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FRANGIS BACON 
 AND HIS 8EGRET 30GIETY 
 
Francis Bacon 
 
 and 
 
 His Secret Society 
 
 An Attempt to Collect and Unite the 
 Lost Links of a Long and Strong Chain. 
 
 Mrs. HENRY POTT. 
 
 Commend it, or amend it." 
 
 SECOND AND REVISED EDITION 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO: 
 JOHN HOWELL, 328, POST STR 1 
 
Go, LITEL Booke>; GODDE ' V SJE^I> .t«ee' good passage, 
 And specialie lette this, be thy praier, . 
 Unto them alle ,'th*at <¥HEE«*wrX*REptfO.R' keare : 
 Wher thou art wrong, after their help to calle 
 Thee to corecte in anie parte atte alle." 
 
 — Chaucer. 
 
 Printed in Great Britain 
 
 by 
 
 Marshall Brothers, Ltd., 
 
 London. 
 
'- 
 
 To THE 
 
 "youti9 scftollars or tfte Uniuersittes," 
 
 M Sons of the Morning," 
 
 I dedicate this hook, 
 Confident that they will not disappoint the prophetic hope of 
 
 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 that, in the "New Birth of Time," his Filii Scientiarum " 
 
 would accomplish his work, and " hand 
 
 down the Lamp" to the Next Ages. 
 
 1)37287 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Introductory 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Francis Bacon: Some Doubts Connected With His Personal 
 
 History, and Actual Works and Aims 24 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Francis Bacon : A Mystery Surrounds His Private Life and 
 
 Character 38 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Francis Bacon: An Outline of His Life and Aims 83 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Playwright and Poet-Philosopher 110 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Deficiencies of Learning in the Times of Elizabeth and James I. 149 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Rosicrucians : Their Rules, Aims, and Method of Working 186 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Vital Spirits of Nature 218 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Masonry 243 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Paper-Marks Used Until the Time of Sir Nicholas Bacon ... 283 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Paper-Marks In and After the Time of Francis Bacon 318 
 
 Plates 357 
 
 List of Paper-Marks 385 
 
PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, 
 
 Correcting some Errors, Noting some Omissions, 
 adding some Particulars Worthy of Inquiry. 
 
 TO THE KEADEE. 
 
 TWENTY years have rolled away since the first edition 
 of this book, having vainly struggled for leave to 
 chirp and twitter at home, spread its small wings 
 and flew over to America, in hopes that in that spacious and 
 " liberal air " it might pipe and whistle freely. 
 
 The opposition which in those days beset any book daring 
 to set forth true particulars concerning the hidden life of 
 " Bacon " seems almost too strange to be true, but Records 
 of such passages have been carefully stored for the student 
 of a future generation. Meanwhile, although opposition to 
 Baconian publication continues the case is altered. Matters 
 put forward with diffidence and reserve have been now 
 declared indubitably correct, and the suppressive methods of 
 Librarians, Custodians, and the Press in general, with regard 
 to unpublished records, or anything touching the life and 
 works of the concealed Poet-Philosopher (although continued), 
 are now to a great extent understood. 
 
 At the age of 15 Francis began to draw together his "In- 
 visible Brotherhood" the Rosicrucian Fraternity. This was 
 
• ••••• * 
 
 • •• • » . 
 
 • • • V 
 
 2 PREFACE. 
 
 positively asserted and enforced with instances by a Rosicrucian, 
 the last of his circle, to the present writer. 
 
 It has also been announced to a Lodge of Masons, by the 
 " Supreme Magus. Ros. Cru. in Anglia^ that the Rosicrucian 
 and Masonic Orders are parts of One and the Same Society — 
 The Rosicrucians, a Secret Society — the Freemasons, a Society 
 with Secrets. This statement after some objection from the 
 Lodge, was accepted as an incontrovertible fact. 
 
 The President of the Bacon Society also received from Sir 
 C. Purdon-Clarke positive confirmation of the statement that 
 Francis Bacon (so-called) founded modern Speculative Masonry. 
 
 For the future then, the withholding from non-masonic 
 students Information, MSS., Books, Collections — the Garbled 
 Catalogues and Indexes, " Errors," and Omissions, the false 
 Pagination, and countless queer and symbolic marks in 
 Paper, Type, and Binding — though they may delay advance, 
 will not puzzle us ; they are Masonic — parts of " Bacon's " 
 wonderfully contrived method for carrying on his work in 
 dark and dangerous times. It appears clear that he did not 
 intend these Secrets of the Higher Masons to be kept for up- 
 wards of 300 years ; but his traditional sons seem to have 
 been incompetent to carry out his intentions to the full, and 
 to make him " pace forth." May the present generation steer 
 the Ship of Knowledge with as much care and more insight 
 and " speculation " as to the " Beacon " which should guide 
 to the wished for Haven. 
 
 A few years more, and surely the Name of "Francis St. 
 Alban " must be allowed to pace forth as he desired. Then 
 (so far as he and his works are concerned), all artifices, 
 evasions, simulation, tricks, allusions, will be understood, 
 accounted for, and used in the identification of his Works. 
 
PEEFACE. 3 
 
 The many Masks, Vizors, Veils, Disguises, Pen-Names, 
 "Tricksy Words," Jargon, Ciphers, Marks, Dots and Spots, 
 Punching and Tearing of pages, &c, &c, will be recognised 
 as ingenious devices by means of which the "Shrewd Con- 
 triver " managed that his " dear concerning^ " should be 
 veiled from all but his initiated helpers. This on reflection 
 we see, could never have been achieved had all members of 
 the vast and mixed Brotherhood been equally well-informed. 
 The contrary is the case. Very few Modern, or " Specula- 
 tive " Masons know anything about their own origin, or the 
 true methods and aims of their Society — but of this bye and 
 bye. Affirmations, hints and useful suggestions received, 
 have encouraged the present writer to accede to repeated re- 
 quests that this book shall be republished; it is, therefore, 
 necessary to correct some particulars, which until lately have 
 been assumed and printed as facts, whereas we now find them 
 to be mere traditions buzzed about into " the listening air " 
 for purposes never dreamt of excepting by those who devised 
 them. 
 
 Traditions thus carefully and cleverly spread abroad, 
 entered naturally into " the Air of the Times" an air, accord- 
 ing to a?i£i-Baconian readers, so potent, so liberal, as to 
 furnish Shakespeare and " the rest " with all the knowledge 
 and graces needful (in an age of gross ignorance and 
 illiteracy) for the greatest Poet whom the world has ever seen. 
 " Baconians " cannot believe this ; being Students as well of 
 " Shakespeare " as of "Bacon" they know that " Shahespereans" 
 cannot prove it. 
 
 Within the last ten years we have made great advance, 
 and begin to feel that we are mounting the Hill and daily 
 gaining view of a wide and splendid panorama of the Coast 
 and Provinces which " Bacon " overran. 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 In the following pages it will be seen that Francis Bacon is 
 spoken of as the Son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and his 
 second wife, Anne Cook.* This, we are now convinced, is 
 a fundamental error. Francis was Son of Queen Elizabeth 
 and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.! A younger son was 
 Robert Dudley afterwards Earl of Essex. He was brother of 
 Francis. 
 
 Francis was born at Whitehall Place, or Palace. The 
 Queen would have " put him away," but Lady Anne who was 
 in attendance at the birth, and who had recently lost an 
 infant of her own, begged to be allowed to act as foster- 
 mother, and it seems as though the outside world knew 
 neither of the birth at the Palace, nor that Francis was not 
 the son of Sir Nicholas and Lady Anne Bacon. There were, 
 in those days, no newspapers. 
 
 It needs but little thought and intelligence to make us realise 
 the importance of such information. Many perplexing questions 
 regarding Elizabeth's strange behaviour towards Francis and 
 Robert Dudley — the striking family likenesses noted between 
 these three — and other interesting problems beyond our present 
 reach, seem to fade as phantoms, and to reappear as facts when 
 subjected to close research and examination. 
 
 Since Mrs. Wells Gallup first deciphered from "Bacon's" 
 own Biliteral Cipher, this astounding piece of history, research 
 has been wide-spread, and no evidence has been brought 
 forward to shake — but many facts to fortify — the information 
 advanced. 
 
 Another error, assumed to rest upon the Poles of Truth, 
 
 * Usually spoken of as Lady Anne Bacon. 
 
 fWe are indebted for the positive affirmation of these facts to the 
 labours of Mrs. Wells Gallup, and her deciphering of Bacon's own 
 Biliteral Cipher. 
 
PREFACE. 5 
 
 concerns the death of Francis St. Alban. Current History 
 fixes the date at the year 1626 ; but each one of four different 
 writers • (contemporaries and moving in the same learned circle) 
 when reporting "Lord Bacon's" death, assigns a different 
 place for the event. One says that he died at the 
 house of Lord Arundel at llighgate. Another that he died at 
 the house of his friend, Dr. Parry, in London. A third that 
 he died at the house of his cousin, Sir Julius Caesar, at 
 Muswell Hill ; and a fourth, that he died at the house of his 
 Physician, Dr. Witherbourne. Not one of these "authorities" 
 either confutes, or confirms another. 
 
