Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

10 FRANCIS BACON
The chain of argument which has been formed is of the following
kind:
1. There is a mystery about the life, aims, and actual work of
Francis Bacon. Ben Jonson (whose accuracy is never questioned)
acknowledges this in his verses to Bacon:
"Thou stand'st as though a mystery thou didst."
And Jonsen's testimony to Bacon's immense and poetic genius,
" filling up all numbers, " etc., would be unintelligible if we were
to maintain that all is known which could be known about Bacon
and his works.
The more we study these, the more we weigh his utterances,
his fragmentary papers, his letters, his ambiguous or enigmatic
notes, his wills, and the dedications and prefaces to many of his
acknowledged or suspected works,— the more closely we com-
much
pare the opinions expressed on any of these subjects, so
the more clearly do we perceive the mystery, the apparent contradictions
which exist in his life and writings, and which embroil
and confuse the statements of his innumerable critics and
biographers. The apparent " contraries of good and evil " are,
that there is hardly an
in Bacon's case, so many and so strong,
opinion expressed concerning him by one "great authority"
which is not absolutely contradicted by another equally great.
2. In spite of Bacon's distinct and repeated statements as
to the deep and prevailing darkness,
the ignorant grossness of
his own era; — in spite of his catalogue of the " deficiencies" of
learning,
deficiencies which, commencing with lack of words,
extend through some forty distinct departments of learning;
and not only to " knowledges," but to everything requisite to
form a fine and polished style, or to express noble thoughts :
—
in spite of all this, we are taught to believe in an outburst of
literary genius and of "giant minds," simultaneously all over
the world, during the age in which he lived. Yet we are compelled
to confess that Bacon's statements have never been challenged
or refuted.
Philology shows a marvellous correspondence in
literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period.
the English
True, some