505-193-312

down column 1, page 76 312

76:1 their

312

76:1 their

523-193-330—18 b & h One has but to compare this with the marvelous adjustments shown on pages 571, 572 and 573, ante, whereby the same words, found and out, are made to do double duty, by two different modes of counting, (the difference between 836 and 900, the two root-numbers employed, being precisely equal, as in this case, to the number of bracketed and hyphenated words in the text, between the words themselves and the starting-point of the count), to realize the extraordinary nature of the compositions we call the Shakespeare Plays.

And observe again, in this last group of words, how regularly 254 and 193 alternate: 254 193 254—193 — 254-193; and two groups of 523 each alternate with two groups of 505 each, thus: 523, 523, 505, 505, 523, 523, 505.

But to continue: We recur to 505 again; deduct from it again the modifier 30; this leaves us 475; deduct from this 193 plus the bracketed and hyphenated words inclosed in the 193 words, and we have left 267; we advance up the next column, and the 267th word is the 242d word, aim.

Here, then, we have the sentence:

Our men turned their backs and fled in the greatest fear, swifter than arrows fly toward their aim.

I might go on and fill out the rest of the narrative, but that will be done in a subsequent chapter. This at least will explain the mode in which the Cipher is worked out.

While it may be objected that I have not the different paragraphs in their due and exact order in the sentences I have given, or may give, hereafter, no reasonable man will, I think, doubt that these results are not due to accident; that there is a Cipher in the Plays, and a Cipher of wonderful complexity. And I shall hope that the ingenuity of the world will perfect any particulars in which my own work may be imperfect; even as the complete working-out of the Egyptian hieroglyphics was not the work of any one man, or of any half-dozen men, or of any one year, or of any ten years.

There is, of course, a species of incredulity which will claim that all this wonderful concatenation of coherent words is the

result of chance; just as there was a generation, a century or two ago, which, when the fossil forms of plants and animals were first noticed in the rocks, (misled by a preconceived notion as to the age of the earth), declared that they were all the work of chance; that the plastic material of nature took these manifold shapes by a series of curious accidents. And when they were driven, after a time, from this position, the skeptics fell back on the theory that God had made these exact imitations of the forms of living things, and placed them in the rocks, to perplex and deceive men, and rebuke their strivings after knowledge.

With many men the belief in the Stratford player is a species of religion. They imbibed it in their youth, with their mother's milk, and they would just as soon take the flesh off their bones as the prejudices out of their brains. Ask them for any reason, apart from the Plays and Sonnets, (the very matters in controversy), why they worship Shakspere; ask them what he ever did as a man that endears him to them; what he ever said, in his individual capacity, that was lofty, or noble, or lovable; and they are utterly at loss for an answer; there is none. Nevertheless they are ready to die for him, if need be, and to insult, traduce and vilify every one who does not agree with them in their unreasoning fetish worship. It reminds me of an observation of Montaigne:

How many have been seen patiently to suffer themselves to be burnt and roasted for opinions taken upon trust from others, and by them not at all understood. I have known a hundred and a hundred women (for Gascony has a certain prerogative for obstinacy) whom you might sooner have made eat fire than forsake an opinion they had conceived in anger.

And a remarkable feature, not to be overlooked, is, that not only do a few numbers produce some of the twenty-nine words in these sentences, but they produce them all. Thus nearly all come out of 505, towards the last intermixed with 523; and we derive from 312 sent, out, soldiers, fly, furious, fear, their; while from 221 we get men, turned, backs, in; and 251 gives greatest, arrows, etc. It seems to me that if the reader were to write down these words, just as I have given them, and submit them to any clear-headed person, and tell him they were parts of a story, he would say that they evidently all related to some narrative in which soldiers were sent out, that somebody was furious, and some other parties were in the greatest fear and had turned their backs to fly.

THE

CHAPTER IV.

BACON HEARS THE BAD NEWS.

Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office; and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell
Remembered knolling a departing friend.

2d Henry IV., 1, 2.

'HE Cipher grows out of a series of root-numbers. Before we reach that part of the story which is told by the root-numbers 505, 513, 516 and 523, there is a long narrative which leads up to it, and which is told by another series of numbers, which grow in due and regular order out of the primal root-number, which is the parent of 505, 513, 516 and 523. They start at "The Heart of the Mystery," the dividing line between the first and second parts of Henry IV. and progress in regular order, forward and backward, moving steadily away from that center, as the narrative proceeds, until they exhaust themselves on the first page of the first part and the last page of the second part of the play. Then the primal number is put through another arithmetical progression, and we reach the numbers I have named, 505, 513, 516 and 523, and these give us that part of the story which is now being worked out. And to tell that story we begin, properly, with the very beginning, at "The Heart of the Mystery," in the first column of the second part of the play of King Henry IV.

