Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

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CHAPTER III.
FRANCIS BACON :
A MYSTERY SURROUNDS HIS PRIVATE LIFE
AND CHARACTER.
THE
" I prefer to keep state in these matters."
"Behind to concealed poets."
more closely we peer into Bacon's history, the more particularly
we follow up iuquiries about him,— his private life,
his habits, his travels, his frieuds, his will, his death,— the more
mysterious a personage does he appear. His public or superficial
life seems easy enough to understand, but whenever we
endeavour to go beyond this we find ourselves continually confronted
with puzzles and euigmas, and we feel that Ben Jonson
was justified in saying, in his ode on Bacon's birthday,
" Thou stand'st as though a mystery thou didst."
This mystery is felt in many ways. Several times we find him
writing with looked doors, tbe subject of bis labours not known,
his friends offended by his secresy and reticence. We find collections
of his letters, distinctly his, and with notbing in them which
could apparently injure the writer, or any one else, published
with names and dates cancelled, and with everything possible
done to conceal their aim or tbeir author. We find him writing
in ambiguous terms (wbich only knowledge derived from other
sources enables us to interpret), and using feigned names, initials,
and pass-words in his private letters. Tbe cipher wbich
he invented when he was eighteen or nineteen years old, he has
used and tested, and finds to be superior to all others, when he
is sixty-two. How, when, and wherefore, did he use or require
this extensive knowledge and use of ciphers? And, in describing
the ciphers, he speaks of other concealed means of cojn-
(4°)