 Long research, collation of books and records, and finally 
 corroborative and emphatic assurance from two authorities 
 as important and indisputable as any, have independently 
 testified to the truth of conclusions arrived at by the present 
 writer as to the death of Francis St. Alban — that he did not 
 really die in 1626. The witnesses agree not together ; yet 
 neither do they check or correct each other. We say, then, 
 they are in league ; they are of that Fraternity which is bound 
 " to Conceal as well as Reveal " the Secrets of their Great 
 Master. In 1626 he died to the world — retired, and by the 
 help of many friends, under many Names and Disguises, 
 passed to many Places. As Recluse, he lived a life of study; 
 revising a mass of works published under his " Pen-names " 
 — enlarging and adding to their number. They form the 
 Standard Literature of the 17th Century. 
 
 Collation of many Works and many Editions led and 
 gradually forced the present writer into the belief that Our 
 
 * Dr. Fuller, the Historian ; Dr. Sprat, the First President of the Royal 
 Society ; Dr. Wallis, the Second President ; and Dr. William Rawley, 
 Bacon's Chaplain and Secretary. 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 Francis lived to a very great age ; that he was certainly alive 
 and working in 1640, and that evidence spoke in favour of 
 his being still influencing his Society in 1662. Some years 
 after these conclusions had been reached and communicated 
 to some very learned German correspondents, one wrote re- 
 calling this correspondence, and making this clear and positive 
 statement. Francis St. Alban the " Magus," the " Miracle of 
 Men," "died at the age of 106-7, in the year 1668" A 
 portrait was also sent representing him in Geneva Gown and 
 shortened hair, as he appeared when he retired from the world, 
 taking the name of Father X. His portrait in extreme old 
 age figures as the counterfeit presentment of the Eosicrucian 
 Father, " Johann Valentin Andreas" * at the beginning of a 
 work passing under this pseudonym. 
 
 The facts as to the " All-one-ever-the-same " Authorship of 
 the great works of the 16th and 17th Centuries was arrived 
 at by Collation of many works and editions. At first we tried 
 to suppress surprising theories, but the evidence from analogies 
 was too strong. 
 
 We have, as yet, no reliable information as to the death of 
 Francis St. Alban, or Father, or Pater X. We have no record 
 of any person who witnessed his death, or who attended the 
 funeral. We are ignorant as to where he was buried. Was 
 St. Paul's his monument ? Was he embalmed ? 
 
 These questions should receive close attention ; they are 
 deserving of the most painstaking inquiry. No attempt is 
 here made to debate these weighty questions, we do but state 
 the result of long and anxious efforts by hook and crook to get 
 
 * This is reproduced in Bibliotheca Rosicruciana by Mr. Leigh Gardner, 
 with Introduction by Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, M.W., Supreme Magus. Soc. 
 Ros. in Anglia." Q.V. 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 at the Truth. Should errors be detected, let them be simply 
 and truthfully corrected. Truth and nothing but the Truth is 
 the one aim and object of our pursuit. Again, this Book 
 and its Author appeal to Bacon's " Sons of Science " to help 
 in advancing his cause, and in making him and his noble 
 work fully known. May ho obligations be undertaken, no 
 vows made which may clog the student's own advance, letting 
 " mysteries " (as Timon says) " decline to their confounding 
 contraries, and yet Confusion live." 
 
FRANCIS BACON 
 
 AND 
 
 HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 "Read, not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for 
 granted, nor to find talk and discourse ; but to weigh and consider." 
 
 THE object with which this book has been written is to 
 invite attention and help in clearing some obscurities, 
 and answering some difficult questions, which have lately 
 presented themselves, in the course of a close investigation into 
 the works and aims of Francis Bacon and his friends. 
 
 Although, for the sake of brevity, propositions are here stated 
 rather than argued, it must not be thought that such statements 
 are dogmatic, or that the conclusions drawn by the writer are 
 intended to be forced upon others. 
 
 So far as is possible, facts have been distinguished from 
 conjectures, suggestions, or inferences. Nevertheless, since, to 
 most minds, it is helpful to learn what general conclusions have 
 resulted from certain disconnected items of evidence, such con- 
 clusions as have been reached are frankly offered, and will 
 readily be withdrawn, if proof or stronger evidence should be 
 forthcoming on the contrary side. 
 
 Let those who peruse these pages regard them only as the 
 faint rays of a lamp of inquiry, which may guide others, 
 stronger and more capable, to come forward and work, till this 
 mine of truth shall be thoroughly explored, and its treasures 
 brought to the surface. 
 
10 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 The chain of argument which has been formed is of the 
 following kind : 
 
 1. There is a mystery about the life, aims, and actual work 
 of Francis Bacon. Ben Jonson (whose accuracy is never 
 questioned) acknowledges this in his verses to Bacon : 
 
 " Thou stand'st as though a mystery thou didst." 
 
 And Jonson's testimony to Bacon's immense and poetic genius, 
 " filling up all numbers" etc., would be unintelligible if we 
 were to maintain that all is known which could be known about 
 Bacon and his works. 
 
 The more we study these, the more we weigh his utterances, 
 his fragmentary papers, his letters, his ambiguous or enigmatic 
 notes, his wills, and the dedications and prefaces to many of 
 his acknowledged or suspected works, — the more closely we 
 compare the opinions expressed on any of these subjects, so 
 much the more clearly do we perceive the mystery, the apparent 
 contradictions which exist in his life and writings, and which 
 embroil and confuse the statements of his innumerable critics 
 and biographers. The apparent " contraries of good and evil " 
 are, in Bacon's case, so many and so strong, that there is hardly 
 an opinion expressed concerning him by one " great authority " 
 which is not absolutely contradicted by another equally great. 
 
 2. In spite of Bacon's distinct and repeated statements as to 
 the deep and prevailing darkness, the ignorant grossness of 
 his own era ; — in spite of his catalogue of the " deficiencies " 
 of learning, deficiencies which, commencing with lack of words, 
 extend through some forty distinct departments of learning ; 
 and not only to " knowledges," but to everything requisite to 
 form a fine and polished style, or to express noble thoughts : — 
 in spite of all this, we are taught to believe in an outburst of 
 literary genius and of " giant minds," simultaneously all over 
 the world, during the age in which he lived. Yet we are 
 compelled to confess that Bacon's statements have never been 
 challenged or refuted. 
 
 Philology shows a marvellous correspondence in the English 
 literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. True, some 
 works are superior to others, as are the first efforts of a clever 
 boy to the compositions of his mature manhood — still, a very 
 decided resemblance in thought, opinion, knowledge, and diction 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 11 
 
 is perceptible, when the works of the time are exhaustively 
 compared. 
 
 This likeness extends even to foreign works, especially when 
 they are divested of their Latin, French, German, Italian, or 
 Spanish mantles, and appear as "translations" in very Baconian 
 diction. In many cases the translations appear to be the 
 originals. * 
 
 3. It is manifestly impossible that any one man, however 
 gigantic his power, could have performed, single-handed, all 
 that we believe to have been done and written by Francis 
 Bacon. But many entries in his private notes, many hints in 
 his letters and acknowledged works, indicate his faith in the 
 efficacy of united efforts, and that, besides the mystery which 
 surrounded himself, there was also a mystery concerning many 
 of his nearest relations and friends, who seemed to have worked 
 for the same ends as he did, and perfectly to have understood 
 the ambiguous language in which he expressed himself. Secret 
 societies were common in the Middle Ages, and Bacon, we 
 believe, was the centre of a secret league for the advancement 
 of learning. This revival of learning was the " New Birth of 
 Time " — the " Renaissance." 
 
 4. Examination into the history of the secret societies of the 
 Middle Ages shows the Rosicrucian fraternity as the one of all 
 others which would have been best fitted to promote Bacon's 
 lofty aims ; its very constitution and mode of procedure seeming 
 to be the result of his own scheme or " method." 
 
 5. It further appears that no sharply defined line could be 
 drawn between the method and objects of the Rosicrucians and 
 those of the Freemasons ; and that, in fact, although the pro- 
 phetic imagination of Bacon carried him into the highest flights 
 of poetic and religious aspiration, and into the sublimest regions 
 whither the Rosicrucian brethren strove to follow him, yet he 
 was observant and practical enough to see that there were things 
 in heaven and earth unheard of in ordinary philosophy ; that 
 only a few in his own times would be able to comprehend them, 
 and that, even in the ages to come, such things must be "caviare 
 to the general," and quite beyond the reaches of their souls. 
 
 Consequently, whoso would set about a " universal reforma- 
 tion of the whole wide world," such as the Rosicrucians dreamed 
 of, must begin in a very humble way, and on the low level, but 
 
12 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 the very broad basis, which is the first stage or platform of Free- 
 masonry. 
 
 6. A secret society implies and involves secret means of com- 
 munication and mutual recognition — ciphers or secret writing. 
 Mr. Donnelly's great discovery of cipher in the Shakespeare Folio 
 of 1623 has been the cause of much investigation, not only into 
 the typography of old books, but also into the art of crypto- 
 graphy, which, in and after Bacon's time, forms an important 
 element of education in the higher schools of learning, especially 
 in the seminaries and Jesuits 1 colleges on the Continent. "Every 
 prince has his cipher."* It is certain that, in those dark and 
 dangerous days, no correspondence of importance was conducted 
 without the use of some secret writing or cipher, 
 
 So numerous are the works on cryptography published in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that they form a small 
 bibliography of themselves. The most important of these is a 
 large octavo volume, published with a pseudonym (and under 
 the auspices of the Duke of Brunswick, who is said to have 
 patronized Shakespeare and his company) at Luneberg in 1623 
 (1624 New Style) — in the same year, namely, as that of the 
 publication of Bacon's De Augmentis, in which his own cipher 
 is described, and of the Shakespeare Folio, in which Mr. Donnelly 
 has found a cipher narrative. 
 
