The Rose Cross ~ Part One

Apollo
The Great Assizes
That Bacon was known as a poet by his contemporaries is proved by abundant evidence.

Perhaps the most important proof of the esteem in which he was held is exhibited in the Great Assizes holden in Parnassus.

The two parts of the Pilgrimage to, and the Return from, Parnassus were produced respectively in 1597, 1598, and 1601.

The Great Assizes was printed in 1645. Raphael had depicted in the Vatican the triumph of antique art under the poetic influ-ence of the Renaissance, and the author or authors of the Pilgrimage and Return framed the trilogy to be enacted at St. John’s College, to depict the antithesis of the modern art of learning under the demoralizing influence of the age.

The culmination is found in the Great Assizes convened at Parnassus for the trial of the trashy and misleading Literature of the period.

To the lofty mount of Learning, crowned with its temple, the university, prefigured in their dreams as Parnassus, the glorious abode of Apollo and the Muses, the lovers of Learning journey; but find, after experience, how vain have been their dreams, and return to the world disillusioned.

In time the fact beams luridly upon their vision that the golden age of literature has past, and is being supplanted by an age of trashy pamphleteers and news-scribblers.

The lovers of true literature thereupon appeal to Apollo, who convenes a high court to meet at Parnassus.

The great authors, principally of the past, are summoned as assessors by Apollo; a jury is empanelled, and the principal male factors, the newspapers of the day, are first placed on trial.

At the head is Apollo and next to him is Verulam, or Bacon, his chancellor.

From this single circumstance it is evident that the God of Music and Poetry regarded Bacon as worthiest among mortals of the chief seat in Parnassus.