Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

"
ANT) HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 51
sleeps not.
Those works of the alphabet arc in my opinion of less
use to you ivhere 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 ssni them to you; ani for my part I
value your reading more titan your publishing them to others.
Thus, in extreme haste, I have scribbled to you I know not ivhat, "
etc.i
" What these works of the alphabet may have beeu, I cannot
guess," says Speckling, in commenting upon this letter, " unless
they related to Bacon's cipher, in which, by means of two alphabets,
one having only two letters, the other having two forms
for each of the twenty-four letters, any words you please may
be so written as to signify any other words, provided only that
the open writing contains at
the concealed." 2
least five times as many letters as
In the Promus, the mysterious letter has been connected with
an entry in which Bacon seems to connect the plays with an
alphabet: Ijsdem filter is efflcitur tragcedia et comedia (Tragedies
and comedies are made of one alphabet), 3
and the first impression
conveyed by this entry was that the alphabet was a
secret term to express the comedies and tragedips, since Bacon
quotes Aristotle to the effect that u Words are the images of
cogitations, and letters are the images of words. " The recent
discoveries of Mr. Donnelly and others seem to enhance the
probability that the entry in question refers to the plays containing
a cipher, the word alphabet bearing in this case abifold allusion,
to the nature of the tragedies and comedies, and a double fitness.
And how are we to interpret the following passage from a
letter of March 27, 1621-2, to Mr. Tobie Matthew? " If upon
your repair to the court (whereof I am right glad) you have any
speech with the Marquis [of Buckingham] of me, I pray p 'ace
the alphabet, as you can do it right well, in a frame, to express
my love, faithful and ardent, to him.
1 Spedding, i. 134, and Sir T. M. p. 14.
2 Let. Life, iv. 134.
3 Promus, 516. The Latin quotation from Erasmus' Adagia, 725.