 7. Inquiry as to cipher systems and their wide-spread use, 
 and immensely varied forms, led to the observation that the use 
 of stenography, or short-hand, though used as a method of 
 " swift " writing, is, in some of the old books, found to be in- 
 timately connected with cryptography. The results of this 
 research, so far as it goes, tend to show Bacon again as the 
 introducer and great encourager of this short-hand cipher. It 
 even appears probable that he taught it to his young assistants 
 and secretaries, and that by this means a great deal of his won- 
 derful conversation, and the contents of many small treatises, 
 tracts, sermons, etc., were taken from his lips, such discourses 
 being at leisure written out, sometimes revised by himself, and 
 published at various places and under various names, when the 
 opportunity arose or when the time seemed ripe. 
 
 8. With regard to the peculiar typography and the "typo- 
 
 * Promus. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 13 
 
 graphical errors " which were tabulated from the Shakespeare 
 Folio of 1623, it is found that the same peculiarities, the same 
 " errors," the same variations in type, exist throughout the 
 whole circle of Baconian (or " Rosicrucian ") publications of a 
 certain period.. Such errors and peculiarities predominate in 
 the most important works, especially in the head-lines, prefaces, 
 indexes, tables of contents j^and " accidents " in printing, when 
 very frequent in such places, or in the pagination of the book, 
 are, as a rule, not in the text of the book itself. Usually one 
 edition only contains these " errors and accidents ; " often this 
 is the " second edition, carefully revised and augmented." Such 
 books have every condition requisite for cipher. 
 
 9. In books where there are other distinct signs of Baconian 
 origin, the wood-cuts have a strange connection and affinity. 
 The collation of a large number of tracings and photographs 
 from a certain class of books reveals a complete chain-work, 
 linking one book to another. This chain invariably leads up to 
 Francis Bacon and his friends, as the authors, " producers," or 
 patrons of those works. 
 
 10. The same system of mutual connection is found to be 
 kept up by "water-marks, 1 ' or paper-marks, in these same 
 books. These paper-marks are extremely numerous and vary 
 very much. From three to twenty-four different patterns have 
 been noted in one volume. 
 
 11. The tooling of the binding forms another chain of con- 
 nection amongst these books. 
 
 12. Further examination discloses other secret marks, chiefly 
 made, we think, to take the place of paper-marks, and inserted 
 during the last stage of perfecting the book. They tally with 
 each other, and also form a complete chain of evidence as to 
 the workings of a secret society. Say that they are printers' 
 marks ; yet they are secret marks produced with cunning, skill, 
 and forethought, and not without expense as well as trouble. 
 
 13. All these secret signs are traceable, variously modified, 
 and ingeniously introduced to suit the exigencies of modern 
 printing and publishing, from the time of Bacon to the present 
 day. The chain of connection seems to be complete. Inquiries 
 amongst notable printing-firms and printers, and researches into 
 books, supposed authorities on the subject, fail to produce defi- 
 nite information ; but the facts are not denied nor these state- 
 
14 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 ments refuted. The impossibility of getting a straightforward 
 answer to the questions, "Are these things true?" or "Are 
 these things untrue?" confirms the long-growing conviction 
 that the same system which was set going in the time of Bacon 
 is at the present time in full working order ; and that the Free- 
 masons form the Arts and Crafts, the later-established and lower 
 degrees of the society which, at the eighteenth degree, rises into 
 the literary and religious Fraternity of " Rose Croix," or " Rosi- 
 crucians" as they were called by Andreas. 
 
 14. The Eosicrucians and the Freemasons speak in their books 
 of the necessity for a " universal language." This language is 
 to be partly by signs, but also largely by symbols or emblems. 
 It is the language of the " Renaissance." A collation of passages 
 shows that all the metaphors, similes, symbols, and emblems of 
 the Eosicrucians and Masons, and of all the works which we 
 connect with them, are included in the works of Bacon. The 
 greater contains the less, and the language is his. No one has 
 since improved upon it, although many have paraphrased and 
 diluted his words, as well as his original thoughts. 
 
 15. Bacon's most intimate friends, relations, and correspondents 
 seem to have been all either Eosicrucians, Freemasons, or Illumi- 
 nati, as, in Italy and parts of Germany, they were sometimes 
 called.* Their names continually appear in connection with the 
 works produced under the auspices of these societies ; their 
 portraits often include the recognized marks of distinction ; and 
 in many cases notable resemblance to portraits of Bacon ; even 
 their epitaphs and their very graves comply with the rules of the 
 section of the society to which they belonged, and the " Great 
 Master " who led them. 
 
 16. It is not concluded, from the evidence which has been 
 collected, that Bacon originated secret societies, or that there 
 were no religious fraternities or trade guilds, before his time, 
 possessing secrets which they kept for mutual help and pro- 
 tection. 
 
 On the contrary, all evidence goes to show that such institu- 
 tions did exist, in a rude and inefficient condition ; that in all 
 probability Sir Nicholas Bacon and others had conceived a 
 
 * Baconian Masons are apparently the modern " Speculative " Masons 
 who are traceable to the 16th century. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 15 
 
 thought of attempting to follow the example of Sir Thomas More 
 and to erect some such society, for the purpose of reviving learn- 
 ing, and benefitting the Future Ages. But it remained for the 
 genius, energy, and untiring devotion of Francis Bacon to accom- 
 plish these things, and he seems to have been peculiarly fitted 
 for the purpose. 
 
 Throwing the whole weight of his gigantic intellect and the 
 enthusiasm of " that greaf heart of his " * into the work of 
 methodising and perfecting previous weak and disjointed 
 schemes, he built up, step by step, stone by stone, the great 
 fabric of learning, the " Solomon's House " which his descen- 
 dants have kept in repair, and to which the " future ages " have 
 made additions in some departments. 
 
 It was Bacon who designed the exquisite machinery or 
 " engine " which still exists for the reception, arrangement, 
 digestion, and wide-spread distribution of knowledge. It was 
 he who, finding the new truth in vain trying to struggle up in a 
 thankless soil, and the learning of the ancients smothered and 
 buried in the dust of oblivion, set himself the task of raking and 
 digging up and setting it forth again, polished and glorified 
 with all the lustre of his radiant mind. The organisation or 
 " method of transmission " which he established was such as to 
 ensure that never again, so long as the world endured, should 
 the lamp of tradition, the light of truth, be darkened or 
 extinguished ; but that, continually trimmed and replenished 
 with the oil of learning, it should be kept alight, a little candle 
 in a dark place, or a beacon set on a hill, burning with 
 undimmed and perpetual brightness. 
 
 Many questions arise in the course of the inquiries with which 
 the following pages are concerned — doubts and knotty points 
 which cannot yet be definitely settled, but which must be 
 considered open questions, fair subjects for discussion and 
 further research. Present knowledge is not equal to the task of 
 solving many such enigmas, and doubtless these will for a while 
 continue to obtrude themselves. But we say " present know- 
 ledge" speaking in regard to the world and readers in general. 
 There is little room for doubt that the difficulties and obstacles 
 which we have met with, and the obscurity which enshrouds so 
 much of the history of Bacon and his friends, are neither dark 
 
 * Dr. Rawley's Life of Bacon. 
 
16 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 nor difficult to a certain clique of learned men, still representing 
 the brethren of the Rosie Cross. As to the lower degrees of 
 Masonry, the Arts and Grafts (or the mysteries of handiworks), 
 there are, doubtless, a limited number of personages, presiding 
 over some of the Freemason lodges, by whom all these details 
 are perfectly well understood. 
 
 It is by no means so sure that even the high initiates in any 
 branch of the society are informed of all or of the same 
 particulars. Probably the supreme head, or Imperator, and two 
 or three of his subordinates, are acquainted with the whole 
 history of the society, and with every detail of its method and 
 present work. But with regard to the lower orders of the 
 fraternity, it does not appear, from the evidence we have 
 collected, that they possess any true knowledge or idea of their 
 origin. Perhaps they believe the fictitious histories which we 
 shall presently have occasion to glance at. But, at all events, 
 so far as observation and inquiry have enabled us to ascertain, 
 every craft or mechanical art, connected with Freemasoniy, still 
 keeps up the old secret signs, which, though now perhaps use- 
 less anachronisms, were, at the time of their invention and 
 institution, excellent and ready means for the transmission of 
 information and mutual intelligence, not only from man to man, 
 in a living generation, but from man to posterity, and to " the 
 future ages." 
 
 Masons mark the stones they chisel with marks which they do 
 not understand ; but the architect who decorates his building, 
 externally and internally, with the symbolic ornamentation of 
 the Renaissance, is a Freemason of higher rank, and we do not 
 suppose, from the specimens which we see of recent workman- 
 ship, that he, like the mechanics in his employ, works or designs 
 in mere " base imitation " of his predecessors. The very nature, 
 position, or circumstances of the buildings thus decorated pro- 
 hibit the belief that their ornaments are casually or aimlessly 
 applied. 
 
