Francis Bacon's Association with
Jacob de Bruck's Emblems

Motto: At Last They Shake

Inscription:

As sportive lads who play in snow
Can make a little ball wax great
Though it began attenuate;
So through another thou didst grow.

Living thou wast unseen, half-dumb,
And useless in the vain pretence
Of intellectual eminence,
Have done with it. Thy hearse hath come.

In this emblem, the wind sets from that quarter where certain revellers are making merry under the trees: this is indicated by the waving of the sedge seen growing along the bank of the stream; therefore, the spear enveloped with ciphers threaded on a strand will shake and vibrate in the breeze.

The motto or poesy of the ring, Ultima Frigent means at the last they shake, and signifies no less.

The eel prone upon his back denotes two things: first the vowel U (that is, you) may be supposed to utter this phrase, You, Shakespeare, enveloped as thou art in ciphers.

The U may also be taken as expressing the Roman numeral 5, hence that the five fold cipher, like the eel his back on, is dead.

The last line of the Latin poem, “Now the undertaker layeth hold of the fame of the dead man,” utters a prophecy.

Motto: It Flourishes if God Nourishes

Inscription:

The tree that is dry we abandon,
Though once it bore flower and seed,
But the merciful God layeth hand on
The Dead, and they blossom indeed.

There needs not a long interpretation of this emblem than a brief quotation from the play of Cymberline:

“And when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow, then shall posthumas end his miseries. Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty.”

Posthumas prefiguring there the after ages, and the branches dead many years.

Inscription:

Whilst I have health and vigour left,
And my unclouded mind,
Of favouring Fortune not bereft
And Providence is kind ;
Why is it that a man so old,
In many a curious coil
Some secret writings to infold,
Should kill himself with toil?
Because with my last prayer and breath
I crave supremacy o'er death.

Nil ultra may be seen prefigured as to Bacon’s cipher, and the snail marching round and round his ring the slow process of its solution.

Motto: What I desire is not mortal

Inscription:

Old Timon's wealth, Apollo's grace,
And Hercules' unbending thews,
Are like the baubles children choose,
Are like the shadows which men chase.

Above my head I hold at rest
A cipher signifying nought
To thy dull intellect untaught:
But tell me what is in my chest?

The fabled phoenix rising from his ashes, a representation of those secret writings already touched upon. The cipher held aloft, Bacon’s cipher.

The buried numbers 39 and 27 to the left of the emblem on a slab with squares and triangles, signifies a two fold numerical cipher.

The obelisk, peradventure it is a joke; peradventure it is a deep fetch of wit.

There need in conclusion only this, as the verse declares: It is not mortal fame that I desire.

Inscription:

Shake speares! sound trumpets! in the lists
The visored knight his futile course doth run;
Brazen his armour, iron are his wrists,
But he shall falter ere this just be done.

The youth stands upon a hillock and blows at a candle. What more, merry? I tow little more; but the drift of your book being now apparent, there may be one who, regarding the knights that Shake-speare’s will pierce the veil and say, “Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”

Bacon’s poor player moves apace to his final exit.

Emblem 6

Inscription:

Nature gives cautions when wise counsellors blanch.
The leaf infected will infect the branch.
All evil concourse let thy wisdom flee,
Thy boon companions are no boon to thee.

In the Sonnets there are divers notable mysteries, as manic writers have in good part marked.

This emblem addresses itself to observation, not to the intellect.

The light and the dark A in the impress of those sonnets are represented in the branches of the tree.

These two letters signify a two fold literal cipher and make the distinction between one which is numerical, shown in the fourth emblem above.

This cannot be understood except it is examined with care the light and the dark A with their suspended key in Shake-Speare and his Sonnets.

The executioner in the back ground dose behead his victim, an obscure glance at that notable mystery, The onlie Begetter of these ensuing sonnets.

Inscription:

Now who shall read the laws of him
Who knew not his own laws,
Or understand the causes dim
Of faults that had no flaws?

This emblem takes hold, under the name of logs, of the logarithms; and by the motto of the ring, Nil solidum which means nothing solid, there is a warning against credulous beliefs.

Inscription:

Many men do many things,
And many things are done,
And one would fly with waxen wings,
Who recks not of the sun;
But he who sees his duty clear
Achieves what little men do fear.

The ant beneath the hat, that must be sought here as to dig the meaning out; and I mean of the shovel resting upon the arm of the sea, that the sea can’t uphold it.

The rebus of a secant is plainly expressed in seek ant and sea can’t.

The trigonometrical functions of the arc have a relation to a problem, where chosen is the French word for ant, fourmys, in the French verses, a manifest reference to form is, and he who has read Bacon’s Novum Organum where the emphasis is laid upon the discovery of forms.

Inscription:

Above the avaricious vulture stays,
Before the anagram betrays.

Peradventure the last Sonnet of Shake-Speare, which begins, “Oh truant muse,” looks as well to the preceding emblem as towards the one now numbered 9, because the ring and the cord binding pillar to pillar make the letters Oh.

In certain copies of the edition of Shake-Speare’s Sonnets, 1609, this word Oh will be found to bear a cipher dot: .Oh.

Motto: Whilst I breathe I shall hope

Inscription:

Fate with her pallid lips oft cried,
Give o'er, for thou art overborne I
A wasted life thou mayest mourn,
But my faith told me fate had lied.

The beacon on the hill found here indicates Bacon well enough and the trefoil held aloft may be interpreted, if you will read page 43, vol. 4 of the Letters and Life of Francis Bacon by James Spedding, London, 1868.