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26 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
Commandments at once, was a thought which, in the
year 1626, it was wise to express in a secret (veiled)
language, by means of a cipher.
Now, if we take up Bacon's works themselves, we
shall find, wherever we turn, that he was thoroughly
versed in all occult arts, and we shall constantly
be coming across sentences which justify our con
cluding that they contain, or secretly express, some
mystery, some mysterious thought or action.
The cipher employed by Rawley, which we referred
to above, was a very simple one for those times.
Francis Bacon himself, in his work " De Augmentis
Scientiarum " (1623), devotes whole pages to the
subject of ciphers and secret or occult methods of
instruction. He discusses the special method how
one ought to bring forward, and speak upon, a subject
or matter that were of too dangerous a nature for the
general public, as being too new and too exciting.
It
may then be expressed by mouth, written, yea even
printed, and yet only the initiated, only the "filii" will
know what is really meant thereby. Bacon enumerates
a whole series of such methods, and then goes on to
mention briefly the various kinds of ciphers, dwelling
longer upon one, which, as a young diplomatist in
France, where he was attach^ to the English Embassy,
he had invented himself. By this method it is possible
to express " all
by all " (omnia per omnia). It is
based upon the employment of two alphabets differing
but slightly from each other, every five letters ot
which mean a secret letter. With its aid one might
write, for instance, Tennyson's " Locksley Hall," and
the initiated would decipher "The May Queen " from
it. The disguising piece need, as we said, only