 In like manner, craftsmen, employed in the arts and trades of 
 paper-making, printing, engraving, and book-binding, continue 
 to reproduce, under certain circumstances, not only the old secret 
 marks, but the old hieroglyphic or symbolic pictures, modified 
 to suit modern requirements. 
 
 Here, again, it is plain that the simple craftsman is the mere 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 17 
 
 tool, obediently performing, he knows not precisely what, or 
 wherefore. But who orders and guides that workman ? Who 
 dictates the style of the peculiar designs which we see repeating 
 the same story, handing down the same lamp of tradition which 
 was lighted in the days of Queen Elizabeth? Whosoever he 
 may be who dictates or designs, he is not, like the workman, 
 ignorant of the what or the wherefore. When you meet with 
 him and question him, he will not tell you that he " does not 
 know ; " he will reply that he " cannot tell" To this is often 
 added some suggestion as to the improbability of such a method 
 being now in existence : "Is it likely that this system should 
 continue ? Of what use could it be at the present time ? " To 
 the latter question we can only reply that, if this system was 
 established in connection with a society bound by repeated vows 
 of secrecy and constancy to continue it from one generation to 
 another, we cannot see at what point they could ever break it 
 off, except by discovery. It is precisely because of its apparent 
 inutility in the present day, and because it seems that such 
 secrecy now hinders and confounds knowledge (without any 
 compensating advantages), that we desire to aid in lifting that 
 curtain which Bacon intended should be one day raised; and 
 which we have good reason for knowing that many of his 
 followers desire to see withdrawn, though they may not move 
 one finger for the purpose. 
 
 At the present hour it does indeed appear as if such marks 
 and symbols were practically useless — anachronisms, in free 
 England at least. Yet neither can we truly say that they are 
 totally valueless, seeing that, little as we understand their 
 purport, we have been able to use them as guides through a 
 strange and unmapped region. 
 
 The very nature of the case makes it impossible to be accurate 
 in describing these occult signs. Many of them, doubtless, are 
 mere blinds, the puzzling dust of which we shall read, cast in 
 our eyes with intent to deceive and mislead us. This is right, 
 and as it should be ; for it would be but a poor secret which 
 could easily be discovered ; and from Bacon, and in anything 
 which he devised, we should expect the utmost ingenuity and 
 subtlety combined with the greatest power and the wisest fore- 
 thought ; — a scheme planned by Prospero, with mischievous 
 improvements by Puck, and carried out by him in conjunction 
 with Ariel. 
 
18 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 We are armed and well prepared for a volley of perhaps good- 
 natured abuse and derision from those, on the one hand, who 
 wish to discourage others from following up the lines of research 
 which are here indicated ; on the other hand, from that very 
 numerous class which so often attracted Bacon's notice — those, 
 namely, who, never having studied a subject, are the more 
 positive, either that it is a delusion, or that it is not worthy of 
 study. His remarks on such critics are so satisfactory and 
 exhaustive, that this prospect in no way troubles us. 
 
 There is yet a third class which has been before us throughout 
 the process of collecting the particulars included in the following- 
 pages — students not too easily satisfied, but willing to take 
 some personal trouble to reach the bottom of things, and to get 
 at the truth. To these we need not say, as to the former class of 
 readers : 
 
 " Before you judge, be pleased to understand." 
 
 But we do entreat that, accepting nothing at second-hand, 
 taking nothing for granted, they will contribute some personal 
 help in testing, disproving, or confirming the statements and 
 suggestions made in this book, for, the sooner error is confuted 
 and truth established, the better for all. 
 
 If these statements be incorrect, such especially as are con- 
 nected with trades and crafts, it must be easy for heads of great 
 houses connected with such crafts plainly and unreservedly 
 to confute them. Men are not usually found backward in 
 contradicting other men's assertions when they consider their 
 own knowledge superior. And to the simple question, "Am I 
 tvrong?" the answer "Fes' 1 would be at once conclusive and 
 satisfactory, if delivered by a competent authority and an 
 honourable man. 
 
 Such an answer has hitherto been withheld, and it cannot be 
 thought unreasonable if for the present we continue in the faith 
 that the statements and theories here set forth are approximately 
 correct. When those who have it in their power absolutely to 
 confirm or refute our observations will do neither the one nor the 
 other ; when published books are found invariably to stop short 
 at the point where full information is required, (and which must 
 be in the possession of those who, having written up to that 
 point, know so well where to stop and what to omit,) then we are 
 assured that the questions remain unanswered, the books incom- 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 19 
 
 plete, because those who have in their possession the information 
 which we need, are bound by vows to withhold it. In Free- 
 masons' language, they " cannot tell " — an expression which 
 recurs with remarkable frequency in correspondence on these 
 subjects, and which is judiciously or graciously varied and para- 
 phrased : "I regret to be unable to give you the information you 
 seek " — " I am sorry that I can tell you nothing which will assist 
 your researches " — " These inquiries are most interesting — I 
 wish it were in my power to help you," etc. 
 
 In vain have we endeavoured to extract the answer, " I do not 
 know" Such a phrase does not seem to exist amongst the 
 formulas of Freemason or Rosicrucian language. 
 
 It has been our effort, throughout this work, to keep each 
 subject distinct from every other ; at the same time to show 
 how all are inseparably linked and bound together ; how every 
 clue pursued in this argument leads to the same point ; and how 
 lines converge to the centre. 
 
 In attempting this, all effort at pleasing composition in our 
 book has had to be renounced, for it is better to be understood 
 than applauded ; and frequent repetitions are needful in order 
 to spare the reader from puzzling and from the worry of 
 perpetual foot-notes or references. He may often be disappointed 
 at the slight, sketchy treatment which very interesting and 
 important matters have received. But since the present object 
 is to rouse inquiry, rather than to clinch any argument, or to 
 silence objectors, it seems the wisest plan first to state and 
 suggest, not stopping at every turn in order to prove each 
 statement. 
 
 It is notorious that, in such matters as are here brought 
 forward, judgment will and must be delivered according to 
 each man's light and knowledge. Those who know most will 
 understand most, inquire most, and be the most interested and 
 sympathetic. But we cannot " go beyond Aristotle in the light 
 of Aristotle." 
 
 And surely our sympathies should rather be with those " who 
 seek to make doubtful things certain " than with those others 
 " who labour to make certain things doubtful." If so, let us 
 beware of forming opinions positive and stereotyped upon 
 matters of which we have but little knowledge, and which 
 are only now beginning to be duly weighed and sifted. It is 
 
20 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 in vain to assume a knowledge if we have it not ; and judgments 
 delivered under the wig of Folly are sure to be soon reversed. 
 Bacon underwent such mock trials in his own life-time, and 
 he has told us how lightly he regarded them. " We decline," 
 he says, " to be judged by a tribunal which is itself upon its 
 trial." 
 
 To the end that this investigation may be the more easily and 
 swiftly performed, we append a few notes, but for brevity's sake 
 (and to avoid the deterring appearance of erudition which, to 
 some minds, is produced by an array of quotations and refer- 
 ences) these have been curtailed to a minimum. They will not 
 satisfy the real lover of truth, but such a one will pursue the 
 subject for himself, and dig to the very roots of matters which 
 can be here merely noted or pointed out. 
 
 Before concluding these preliminary remarks, we w T ould ask 
 leave to say a few words respecting an idea which has lately 
 become the fashion. This idea finds expression in the statement 
 that it is impossible to credit the Baconian theories because they 
 are contrary to common sense. 
 
 Common sense, we are assured, tells, or should tell us, that the 
 notion is absurd that a great secret society exists in the present 
 day ; that there are ciphers introduced into many Baconian 
 books ; that Bacon wrote all that philology declares him to have 
 written ; or that he inaugurated the vast amount of works of all 
 kinds which evidence seems to show that he did inaugurate. On 
 the whole no one with any common sense can suppose that things 
 are true w T hich the speaker (whose common sense is always excel- 
 lent) does not understand. 
 
 Such remarks, from those who have never studied the matter 
 in question, invariably suggest the inquiry, — What is this 
 omniscient common sense, which is supposed capable of deciding 
 without effort, and by some mysterious short cut, many hard 
 and knotty points which have cost the investigator so much 
 pains and labour ? 
 
 Surely common sense is not, as many seem to imagine, a kind 
 of intuitive genius, or even a penetrative insight. Rather it 
 should be defined as the power of reasoning upon experience. 
 
 For example, suppose a man never to have seen or heard of 
 an egg ; could any amount of sense, common or uncommon, lead 
 him to expect that some day the shell would be cracked from 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 21 
 
 within, and that a living ball of fluff and feathers would soon 
 come forth ? Yet, having seen one such egg, and the chicken 
 which issued from it, the man would, on finding another egg, 
 expect a like result. If, after watching a hen roost for many 
 days or weeks, seeing the same phenomenon frequently 
 repeated, he still remains doubtful as to what might come 
 out of an egg, thinking it equally probable that, instead of 
 a chicken, a mouse, a frog, or a swarm of bees might appear, 
 we should consider him a fool, entirely without common sense, 
 incapable of reasoning by analogy or experience. And so with 
 all cases in which common sense is exercised. 
 
