Bacon's DictionaryAppendices

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The exhibits and miniatures of which are found in this section, are designed to assist the serious student and reader in following the path of the Authorship Controvesy that has been so laboriously persued by many authors and researchers during its commence.

These exhibits have been placed here as not to interrupt the flow of reading in the Baconian Dictionary sections, being a finding list of Bacon’s works, his history, his thoughts and his aims, which are a subject of study and discussion.

Minerva Britanna, 1612

Francis Bacon was a great admirer of the young Prince Henry and it would not seem inconsistent that he would have created two volumes on Emblems for this unfortunate Prince. In 1618 Minerva Britanna was issued The Mirrour of Majestie, of which no more than two copies are said to exist, the only perfect one being in the choice library of Mr. Corser, of Stand. The edition “was sent abroad” and his defence of his country in his Epistle to the Reader sounds very like a commendation of Whitney’s: “They term us Tramontane Sempii, simple and of dull conceipt, when the fault is neither in the Climate, nor as they would have it, in the constitution of our bodies, but truly in the cold and frozen respect of Learning and artes generally amongst us; comming far short of them in the just valuing of well-deserving qualities.” On page 172 in the Minerva Britanna, Peachamimplies that Whitney personally gave consent to Peacham’s use of the device of Love and Death. 1 From Quarles’s Emblems published in 1634, Emblem VI., has this peculiar line that may also be found in Bacon’s poetic works: “The world itself, and all the world’s command, is but a bubble.” Also from the same edition the epistle to the reader: “An Emblem is but a silent parable: Let not the tender eye check, to see the allusion to our blessed Saviour figured in these types. In Holy Scripture he is sometimes called a Sower; sometimes a Fisher; sometimes a Physician: And why not presented so as well to the eye as to the ear? [Sonnet] Before the knowledge of letters, God was known by hieroglyphics. And indeed what are the Heavens, the earth, nay, every creature, but Hieroglyphics and Emblems of his glory? I have no more to say; I wish thee as much pleasure in the reading, as I had in writing.”

The first English book on Stenography seems to have been that published by T. Bright in 1588. Here we may pause to note three particulars: T. Bright was Dr. Timothy Bright, under whose name the Anatomy of Melancholy was first published in 1587. This edition is entered in the British Museum Catalogue as the work of T. Bright. The subsequent editions take no notice of Bright, but are published in the name of Burton. “What’s in a name?” In the introduction of Elizabeth Wells Gallup’s Bi-literal Cipher of Sir Francis Bacon the Editor, calling attention to these facts, adds that “The Cipher mentions both Bright and Burton as names under which “Bacon” wrote the book, and also that the different editions contain each a different cipher story.” And Tenison in Baconiana (1679) says, “Whosoever would understand the Lord Bacon’s cypher, let him consult that accurate edition [De Augmentis]. For, in some other editions which I have perused, the form of the letters of the Alphabet, in which much of the mystery consisteth, is not observed; but the Roman and Italic shapes of them are confounded.” A cipher in Sonnet 76 was discovered February 1, 1905 by a Mr. R.A. Smith, of Washington, D.C.: in line one the 6th word begins with b; in line 3 the 9th word begins with a; in lines 4, 5 and 6, the 6th word begins consecutively with c, o, n. Each numbered word is a multiple of 3, and the initials spell BACON.

Sonnet 76

Why is my verse so Barren of new pride

So far from variation or quick change?

Why with the time do I not glance Aside,

To new-found methods and to Compounds strange?

Why wrote I still all One, ever the same,

And keep invention in a Noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth and where they did proceed?

