Elizabeth Wells Gallup

“ It is an honor to be thought capable of such a production, through the gathering of historical facts, aided by a romantic imagination, and the power to express it all in the pure old English language of Francis Bacon. Did I possess such creative powers I would have devoted them to some more popular theme and spared eyes and brain from the nervous exhaustion of examining seven thousand pages of old English printing for the peculiarities of the Italic letters in them. I cannot aspire to the honor of such a “creation.” ”

“ In the Advancement of Learning, Bacon says: “Love teacheth a man to carry himself ... to prize and govern himself ... onely Love doth exalt the mind and neverthelesse at the same instant doth settle and compose it.” The play of Romeo and Juliet was the story of the love of Bacon’s youth and early manhood, and the score of years between the time of writing the play and publishing the essay had filled his life with other things, yet those who have read the cipher story know that an inner chamber of his heart enshrined a memory of Marguerite. ”

“ The proofs are overwhelming and irresistible that Bacon was the author of the delightful lines attributed to Spenser,—the fantastic conceits of Peele and Greene,—the historical romances of Marlowe,—the immortal plays and poems put forth in Shakespeare’s name, as well as the Anatomy of Melancholy of Burton.
The removal of these masques, behind which Bacon concealed himself, may change the names of some of our idols. It is, however, the matter and not the name that appeals to our intelligence. ”

“ As fiction it would be unique; as history, though truth is proverbially stranger than fiction, it is unparalleled. Nothing that can give interest to a book is wanting. There is the excitement of discovery; the triumph of hidden truth brought to light, of error refuted; the romance of a great prince, robbed of his birthright, who finds his consolation in winning a nobler realm—the kingdom of the mind; the tragedy of a younger brother, a wild though generous spirit, seduced by misdirected ambition into the thorny path of rebellion that leads to the question and the block ”

“ Again, Lord Macaulay tells us: “No man ever had an imagination at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. In truth, much of Bacon’s life was spent in a visionary world, amidst things as strange as any that are described in the Arabian tales.”—“A man so rare in knowledge of so many several kinds, endued with the facility and felicity of expressing it all in so elegant, significant, so abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing array of words, of metaphors and allusions, as perhaps the world has not seen since it was a world,” said Sir Tobie Mathew. ”

“ Seven years of time have I given to the study of Bacon and his ciphers—not as a dilettante, desultorily, as a means of recreation or use of spare moments—but as a student in the hardest, most conscientious sense of the word. A study which has been a weariness to the brain and destructive to [Pg 166] eyesight. Has Mr. Dana given seven days, or even hours, to real research?
As Bacon said in his History of King Henry VII. “We shall make our judgment upon the things themselves, as they give light one to another, and (as we can) dig truth out of the mine.” ”

“ Pope calls him “the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any other country, ever produced.” Lord Macaulay says: “Bacon’s mind was the most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed upon any of the children of men;” while Edmund Burke is even more eulogistic: “Who is there that, hearing the name of Bacon, does not instantly recognize everything; of genius, the most profound; of literature, the most extensive; of discovery, the most penetrating; of observation of human life, the most distinguishing and refined.” ”

“ Gallup’s claim to have discovered the existence of Francis Bacon’s Biliteral Cipher in many of the works of his time is one which, in view of the story deciphered, will, if substantiated, oblige us to rewrite a page of history and to tear a mask from many an idol before which we have bowed for three centuries. We shall, therefore, require the most convincing proofs of the bona fides of the discovery. ”

“ We have now established, as we think, beyond contradiction, the fact that so far from being incredulous as to the existence of the biliteral cipher in Bacon’s works, we ought to expect it. How is it, then, the reader will say, that it has remained undiscovered for so long? It is the old story once more of Columbus and the egg, or, as Mrs. Gallup aptly quotes from Bacon himself, “in which sort of things it is the manner of men, first to wonder that such a thing should be possible, and after it is found out, to wonder again how the world should miss it so long.” ”

“ BI-LITERAL CYPHER OF FRANCIS BACON. Baconiana.
To thousands who tread unthinkingly the earth’s fair surface, the mineral constitution of the globe, or the history of its formation, is as a sealed book. The geologist, however, pointing out the parallel lines in a rock will tell us they indicate the glacial period. From a piece of coal he will describe the forests and plant life which formed the coal measures of the carboniferous era. He finds where volcanic action reveals strata from unknown depths, and reads their history like a printed page. ”

“ Marston has detected in the Iliad translation, we can afford to wait for Mrs. Gallup’s explanation. If the whole problem rested on Mrs. Gallup’s good faith, the flaw might seem supicious, but it rests on the shape of letters in books at the British Museum. In itself it is the biggest literary problem ever set before the world; the prima facie case is overwhelming, as every one who has studied the question knows full well. How is it possible that a dreary, senseless old prejudice should be allowed to stand in the way of the truth? ”

“ Deciphering the Bi-literal Cipher, as it appears in Bacon’s works, will be impossible to those who are not possessed of an eyesight of the keenest, and perfect accuracy of vision in distinguishing minute differences in form, lines, angles and curves in the printed letters. Other things absolutely essential are unlimited time and patience, persistency, and aptitude, love for overcoming puzzling difficulties and, I sometimes think, inspiration. ”