 Now, it is plain that things which are entirely new to us, 
 things of which we have never had any previous experience, are 
 not matters upon which we can successfully decide by common 
 sense. On the contrary, we must use some sense out of the 
 common if we would attain to the knowledge and compre- 
 hension of totally new sciences or branches of learning; and 
 to learn new things, as Shakespeare tells us, is the end of study : 
 
 Biron. What is the end of study ? Let me know. 
 
 Long. Why, that to know which else we should not know. 
 
 Biron. Things hid and barrd, you know, from common sense. 
 
 King. Aye, that is study's glorious recompense. 
 
 Those who, without any experience in the questions involved, 
 pronounce that Bacon could not have written Shakespeare, or 
 that there is no cipher in the Plays, or that Bacon did not found 
 Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, or that, although the former 
 society exists, the latter does not, are going in direct opposition 
 to common sense, or to Reason based upon Experience. 
 
 For experience has shown that the philology, science, ethics, 
 and many other particulars in the Plays prove them, by internal 
 evidence, to be the products of Bacon's heart, brain, and hand ; 
 and hundreds of other pieces of evidence, connected with the 
 circumstances of their publication, confirm the doctrines which 
 are founded upon internal evidence. The evidence is precisely 
 of the same kind as that which has been held good in examining 
 the claims of many authors to their accredited works ; and the 
 same rules of criticism which are employed in one case should 
 hold good in another, where the same similarities are seen in 
 infinitely greater numbers. 
 
22 FKANCIS BACON 
 
 From the Promus * we gather the elements of a new phrase- 
 ology, newly coined words, turns of expression, metaphors, 
 proverbial sayings, and quotations from five or six languages ; 
 from the Natural History and the History of Life and Death, a 
 mass of scientific facts, new and curious in the days when they 
 were recorded and published. In the Novum Organum and the 
 Advancement of Learning, we find a fund of new ideas, theories, 
 aphorisms, and philosophical reflections, and in the Wisdom of 
 the Ancients, parables "new" and "deep," with mythological 
 interpretations different from any previously offered. 
 
 Now, when all these things are seen reflected in the poetry of 
 Shakespeare and other supposed authors, in days when we have 
 the authority of the great Verulam himself for pronouncing 
 knowledge "deficient" in nearly every branch of polite learning, 
 common sense tells us that the author who wrote the notes, and 
 the author who used them in his prose and poetry, were one 
 and the same. 
 
 Again, when we find Shakespeare writing in many different 
 styles, — styles so varied that his warmest admirers differ and 
 wrangle over them, assigning bits of his plays first to one 
 author, and then to another, calling some plays " spurious," 
 others " doubtful ; " when we find some of his poetry very 
 prosy, and some of his prose finest poetry, — when the same 
 observations recur with Bacon's acknowledged works, Ben 
 Jonson praising both authors in the same words, but saying 
 that Bacon alone filled all numbers ; when we find the analogies 
 between the two groups of works made patent by thousands 
 of extracts and passages, on all conceivable subjects, and 
 notably by a harmony of many thousand metaphors and similes, 
 common sense is forced to declare that here again the author is 
 one and the same. 
 
 Experience shows that Freemasonry exists, exercising the 
 same functions, rules, and system as it did nearly three hundred 
 years ago, Reason tells us that what is a fact concerning the 
 lower grades of a society is likely to be equally a fact concern- 
 ing the upper grades of the same society; and when we see 
 the Freemasons exhibiting and proclaiming themselves, in their 
 meetings, dresses, and ceremonials, much as they did at their 
 
 * Bacon's private MS. notes, in the Harleian collection, British Museum. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 23 
 
 first institution, we find it contrary to common sense to main- 
 tain that the retiring and silent Rosicrucians, whose rules from 
 the first enforced concealment and silence, cannot now be in 
 existence, because they are not seen or generally recognised. 
 
 With regard to the use of ciphers, it is true that modern 
 society has little or no experience of their use ; but since the 
 art of cryptography constituted in Bacon's time an important 
 part of a learned education, it is contrary to common sense to 
 say that the introduction of ciphers into printed books is either 
 impossible or improbable ; or that, though the societies which 
 used them may still exist, working on their original lines, it is 
 absurd to suppose that they know of the ciphers or use them 
 still. If the society exists, its ciphers exist also. 
 
 There are some drawbacks to the delight of pursuing these 
 many and various questions. One is the conviction which 
 presses upon us, that all the information which we seek is 
 perfectly well known to certain living persons ; that the par- 
 ticulars which, with painful slowness, we rake for and sift from 
 the dust of time, from books whose titles are generally forgotten, 
 from manuscripts whose very existence is generally unknown, 
 are all formally recorded, or have been verbally transmitted to 
 those certain few ; so that, in the endeavours now made toward 
 reaching absolute truth in these particulars, we are doing what 
 Bacon would call actum agere — doing the deed done — a process 
 always unsatisfactory, and one from which we seek to deliver 
 others who may follow in our footsteps. 
 
 It is, moreover, disheartening to know that this book must 
 be, of its very nature, imperfect. It must go forth unfledged, 
 " flying," as Bacon says, " out of its feathers." Hardly will it 
 have flown, ere the " dogs," Bacon's cynics, and his critics, the 
 " birds of prey," will be after it, and hunt it down, and peck it 
 to pieces. Yet if, perchance, it may be fortunate enough to 
 attract the attention of some dozen students in our great 
 libraries, workers in any department of knowledge, this little 
 work will have fulfilled its mission. Perhaps some fresh 
 streams of information may flow in to assist subsequent portions 
 of this book. At all events, even common criticism, hostile 
 though it may be, will, we trust, lend further aid to the clearing- 
 up of errors or misapprehensions, and to the "finding out 
 Truth, though she be hid indeed within the centre." 
 
24 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FRANCIS BACON I SOME DOUBTS CONNECTED WITH HIS PERSONAL 
 HISTORY, AND ACTUAL WORKS AND AIMS. 
 
 " I have been induced to think that if there were a beam of knowledge 
 derived from God upon any man in these modern times, it was upon him." 
 — Dr. Rawley. 
 
 IT is certain that, although much is know r n about Francis 
 Bacon in some parts or phases of his chequered life, yet 
 there is a great deal more which is obscure, or very inade- 
 quately treated by his biographers. 
 
 So little has, until recently, been generally thought about 
 him, that the doubts and discrepancies, and even the blanks 
 which are to be found in all the narratives which concern him, 
 have usually passed unnoticed, or have been accepted as matters 
 of course. Yet there are points which it would be well to 
 inquire into. 
 
 For instance, what was he doing or where was he travelling 
 during certain unchronicled years ? Why do we hear so little 
 in modern books of that beloved brother Anthony, who was his 
 " comfort," and his " second self " ? And where was Anthony 
 when he died ? Where was he buried ? And why are no 
 particulars of his eventful life, his last illness, death, or burial, 
 recorded in ordinary books ? 
 
 Where is the correspondence which passed for years between 
 the brothers ? Sixteen folio volumes at Lambeth inclose a 
 large portion of Anthony's correspondence. Letters important, 
 and apparently unimportant, have been carefully preserved, but 
 amongst them hardly one from Francis. And where is any 
 correspondence of the same kind either from or to him — letters, 
 that is, full of cipher, and containing secret communications, 
 information concerning persons and politics, such as Anthony 
 was engaged in collecting for his especial use ? The letters to 
 Anthony are preserved. Where are those from him ? Then, 
 again, of his chief friends and confidants — why do his published 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 25 
 
 letters and biographies pass over lightly, or entirely ignore, his 
 intimate acquaintance with many remarkable men; as for 
 instance, with Michel de Montaigne, John Florio, Father 
 Fulgentius, and Pierre Du Moulin, with John Beaumont and 
 Edward Alleyn, with Giordano Bruno, Theodore Beza, Ben 
 Jonson, Galileo and many more ? 
 
 Or, turning to more general inquiries, how came there to be 
 such an outburst of learning and wit in the immediate society 
 of the very man who repeatedly pronounced learning and true 
 literary power to be deficient ? How was it that, although from 
 the first moment when he began to publish, all authors adopted 
 his words, his expressions and his ideas; though they con- 
 tinually echoed, paraphrased, or curtailed his utterances, and 
 set up his judgment as a standard, working, thenceforward, on 
 his lines, his NAME was seldom mentioned, and that, even to 
 this day, the tremendous debts owed to him by the whole 
 civilized world are practically ignored ? Seeing the prodigious 
 difficulty which now meets any attempt to eradicate an old 
 error or to gain acceptance for a new idea, how, we would ask, 
 did Bacon contrive so to impress, not only his new diction, but 
 his new ideas, upon the literature and upon the very life of 
 whole nations? 
 
 In the process of collecting material for a harmony between 
 the scientific works of Bacon, Shakespeare, and others, it became 
 apparent that many of Bacon's works, especially the fragmentary 
 works, Valerius Terminus, Thema Gozli, the Histories of Dense 
 and Rare, or Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, etc., still more notably 
 the Sylva Sylvarum, the New Atlantis, and the History of Life 
 and Death (published together, after Bacon's death, by his 
 secretary, Dr. Rawley), as well as the Praise of the Queen (for 
 the publication of which Bacon left special instructions), were 
 not that alone which they pretended to be. They profess to be 
 works on science or history; they prove, when more closely 
 examined and collated with the rest of Bacon's acknowledged 
 works, to be parables, or figurative pieces, conveying a double 
 meaning to those who had knowledge enough to receive it. 
 