T. Bright dedicated his book on short-hand writing to Queen Elizabeth, with the title Characterie, or the Art of Short, Swift and Secret Writing. At the time of the publication of the entitled book, Francis Bacon was twenty-seven years of age, and passing through a period of the greatest leisure which he ever enjoyed. From 1586 to 1590 there is hardly a trace of his doings, but the press was teeming with and issuing works of all kinds the English Renaissance had begun. To the Treatise on Short Writing of 1588, there followed The Writing School-master, by Peter Bale. Here we are told that “Brachygraphy, or the art of writing as fast as a man speaketh treatably, may in appearance seem difficult, but it is in effect very easy, containing a many commodities under a few principles, the shortness whereof is obtained by memory, the swiftness by practice, the sweetness by industry. A most Baconian utterance suggestive of its true source.” The date of this book is 1590. The next attempt towards improvement in the art seems to have been printed in 1602 by John Willis. It was entitled The Art of Stenographic or Short Writing by Spelling Characterie, and after this had passed through numerous editions, a fresh treatise was published by Edmund Willis in 1618, and two more in 1630, by Witt and Dix. Colonna Cypher found in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published anonymously at Venice in 1499. He also refers to an earlier Bi-literal Cypher, as set forth, together with a Tri-literal and a Quinquiliteral Cypher in Mercury; or, the Secret and Swift Messenger, ascribed to Bishop Wilkins and dated 1641. Also of interest is the Art of Secret Information disclosed without a Key, by John Falconer, published in 1685:

1. You may discover from the number of characters in the writing, whether two Alphabets be used.
2. After you have found out, that two Alphabets or more are used, you may, from the frequency of each particular character, etc., observe the differing letters that express the same power.
3. And having by several Operations distinguished the Alphabets one from another, anything of new Difficulty vanisheth.

These few facts must surely be sufficient to prove that short-hand writing began and flourished in the reign of Elizabeth, and was vigorously used and improved upon during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That Francis Bacon not only first introduced the art, but that he made good use of it, is without doubt. The scanty records published of his mysterious private life seem in many places to hint, although they do not plainly affirm that this was the case. Hear the saying of Dr. Rawley, when describing his master’s habits of perpetual industry and the delight of his conversation; and Peter Boehner, private secretary and medical attendant to Francis Bacon, describes how in the morning he would call him or some other of his secretaries to his bedside, and how they wrote down from his lips the thoughts and ideas which he had conceived in the night. Had this process been so “slow and laborious” as the general belief is supposed to warrant, our indefatigable and nimble-minded author would have had to pass most of his days in bed. (Gallup). 2 [Also see Chapter entitled: The Life of the Right Honourable Francis Bacon.]

In Michael Bryan’s A Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, 1819, there is a Peacham Henry listed as follows: “This gentleman is said to have engraved a portrait of Sir Thomus Cromwell, afterwards Earl of Essex, after Holbein.He was the author of a book called The Complete Gentleman,published in 1633. He was born at South Mimms in Hertfordshire, and took the degree of M.A. at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an amateur, not a professed artist, and was skilled in music as well as painting and engraving. In his book entitled The Complete Gentleman,and another entitled The Gentleman’s Exercise, he lays down rules for drawing and painting in oil; for making of colours, blazoning Coats of Arms, &c. He died about 1650.” This author undoubtebly is the author of Minerva Britanna, which title page shows an Emblem where a hand protrudes from a curtain writing the phrase Mente, Vide Bori. [By the mind shall I be seen.] In Ben Jonson’s lines accompanying the Droeshout portrait in the Folio, he says this:

To the Reader

This Figure, that thou here seest put,

It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;

Wherein the Grauer had a strife

With Nature, to out-doo the life:

O, could he but have drawne his wit

As well in brasse, as he hath hit

His face; the Print would then surpasse

All, that was euer writt in brasse.

But, since he cannot, Reader, looke

Not on his Picture, but his Booke.

It may be asked, how Jonson’s address can be reconciled with the theory that neither the “Picture” nor the “Booke” are the actor’s, and preserve the commonly accepted meaning of the address? A fair answer may be given to this by showing how in sincere such expressions were at the time this was written. There is ample evidence of their worthlessness, and Malone gives us his opinion in this case. Referring to Droeshout’s portraits, he says: “By comparing any of these prints with the original pictures from whence the engravings were made, a better judgment might be formed of the fidelity of our author’s portrait, as exhibited by this engraver, than from Jonson’s assertion, that in “this figure” “the Grauer had a strife with Nature, to out-doo the life”; a compliment which in the books of that age was paid to so many engravers, that nothing decisive can be inferred from it.” 3 [Also see Part III: Shaksper’s portraits.]