“ Some one has said, “any man’s opinion is the measure of his knowledge.” If his knowledge is ample his judgment should be true, and I am well aware there has been little opportunity for men of letters or the reading public to know about this new phase of the old subject.
The book itself is much wider in its range, and much more far-reaching in its literary and historical consequences, than the mere settlement of the Bacon-Shakespeare question. It concerns not only the authorship of much of the best literature of the Elizabethan period, but the regularity of successions to the throne of England ”

“ It is as mechanical as the reading of hieroglyphics, as naming perfectly well-known objects, as discriminating the clicks of the telegraph. And as far as Bacon was concerned he desired only his right.
It is by its great men in every age of the world that the actor’s calling is dignified, but the genius of the man of the stage is not necessarily the genius of the man who wrote the greatest plays that time through all the centuries has produced. ”

“ But this writer and Spedding have dipped deep into the well of Truth, and with her waters have washed away the mud which had been flung by the envious hands of the pigmy contemporaries over whom Francis Bacon towered, and have shown the whole figure to be sterling gold from head to foot. Even Macaulay and Pope, however, while they mistake Bacon’s moral nature, acknowledge the vastness and exquisiteness of his intellect, though again on this side they fail to appreciate fully his “infinite capacity for taking pains.” ”

“ REPLIES TO CRITICISMS. Elizabeth Wells Gallup.
In presenting the results of my work in deciphering the bi-literal cypher, I expected criticism, but it has taken on some features that have been quite surprising to me.
To answer fittingly all the questions raised would be to write a book. Some are relevant, many not; some are prompted by desire for knowledge, others by a desire to check what they regard as a heresy; most show unfamiliarity with the subject, and not a few are mistaken in their statements of facts. ”

“ It is so much pleasanter to be satisfied with what we have than to delve for things we do not want to know.
Personally, it is a matter of no vital importance to me whether the cipher is accepted or not. I have put my best efforts into its discovery and elucidation. I know that I have accomplished what others have failed to do, and I can look on with equanimity as the world wrestles with the evidences, and finally comes, as it will, to the conclusion I have reached. ”

“ It will be observed by readers of the “Bi-literal Cypher” that the fragment of the Fourth Book of the Iliad which is injected by Bacon into the “Argument” is for illustration merely, and is clearly stated to be only “a supreme effort of memory” of the fuller translation which he had previously embedded as a part of the mosaic in his works, to be extracted and reconstructed through the methods of another cipher.
Surely there can be no more distressing condition than when critics refuse to know all the facts, and are guilty of drawing conclusions without them. ”

“ All this thought out, in diction, much of it, of the highest order, in the old English spelling and phraseology of the 16th century and fitted with such nice exactness to the Italic letters of the old books, “separated into groups of five”—letters that even the sceptics admit the capitals at least agree with the alleged system—the study of months in the British Museum; the explanations and demonstrations to numberless people—all to hide a genius so magnificent! In the language of Mr. Bompas, “Absurd!” And yet, I repeat, if not Cipher it must be my own production. ”

“ It is impossible to deal intelligently with the cipher story till one has first of all escaped from the trammels of the superstition. Let people new to the subject be assured, to begin with, that, without touching a scrap of evidence having to do with ciphers, those who “seriously consider” the question approach the discussion of ciphers from the point of view of knowing that the Shakespeare idea is pure, idiotic nonsense, and that Bacon, of course, wrote the Plays. ”

“ But ridicule and invective are not argument, prejudice is not proof. “Some of our friends,” we used to be told in our childhood, “are for warning, others for example.” Taking those we have quoted for warning, let us give a fair and open-minded consideration to Mrs. Gallup’s claims.
To do this it will be necessary to describe Bacon’s Biliteral Cipher. His own description of it may be seen in any edition of his De Augmentis. Its principle is extremely simple, being, in fact, that of the Morse Code at present used in telegraphy—namely, various combinations of two differences. ”

“ Another crop of inquiries springs up when we attempt briefly to rehearse the wonderful revelations now before us, and which it is within our power to examine and essay to prove.
Elizabeth, when princess, and prisoner in the hands of Mary, secretly married Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Of this secret marriage two sons were born. Francis the elder would have been “put away privilie” by the wicked woman whom he never could bring himself to think of as “mother.” Lady Anne Bacon, however, saved his life, and under an oath of secrecy adopted him as her own son. ”

“ We make a formidable claim on such men as Mr. Sidney Lee when we ask them to abandon a tradition around which they have woven a great mass of ingenious imagination in the effort to account for that which Emerson found unaccountable—the contrast between the little that is actually known of Shakespeare and the works assigned to him. “Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man in wide contrast.” ”

“ Gallup’s interpretation, he has found any fairly considerable number of cipher words to correspond with her interpretation. No one could weave the cipher into a mass of print without making a multitude of mistakes. In ordinary handwriting we most of us slur over scores of the letters we intend to form legibly, but if our readers can read the majority and see what we mean they do not reject the whole because of the defective bits. Of course the double types confuse the perfection of the Cipher, but Bacon seems to have deliberately aimed at confusion, fearing premature discovery. ”