 These works (like the Shakespeare Sonnets) are all more or 
 less obscure and incomprehensible in aim or form. They are, 
 apparently, full of allusions to other parts of his works, where 
 
26 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 similar expressions are applied to quite different purposes. 
 Sometimes they are to outward appearance fragmentary, im- 
 perfect, manifestly inaccurate or incomplete, in matters with 
 which Bacon was acquainted, yet permitted, nay, ordered, by 
 him to be so published. 
 
 It is well known that Bacon's great desire was to be clear, 
 perspicuous, and easily understood. Obscurity in his writing- 
 was, therefore, not caused by disregard of the limited com- 
 prehensions of his readers, or by inadvertence in the choice of 
 words, for he was an absolute master of language, and could 
 write or speak in any style or to any pitch, high or low, which 
 suited his subject. The obscurity, then, was, we are sure, 
 intentional. He admits as much in many places, where he 
 confesses that he finds it desirable " to keep some state " con- 
 cerning himself and his works, and where he, over and over 
 again, commends the use of reserve, secrecy, ambiguous or 
 parabolic language, of allegory, metaphor, simile, and allusion, 
 which are (as he says in the preface to the Wisdom of the 
 Ancients) a veil to hide from the eyes of the vulgar things too 
 deep and difficult for their comprehension. It is desirable that 
 this system or method, of Bacon, should be clearly recognised 
 and understood; it forms a very important element in the 
 matters which are presently to be discussed, and since there are 
 many persons ready to enter into arguments connected with 
 Bacon, but who have never read his works, no apology is needed 
 for reproducing passages from various places where he speaks 
 for himself and in no uncertain tones : 
 
 " Parabolic poesy is of a higher character than others (narra- 
 tive or dramatic), and appears to be something sacred and 
 venerable ; especially as religion itself commonly uses its aid as 
 a means of communication between divinity and humanity. But 
 this, too, is corrupted by the levity and idleness of wit in 
 dealing with allegory. It is of double use and serves for 
 contrary purposes ; for it serves for an infoldment, and it like- 
 wise serves for illustration. In the latter case, the object is a 
 certain method of teaching ; in the former, an artifice for con- 
 cealment. Now, this method of teaching, used for illustration, 
 was very much in use in the ancient times. For the inventions 
 and conclusions of human reason (even those that are now 
 common and trite) being then new and strange, the minds of 
 men were hardly subtle enough to conceive them, unless they 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 27 
 
 were brought nearer to the sense by this kind of resemblances 
 and examples. And hence the ancient times are full of all 
 kinds of fables, parables, enigmas, and similitudes ; as may 
 appear by the numbers of Pythagoras, the enigmas of the 
 Sphinx, the fables of iEsop, and the like. The apophthegms, 
 too, of the ancient sages, commonly explained the matter by 
 similitudes. Thus Menenius Agrippa, among the Romans (a 
 nation at that time by no noeans learned), quelled a sedition by 
 a fable. In a word, as hieroglyphics were before letters, so 
 parables were before arguments. And even now, and at all 
 times, the force of parables is and has been excellent ; because 
 arguments cannot be made so perspicuous, nor true examples 
 so apt. 
 
 " But there remains yet another use of poesy parabolical, 
 opposite to the former; wherein it serves (as I said) for an 
 infoldment ; for such things, I mean, the dignity whereof requires 
 that they should be seen, as it were, through a veil ; that is, 
 when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, and philosophy 
 are involved in fables or parables. Now whether any mystic 
 meaning be concealed beneath the fables of the ancient poets is a 
 matter of some doubt. For my own part I must confess that I am 
 inclined to think that a mystery is involved in no small number of 
 them. Nor does the fact that they are commonly left to boys and 
 grammarians, and held in slight repute, make me despise them ; 
 but, rather, since it is evident that the writings in which these 
 fables are related are, next to sacred story, the most ancient of 
 human writings, and the fables themselves still more ancient, I 
 take them to be a kind of breath, from the traditions of more 
 ancient nations, which fell into the pipes of the Greeks. But 
 *inee that which has hitherto been done in the interpretation of 
 these parables, being the work of unskilful men, not learned 
 beyond commonplaces, does not by any means satisfy me, I think 
 to set down Philosophy according to the ancient parables among 
 the desiderata, of which work I will subjoin one or two examples ; 
 not so much, perhaps, for the value of the thing, as for the 
 sake of carrying out my principle, which is this : whenever I set 
 down a work among the desiderata (if there be anything obscure 
 about it) I intend always to set forth either instructions for the 
 execution of it, or an example of the thing ; else it might be 
 thought that it was merely some light notion that had glanced 
 through my mind ; or that I am like an augur measuring 
 countries in thought, without knowing the way to enter them." 
 
 He then gives three examples (to which we will by-and-bye 
 return, "one taken from things natural, one from things 
 political, and one from things moral." 
 
28 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 From this notable passage we learn, (1) that Bacon regarded 
 parabolic poetry as a means of communication between Divinity 
 and Humanity, consequently as of greater importance than any 
 other ; (2) of double use, for infoldment and illustration ; (3) that 
 the use of parables was sanctioned by religion and Divinity itself ; 
 (4) that it was largely employed in the philosophy of the ancients, 
 and that, although this was a matter of doubt with others, there 
 was no doubt in the mind of Bacon that the philosophical inter- 
 pretation of the ancient myths was deficient, left to boys and 
 . incapable persons ; and that (5) according to his custom, he was 
 prepared to set forth instructions for the purpose of meeting this 
 deficiency. 
 
 The examples given in the Advancement of Learning are but 
 solitary instances. In the Wisdom of the Ancients (now too little 
 read), thirty-one essays disclose to us the matured opinions 
 of Bacon on this subject. The preface to that delightful book 
 repeats at greater length, and in more poetic language, the senti- 
 ments expressed in the Advancement of Learning that "parables 
 serve as well to instruct and illustrate as to wrap up and 
 envelope, and every man of learning must readily allow that this 
 method is grave, sober, or exceedingly useful, and sometimes 
 necessary in the sciences, as it opens an easy and familar 
 passage to the human understanding in all discoveries that are 
 abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinions. Hence, in the 
 first ages, when such inventions and conclusions of the human 
 reason as are now trite and common were new and little known, 
 all things* abounded with fables, parables, similes, compari- 
 sons, and illustrations, which are not intended to conceal, but 
 to inform and teach, whilst the minds of men continued rude 
 and unpractised in matters of subtlety and speculation, or were 
 impatient, and in a manner incapable, of receiving such things 
 as did not directly fall under and strike the senses. And even 
 to this day, if any man would let new light in upon the 
 human understanding, and conquer prejudice, without raising 
 contests, animosities, opposition, or disturbance, he must still go 
 on in the same path, and have recourse to the like method of 
 allegory, metaphor, and allusion." Bacon had said in the 
 Advancement of Learning — and he repeated in the De Augmentis 
 
 " For there's figures in all things " (Henry V. iv. 7.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 29 
 
 in 1623 — that such parabolic teaching and method of interpreta- 
 tion was deficient, and that he was about to set forth examples 
 for the instruction of others. His assertions and conclusions 
 were never challenged or contradicted. On the contrary, his 
 contemporaries tacitly acquiesced in his statements, and pos- 
 terity has endorsed the estimate given by the great men of his 
 time as to his vast and profound learning and his excellent 
 judgment. When, therefore, we meet with other works of his 
 time, not published under his name, but abounding in " the like 
 method " and use of allegory, metaphor, and allusion, we may 
 with reason question the origin of such works ; we may even 
 consider it to be a matter of considerable doubt. In any case 
 we shall be prepared to find Bacon's own works abounding with 
 metaphors and similes, and his new and subtle ideas and 
 theories "wrapped or delivered'''' in a veil of parable and 
 allegory, and symbolic language. 
 
 Having regard to such considerations as the foregoing, it was 
 thought necessary to test the matter by forming a kind of 
 dictionary or harmony of the metaphors, similes, and figurative 
 expressions in the acknowledged works of Bacon and in Shake- 
 speare. About forty thousand of such figurative passages have 
 been brought together from the two groups of works, and it is 
 thus made clear that the metaphors and figures used are to a 
 marvellous extent the same. They exhibit everywhere the same 
 knowledge, the same opinions and tastes, and often the same 
 choice of words ; they mutually elucidate and interchange ideas ; 
 they are found to be connected by innumerable small links and 
 chains with certain fixed ideas which reappear throughout the 
 whole of Bacon's works, and which are indissolubly bound up 
 with the system or method by which he was endeavouring to 
 educate and reform the world. It will be observed that Bacon 
 bases his teaching, in the first instance, upon the figures used in 
 the Bible and by the ancient philosophers, but that he beautifies 
 and expands every symbol, transmuting stones into gold, and 
 making dry bones live. It is impossible to follow up the many 
 questions which grow out of this subject without perceiving that 
 Bacon must in his early youth have deeply studied and mastered 
 the philosophy, not only of the Greeks and Romans (with whom 
 he often compares himself), but also of the learned men of Asia 
 and Africa. The works of Claudius Galen, Porphyry, Diogenes 
 
30 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 of Babylon, Constantimis Porphyrogenitus, and Confucius seem 
 to have been as well known to him as those of the Africans, 
 Origen, Diophantus, Athenaeus, Athanasius, Euclid, St. Augus- 
 tine, or Mohammed Rhazi. Many of the allegories and fanciful 
 symbols or emblems which Bacon introduces into his writings, 
 and which are also abundant in Shakepeare, seem derivable 
 from such studies. 
 
