Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

346 FRANCIS BACON
And here, in his books, are the grapes in clusters or " collections
" ready for the " first vintage." Books of all kinds, and
in all degrees of "crudity," will be found to contain these
famous symbolic paper-marks, of which only a few examples
can here be given. Pray, my readers, heed them, note them,
and add to the list appended to this chapter. If not in one
edition, yet in another, of every work of Bacon, writ by the
light of God's two candlesticks, these grapes will be found.
was at first treading the wine-press alone, and his efforts were
those pioneer labours often so painful, and so unrewarded to
the performer, but which " smooth successors their way."
" Since truth," he says, " will sooner come out from error than
from confusion, I think it expedient that the understanding
should be permitted" (after " a due presentation of instances,"
or collection of facts on the subject in hand) " to make a kind of
essay, which I call the Indulgence of the Understanding, or the
Commencement of Interpretation, or the First Vintage. " Then
he proceeds to press, out of the few facts which he has been able
to collect, " a first vintage," on the nature of heat.
Perhaps we may gain hints as to the degree of completion
which Bacon considered that certain of his works had attained,
by the number of the grapes, or the perfection of the diamond
shape in which many of the bunches are arranged. In this diamond
we are reminded of the " heavenly jewel " of knowledge,
the reason and speech which Bacon says is especially the
divine gift to man. Where there is not this form, a fleurde-lis
or the letters R C have been almost invariably found.
The latter, often combined with another letter, are conjectured
to be a signature of the Rosicrucian brother
by whose aid the work was produced ; as, for instance, in
Cynthia's Revels, two distinct forms of I R C are found, which
may mean " Ionson, Rosy Cross." l The same letters are in a
bar in the last page of Shakespeare, 1623, but they are differently
arranged — R C I, and a reversed C, as may be seen in
1 Often the letters are very confused or inverted, or written so that they can
only he read in a mirror. This complicates matters. We do not pretend to give
positive opinions ahout these things.
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