Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

212 FRANCIS BACON<
of some much larger works. But he also notes that " a Mercury
cannot be made of every word," that is, a dull fellow will never
he made a clever one; nevertheless "a true servant may he
made of an unlikely piece of wood/' 1 and he had a faculty for
attaching people to him and for bringing out all that was best
and most serviceable in their natures.
The next note says that " Princes have a cypher." Was he
thinking that he, the prince of writers, would use one for his
royal purposes? A few Hues earlier is this entry:
" Iisdem e' Uteris efficitur tragoedia et coinedia*'
(Tragedies and comedies are made of one alphabet),
which we now know refers to the cipher narrative for which the
pass-word was the alphabet, and which is found running through
the Shakespeare tragedies and comedies. 2
Such entries as these, suggestive of some mystery, are
interesting
when taken in connection with other evidence derivable
from Bacon's manuscript books, where the jottings have been
more methodised or reduced from other notes. In the Commentaries
or Transportata, which can be seen in MS. at the
British Museum, we find him maturing his plans for depreciating
" the philosophy of the Grecians, with some better respect to ye
iEgiptians, Persians, and Chaldees, and the utmost antiquity,
and the mysteries of the poets. " " To consyder what opynions
are fitt to nourish Tanquam Ansa, so as to graft the new upon
the old, ut religiones solcnt, " of the " ordinary cours of incompe-
1 See letter to Lord Pickering, 1594.
2 " I have sent yon some copies of the Advancement, which yon desired; and a
little work of my recreation, which you desired not. My Instauration I reserve
for our conference — it sleeps not. Those works of the alphabet, are, in my
opinion, of less use to you where you are now, than at Paris, and, therefore, I
conceived that you had sent me a kind of tacit countermand of .your former
request. But in regard that some friends of yours have still insisted here, I
send them to you ; and for my part I value your own reading more than your
publishing them to others. Thus, in extreme haste, I have scribbled to you I
knownot what. " {Letter from Bacon to Sir Tobie Matthew, 160;).)
"What these works of the alphabet may have been, I cannot guess; unless
they related to Bacon's cipher," etc. — (Spedd'uufs comment on the above words,
i. 659.)
See also the Advancement of Learning, ii. : Spedding, iii. 319, where Bacon
quotes Aristotle to show that words arc the images of cogitations, and letters
are the images of words.