 We shall presently have to consider the use which Bacon 
 intended to make of this symbolic language and the manner 
 in which it may be interpreted. Let it be said, in passing, that, 
 although he seems to have made an unwearied and exhaustive 
 research into all the ancient philosophies attainable in his time, 
 and in his early youth seems to have been strongly attracted by 
 the study, yet there is in his works no trace of his mind having 
 undergone the upsetting which is perceptible in so many modern 
 students who have " puzzled their intellects " over the origin of 
 religion. 
 
 He observes the errors and corruptions of the old cults, 
 although at the same time appreciating all that is worthy of 
 praise ; and in his effort to " mingle earth and heaven," 
 metaphysics and science, the abstract and the concrete, he 
 never indulges in the ecstasies of mysticism or occultism, which 
 modern students of these subjects, following the questionable 
 guidance of the mediaeval orientalists and mystics, have allowed 
 themselves. 
 
 Even in adopting the emblems and symbols of the ancient 
 religions he modified them and refined them, and separating 
 from the dross of base matter all that was pure, good, and 
 bright, to the glory of God, and for the use of man. 
 
 Doubts as to authorship, though intensified by examination of 
 the metaphors, etc., quickly gave rise to others. 
 
 An attempt was next made to trace, in other works not 
 Shakespeare, the notes of Bacon's Promus, as well as his figures 
 and peculiar terms of speech, his opinions, scientific statements, 
 and philosophic aphorisms. So few notes of this kind were 
 found, when compared with the multitude of them which are 
 easily perceptible in Shakespeare, that, at the time of the 
 publication of the Promus, we were disposed to reject as non- 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 31 
 
 Baconian most of the Elizabethan dramatists excepting 
 " Marlowe" in whose works at least five hundred points of 
 similarity to Baconian notes and diction are to be found. A 
 closer (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 will 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- 
 
32 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 elusion that the works actually written by Bacon himself are 
 far in excess of those ascribed to him by the majority even of 
 his most enthusiastic admirers. Evidently that it would have 
 been beyond human power for any single individual to have 
 observed, experimented, travelled, read, written, to the extent 
 which we find Bacon to have done, unless he had been aided in 
 the mechanical parts of his work by an army of amanuenses, 
 transcribers, collators, translators, and publishers, and even by 
 powerful friends in high places, and by the control of the 
 leading printing-presses. 
 
 Examination into Bacon's own repeated statements as to the 
 ignorance, incapacity, and miseries of the age in which he 
 lived, shows him pointing out, amongst other things, the 
 " poverty " of language, the lack of words, the necessity for a 
 mutual exchange of words through many countries, in order to 
 perform that noble and much needed work of building up a fine 
 model of language. He notes the absence of graceful forms of 
 speech ; of commencements, continuations, and conclusions of 
 sentences ; of a scientific grammar of philology, in default of 
 which he has been obliged to make "a kind of" grammar for 
 himself. He shows that there were, in his time, no good collec- 
 tions of antitheta, sophisms, and arguments ; the good sayings 
 of the ancients were lost or forgotten ; the ancient and scriptural 
 use of parables, figures, metaphors, similes was extinct ; the 
 sciences were "weak things" weakly handled; learning had 
 become "words, not matter" ; " the muses were barren virgins "; 
 poetry and the theatre at the lowest level. 
 
 So Bacon found things when he conceived his magnificent 
 idea of the " Universal Reformation of the whole wide world." 
 He was at that time a lad of fifteen, and there is reason to 
 believe that he had already written, or was in process of 
 writing, poetry and other works which passed then, and at later 
 periods, as the productions of men of mature years, " authors " 
 of an earlier or later date than is generally ascribed to the 
 works of Francis Bacon.* 
 
 And as in his boyhood he found the world of science and 
 literature, not in this country only, but also on the continent 
 (for he makes no exceptions or qualifications to his statement as 
 
 * This has been confirmed by further research. See the publications of 
 the Bacon Society and the Ladies' Guild of F. St. Alban. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 33 
 
 to the general ignorance which prevailed), so, excluding his own 
 work from the inquiry, he found it still, when, in his old age, 
 he for the last time summed up the wants and deficiencies of 
 the world in all these matters. In youth, enthusiasm had led 
 him to hope and believe in a speedy regeneration and quickening 
 of the minds and spirits of men. In old age he had learned 
 that "the dull ass will npt mend his pace," and that such 
 advance could only be by slow degrees, and in the future ages. 
 " Of myself" he says, " I am silent" but he repeats his 
 former opinions and statements with undiminished emphasis 
 in 1623. 
 
 In the face of such facts as these it appears monstrous to 
 believe that there could really have been in Bacon's time that 
 "galaxy of wits," that extraordinary blaze and outburst of 
 light from many suns, and from a heaven full of stars of the 
 first magnitude, such as we have been taught in our childhood 
 not only to discern but to distinguish. It is more reasonable 
 to suppose that one sun, one supreme spirit, the great Natural 
 Magician and natural philosopher, like Prospero, with many 
 " meaner ministers " to do his biddings, should have planned 
 and carried out, by a method to be transmitted through the 
 whole century, that Great Reformation of the whole world which 
 had been his boyish dream, his fixed idea at the age of 
 fifteen.* Bacon's chief biographer lays stress upon this fact, 
 and as it is one intimately connected with the history of the 
 Secret Society which is the subject of the following pages, it is 
 desirable that it should be firmly established. Again, therefore, 
 we draw attention to the eloquent and beautiful chapter with 
 which Spedding opens his " Letters and Life of Bacon." After 
 telling of the brilliant career of the youthful Francis at Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, of the disappointment which he experienced 
 in that university where he hoped to have learned all that men 
 knew, but where, as he declared, they taught "words, not 
 matter," Spedding says : " It was then a thought struck him, 
 the date of which deserves to be recorded, not for anything 
 extraordinary in the thought itself, but for its influence upon 
 his after life. If our study of nature be thus barren, he 
 thought, our method of study must be wrong ; might not a 
 
 * The asre, be it noted, of the " Rosicrucian Father," the elusive author, 
 " Johan Valentin Andreas." 
 
34 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 better method be found ? In him the gift of seeing in prophetic 
 vision what might be, and ought to be, was united with the 
 practical talent of devising means and handling minute details. 
 He could at once imagine like a poet, and execute like a clerk of 
 the works. Upon the conviction, This may be done, followed at 
 once the question, How can it be done? Upon that question 
 followed the resolution to try and do it." 
 
 Of the degrees by which the suggestion ripened into a project, 
 the project into an undertaking, and the undertaking unfolded 
 itself into distinct propositions and the full grandeur of its total 
 dimensions, I can say nothing. But that the thought first 
 occurred to him during his residence at Cambridge, therefore 
 before he had completed his fifteenth year, we know on the best 
 authority — his own statement and that of Dr. Rawley. "I 
 believe," says Mr. Spedding, " that it ought to be regarded as 
 the most important event of his life ; the event which had a 
 greater influence than any other upon his character and future 
 course. From that moment there was awakened within his 
 breast the appetite which cannot be satiated, and the passion 
 which cannot commit excess. From that moment he had a 
 vocation which employed and stimulated all the energies of his 
 mind, gave a value to every vacant interval of time, an interest 
 and significance to every random thought and casual accession 
 of knowledge ; an object to live for, as wide as humanity, as 
 immortal as the human race ; an idea to live in, vast and lofty 
 enough to fill the soul forever with religious and heroic aspira- 
 tions. From that moment, though still subject to interruptions, 
 disappointments, errors, regrets, he never could be without either 
 work, or hope, or consolation." 
 
 The biographer then shows how the circumstances of Bacon's 
 early life tended to enlist him on the side of reform, religious, 
 scientific, literary, and philanthropic, and to nourish in him 
 high and loyal aspirations. 
 
 "Assuming, then," continues he, "that a deep interest in 
 these three great causes — the cause of reformed religion, of his 
 native country, and of the human race through all their genera- 
 tions — was thus early implanted in that vigorous and virgin 
 soil, we must leave it to struggle up as it may, according to the 
 accidents of time and weather. ... Of Bacon's life I am 
 persuaded that no man will ever form a correct idea unless he 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 35 
 
 bear in mind that from very early youth his heart was divided 
 by these three objects, distinct but not discordant."* 
 
 In the preface to the De Interpretatione Naturoz Prcemium 
 (circa 1603) Spedding describes that paper as of "peculiar 
 interest for us, on account of the passage in which Bacon 
 explains the plans and purposes of his life, and the estimate he 
 had formed of his own character and abilities ; a passage which 
 was replaced in the days of his greatness by a simple De nobis 
 ipsis silemus. It is the only piece of autobiography in which he 
 ever indulged,^ and deserves on several accounts to be carefully 
 considered. The biographer goes on to say that Bacon's own 
 account, written when he was between forty and fifty, of the 
 plan upon which his life had been laid out, the objects which he 
 mainly aimed at, and the motives which guided him, will be 
 found, when compared with the courses which he actually 
 followed in his varied life, to present a very remarkable example 
 of constancy to an original design. He began by conceiving 
 that a wiser method of studying Nature would give man the key 
 to all her secrets, but the work would be long and arduous, and 
 the event remote ; in the meanwhile, he would not neglect the 
 immediate and peculiar services which, as an Englishman, he 
 owed to his country and his religion. With regard to the last 
 two he found, as life wore away, that the means and opportuni- 
 ties which he had hoped for did not present themselves ; and he 
 resolved to fall back upon the first, as an enterprise which 
 depended upon himself alone." 
 
