Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 33
(or perhaps a more enlightened) study obliges us to modify
these views. For it is observed that, although, in many of
these works, the Promus notes are scarce, and the entries in
certain folios of that collection altogether absent, yet, wherever
any Promus notes are discovered in the works of Bacon's time,
or for some years later, there also ivill almost surely be found a
number of metaphors of the same kind as those mentioned above.
The majority of these will be found traceable to the ancient
philosophers and to the Bible, and are always used in the same
characteristic and graphic manner in Bacon's works; the form
of the metaphor being modified to suit
the style and subject of
the piece in which it is set.
This perceptible connection between the metaphors, the Promus
notes, and the use of texts from the Bible, throughout the works
of Bacon, and the school which he seems to have created,
strengthened still further the growing conviction that he was the
centre of a powerful and learned secret society, and that the
whole of the literature contemporaneous with him was bound
together by chains and links, cords and threads, forged, woven,
and spun by himself.
With regard to the Promus, edited with passages from
Shakespeare, and published in 1883, we would say that further
study has thrown new light upon many of the entries. Some,
which appeared very obscure, seem to be intimately connected
with Bacon's plans for the establishment of his secret society.
There are also many errors in the arrangement of the notes,
some being divided which should have been treated as a whole,
and the sheets themselves, as arranged in the Harleian collection,
are not, in the editor's opinion, correctly placed. We make no
apologies for deficiencies in carrying out a work which was, in
the then stage of knowledge, a much more difficult business than
it now appears. Ill health must have its share of blame, the
editor being rendered incapable of revising proofs with the
manuscript at the British Museum. A future edition shall be
much more perfect.
Still prosecuting the work of comparative philology and
science, the present writer was irresistibly drawn to the con-
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