his philosophical works, and others bearing the name of Shakspere, Spenser, Green, Marlowe, Peele, and Burton, several volumes of prose and poetry hitherto unheard of; indeed, they greet us like strange visitants from those far-off days, when Elizabeth and James thought themselves essential to the existence of our forefathers. Translated, however, is hardly the proper word; constructed would be better, for they are composed of detached lines taken from a large number of works according to certain guide-and key-words, which reveal where such excerpts should begin and end.

The works which Dr. Owen introduces to us are remarkable, not only for intrinsic merit, but for their bearing upon history. In them not only Bacon’s early life is disclosed, but secrets of state as well.

We give a single brief example of the method of the word cipher. To apply it extracts are taken from various works, and brought together to form a continuous chain of thought; the decipherer being guided by certain guide-and key-words, which we shall explain more fully hereafter:

The Prelude to a Storm
The day is clear the welkin bright and gay
The lark is merry and records her note (Peele)
The thrush replies the mavis descant plays
The ousel shrills the ruddock warbles soft
So goodly all agree with sweet content
To this gladsome day of merriment. (Faerie Queene)
Fair blows the gale (Marlowe)
From the South furrowed Neptune’s seas
Northeast as far as the frozen Rhine (Greene)
The bright sun thereon his beams doth beat
As if he nought but peace and pleasure meant (Faerie Queene)
A solid mass of gold (Anatomy of Melancholy)
As a mirror glass the surface of the water (Bacon)
Reflected in my sight as doth a crystal mirror in the sun (Peele)

This method of joining lines so as to make sense is not unknown, but has never been attempted on a large scale, or by following hidden guides. What makes this, however, unique in the history of literature is the revelation it makes, and the ingenious method which it displays.

The first volume of Dr. Owen’s work begins with this remarkable letter:

Sir Francis Bacon’s Letter to the decipherer
London, 1623.
My Dear Sir:
Thus leaning on my elbow I begin the letter scattered wider than the sky and earth: And yet the spacious breath of this division. As it spreads round in the widest circle, admits the mingling of the four great guides we use, so that we have no need of any minute rule to make the opening of our device appear as plainly to you as the sun. And for fear that you would go astray from our design before you had your powers well put on, we have marked out a plan in this epistle to communicate to you how our great cipher cues combine.

This letter which is really a dialogue between the author and his future decipherer, covers forty-three pages, and in it we are told the works in which a cipher is used.

The Argenis was first published in Paris in 1621 under the name of John Barclay, an author of some repute, who, it will be remembered, appears as one of the Councillors in the Great Assizes at the head of which was Bacon. In 1629 it was published in an English translation by Sir Robert Le Grys, Knight. This work has been ably treated by Mr. Cunningham to whose work we direct attention. 2 We shall here consider an earlier version which purports to have been translated from a Latin version of 1622 by Kingsmill-Long.

Ben Jonson, two years before, it is said, by request of King James, had entered for publication a translation of the Argenis. This was in the busy year of the Shakespeare and Bacon Folios, which were driven through the press with feverish haste, for Bacon was anxious to get the works he had already written, and those he was writing, printed, as he felt that he was nearing his end. We know now that Jonson had a good deal to do with the Folio, and was helping Bacon with other work which may have delayed the publishing of his translation of the Argenis. What finally became of it we are not informed; hence, writers upon the subject have supposed that it was destroyed. We do not agree with this opinion, and believe that the edition of 1625 under the name of Kingsmill Long, was this translation. First it would have been more than unwise for an unknown author, when a work was ready for the press by a man whose reputation as a Latin scholar was so well known as Jonson’s, to translate and publish the same work in competition with him. Then there are reasons why the translation of Jonson “stayed at the press.”

James, who was an over-timid man, after acquainting himself more fully with its character, may have reconsidered his approval of a work containing not only a dangerous state secret, but sentiments at variance with his own. Jonson himself, too, who was then at the height of his fame, may well have hesitated to publish it, loyal as he was to Bacon who undoubtedly had a hand in the matter, for not only was he personally interested in it as a leading actor, but must have known Barclay, who had lived in London for ten years, being one of that little coterie of writers in which Bacon was so prominent. Did Jonson’s work have a key to its contents? It would seem probable, as such a key would have greatly helped the sale of the book, and at this time we may well suppose would have been agreeable to Bacon, and quite disagreeable to James and Steenie.

There was a call, however, for the Argenis, and in 1625 it was published in folio under the name of Kingsmill Long, without a key, which rendered it innocuous.