And here I would observe that as the Cipher flows out of the first column of page 74 its mode of progression is different from the Cipher referred to in the last chapter, for that grew out of the first column of page 75, which is broken into two parts by the stage direction "Enter Morton;" and hence the root-numbers were modified at one time by subtracting the upper half, and at another time by subtracting the lower half; that is to say, by counting up from

"Enter Morton," or counting down. But the first column of page 74 has no such break in it; it is solid; and hence the root-numbers sooner exhaust themselves. And this perhaps was rendered necessary by the fact that there are but 248 words in the second column of page 74, while there are 508 words in the second column of page 75. There would have been great difficulty in packing as many Cipher words into 248 words as into 508 words. Hence the different Cipher numbers interlock with each other more frequently, and in a short space we find all the Cipher numbers (except 506, which has a treatment peculiar to itself and apart from the others) brought into requisition.

The former Cipher numbers, to which I have alluded, ended with some brief declaration from Harry Percy of the evil tidings; and the first words spoken by Bacon are based on the hope that there may be some mistake, that the news may not be authentic. He inquires: "Saw you the Earl? How is this derived?" "The Earl," of course, means the Earl of Essex, and the head of the conspiracy. And here I would also explain, that just as we sometimes modified 505 and 523, in the examples given in the last chapter, by counting the words above the first word of the second subdivision of column 1 of page 75, to-wit, 193; and sometimes the words above the last word of the first subdivision, to-wit, 192: so with this first column of page 74, if we count down the column there are 284 words, exclusive of bracketed and the additional hyphenated words, but if we count up the column we will find that the number of words above the last word of the column is but 283, exclusive of bracketed words and the additional hyphenated words. And this the reader will perceive is a necessary distinction, otherwise counting up and down the column. would produce the same results; and as the Cipher runs from the beginnings and ends of scenes, and as the "Induction" is in the nature of a first scene (for the next scene is called "Scena Secunda "), it follows that we must adopt the same rule already shown to exist as to 193, 254, etc., and which we will see hereafter runs all through the Cipher, in both plays. And these subtle distinctions not only show the microscopic accuracy of the work, but illustrate at the same time the difficulty of deciphering it.

I place at the head of the column the root-numbers and their

modifications; and the reader will note that every word of the coherent narrative which follows is derived from one or the other of these numbers, modified by the same modifiers, 30 and 50, which we found so effective on page 75, together with the other modifiers, 197, 198, 218 and 219, which are also found, as we have already explained, in the second column of page 74.

I would also call attention to the fact that just as we, in the preceding chapter, sometimes counted in the bracketed and additional hyphenated words in the subdivisions of column 1 of page 75, and sometimes did not: so in this case, sometimes we count in the bracketed and additional hyphenated words in column 1 of page 74, and sometimes we do not. And as in the former instance we indicated it by the marks "-15 b & h," there being 15 bracketed and hyphenated words in both those subdivisions, so in the following examples we indicate it by the marks "-18 b & h," there being 18 bracketed and additional hyphenated words in column 1 of page 74. Where the figures 21b" or 22 b & h" occur, they refer to the bracketed words or the bracketed and additional hyphenated words in the same column in which the words are found.

=

"

=

I would call attention to the significant words in the narrative that flow out of the modifiers; for instance, 523-284-239, from; less 50=189, gentleman; less 30— 209 — 21 b= 188, a; less 30=158, whom; 505-284-221, I; less 50=171, derived; less 30=191, bred; 505284= 221-216 in column 200, these; 523-284-23921 in column=218, news; while 523—283=240, me; —50— 190, well; -30=210, I. Here in two root-numbers, alternated with the modifiers 50 and 30, we produce the significant words: I, derived, these, news, from, a, well, bred, gentleman, whom, I. Surely, all this cannot be accidental?

Suppose instead of these root-numbers, 505 and 523, we take any other numbers, say 500 and 450, and apply them in the same way, and in the same order, as in the above sentence; and we will have as a result the following words: came, the, a, name, listen, you, fortunes, Monmouth, the, that, after. Not only do these words make no sense arranged in the same order as in the above coherent sentence, but it is impossible to make sense out of them, arrange them how you will. You might put together: after that Monmouth came;