 Perhaps it may be found that Bacon's reason for throwing his 
 chief weight into the work which none could execute except 
 himself, was that he did find means and opportunities, through 
 others, to advance not only politics and statesmanship, but re- 
 ligion and the cause of the church. It will, however, be easily 
 seen that if Bacon would carry forward such work, in times so 
 " dark and dangerous," he must do it secretly, and by the aid of 
 powerful friends and assistants. We, therefore, find ourselves 
 engaged in tracing the workings of a great secret society ; and 
 since, so far as we have discovered, that work depended mainly 
 upon Bacon himself, it is necessary to regard his life and actions 
 
 * Spedding, Letters and Life of Bacon, i. 4, 5. 
 
 t This observation will, we think, require modification. " It is the only 
 piece of autobiography which he acknowledges." 
 
36 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 from a totally new point of view, and to acknowledge at the out- 
 set that, excepting in the capacity of lawyer, which he disliked 
 and shrank from ; of courtier, for which he felt himself " unapt ; " 
 and of statesman, for which he pronounced himself to be " least 
 fit" very little is really known about Francis Bacon. 
 
 This lack of satisfactory information has probably led modern 
 writers too much to copy from each other, without duly weigh- 
 ing and examining statements made hastily, to turn a phrase, 
 or of malice prepense. It is usual, in other cases, to lay great 
 store by the evidence of respectable contemporary authority. 
 Need we remind anyone of the eagerness with which such 
 pieces of evidence, even the weakest, have been snatched at and 
 enshrined as gems of priceless value, when they seemed to affect 
 William Shakspere? But, with Francis Bacon, the case is 
 altered. Evidence of contemporary writers, such as Ben Jonson, 
 or Dr. Sprat, president of the Royal Society, or of Bacon's 
 secretary, afterwards the Queen's chaplain, Dr. Rawley, or of his 
 intimate friend and life-long correspondent, Sir Tobie Matthew, 
 is waived aside, when they pour out, in eloquent language, their 
 witness as to his greatness, his genius, his sweetness, and de- 
 voutness of disposition and mind. Aubrey is " a gossip " when 
 he echoes the tale, and says, emphasising the words, that " all 
 who were good and great loved him." The rest were " prejudiced," 
 or " partial," or did not mean what they said. 
 
 Why are such records of Bacon's closest friends, secretaries, 
 coadjutors, and contemporaries, as well as those of his most 
 painstaking biographers, and of his most appreciative disciples 
 and followers, to be rejected in favour of two lines of poetry 
 penned more than a hundred years after his death, and of a 
 hostile review of Basil Montague's edition of Bacon's works? 
 For many years those two lines of Pope,* and that review r of 
 Macaulay, together with Lord Campbell's odious little " Life of 
 Bacon " (based upon Macaulay's essay), were nearly all that the 
 English public read with regard to " Francis Bacon, the glory 
 of his age and nation, the adorner and ornament of learning," 
 " the most prodigious wit " that the world has seen, " the bene- 
 factor of the human race in all ages." 
 
 * Pope's " Essay of Man " is beginning to lie under suspicion. The 
 word Mean in Bacon's times expressed mean, poor, humble, rejected — not 
 stingy, illiberal or avaricious. See 30 examples in Shakespeare alone. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 37 
 
 Let us forget the foolish and cruel things which modern 
 ignorance and prejudice have said of him, things which must 
 be excused and partly justified by our theory that he was, 
 throughout his life, a " concealed man " — not only a " concealed 
 poet," but a concealed theologian and religious reformer or re- 
 vivalist ; and that, by the very rules of his own Secret Society, 
 not only was he bound, in tjiese capacities, to efface himself, to 
 allow himself to be, to any extent, maligned and disgraced, 
 rather than declare his real vocation and aims, but, also (and 
 this is very important), his own friends must ignore him, as he 
 must likeicise ignore them, in all relations excepting those which 
 he " professed " — as a public character and a philosopher. 
 
 In the following chapters we shall not attempt to give a 
 " life M of Bacon in his accepted characters of statesman, lawyer, 
 or scientist, all of which has been faithfully, and, perhaps, ex- 
 haustively, treated of by Spedding and others. Our efforts will 
 be directed to selecting, from the writings of his contemporaries 
 and later biographers and critics, some passages which seem to 
 throw light upon the obscure or private recesses of his life — 
 passages which are sometimes introduced in such a manner as 
 to favour the belief that they were intended to be passed over by 
 the general reader, whilst, to the initiated observer, they were 
 full of suggestion and information. 
 
38 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FRANCIS BACON : A MYSTERY SURROUNDS HIS PRIVATE LIFE 
 AND CHARACTER. 
 
 " I prefer to keep state in these matters.' 1 '' 
 " Be kind to concealed poets, 1 " 
 
 THE more closely we peer into Bacon's history, the more 
 particularly we follow up inquiries about him, — his 
 private life, his habits, his travels, his friends, 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 
 confronted with puzzles and enigmas, and 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. We find him writing with 
 locked doors, the subject of his labours not known, his friends 
 offended by his secrecy and reticence. We find collections of his 
 letters, distinctly his, and with nothing in them which could 
 apparently injure the writer, or anyone else, published with 
 names and dates cancelled, and with everything possible done to 
 conceal their aim or their author. We find him writing in 
 ambiguous terms (which only knowledge derived from other 
 sources enables us to interpret), and using feigned names, 
 initials, and pass-words in his private letters. The cipher 
 which he invented when he was eighteen or nineteen years old, 
 he has used and tested, and finds 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 ? In describing 
 the ciphers, he speaks of other concealed means of communica- 
 tion, of shorthand writing, of hieroglyphic pictures and designs. 
 Since he tells us that what he recommends he always endeavours 
 to practise or achieve, we seek for these things in his own books, 
 and find them there. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 39 
 
 He enumerates thirty or forty great deficiences of learning in 
 his time, and shows how he has endeavoured to supply them. 
 We take much pains to master these, to understand them 
 thoroughly, to trace them in his works, and thus armed and 
 well prepared, set forth to mark their deficiency, or compare 
 their use in works by other contemporary authors also. We are 
 almost appalled to meet with them there, sometimes fewer in 
 number, but the same in nature and quality. What is to be 
 thought of this ? That Bacon did not know what he was 
 talking about? or that there was a general conspiracy of the 
 wits of his age to gull the public as to the authorship of these 
 works ? If they were Bacon's works, why did he not acknow- 
 ledge them ? Yet, if they were not his, how could he persist 
 that all the chief flowers of language were uncultivated, when 
 the works in question were overrun by them ? 
 
 There are many knotty points connected with this branch of 
 the subject. Why, for instance, did Bacon, notably so kind, so 
 large-hearted, so just in acknowledging merit in others, and in 
 " giving authors their due, as he gave Time his due, which is to 
 discover Truth " — why, we say, did he ignore the existence of 
 nearly every great contemporary author? How came it that 
 this bright man, who so pre-eminently shone in his power of 
 drawing out the best parts of those with whom he conversed, 
 who delighted, when quoting from others, to set an additional 
 sparkle on their words, and to make them appear cleverer or 
 more learned than they really were — how did such a man 
 contrive to avoid all allusion to the mass of great literature of 
 all kinds which was poured out unremittingly during nearly 
 fifty years of his life, and which continued for some years after 
 his death ? 
 
 Bacon spoke of parabolic poetry as deficient, and the use of it 
 lost or misunderstood ; and he ignores the Arcadia, the F eerie 
 Queen, and the Shepherd's Calendar. 
 
 In 1623 he mourns the degradation of the theatre, and the 
 contempt with which the noble arts of rhetoric and stage 
 playing were treated, ignoring the Shakespeare plays, which 
 had at that time been played upon the stage for a quarter of a 
 century, and of which the first collected edition had just been 
 (almost simultaneously with the publication of the Be Augmentis) 
 published, heralded into the world with a great flourish of 
 
40 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 trumpets by Ben Jonson. He equally ignores Ben Jonson, 
 although Every Man in his Humour was acted at the Blackfriar's 
 Theatre in 1598 (two or three years after the first appearance of 
 the Shakespeare plays), and although, too, William Shakspere 
 acted on this occasion. 
 
 It is remarkable that it should have ever been, for an instant, 
 credited that Francis Bacon never saw the Shakespeare plays 
 performed, or even that he should not have known all about the 
 plays, and the man who was passing with the public as their 
 author. For thirty years Shakspere lived in London. During 
 those years Bacon was continually assisting, and promoting, and 
 joyfully witnessing the performances of these and other plays, at 
 Gray's Inn and Whitehall, and at the private houses of his 
 friends the Earls of Leicester, Pembroke, Montgomery, and 
 others. Why did he never, in any acknowledged work, allude 
 to Shakespeare or to Ben Jonson, who, as has been shown, was 
 at one time resident in his house ? 
 
 Essays were a new form of writing, and the very word 
 " essay," Bacon tells us, was new. One would suppose that in 
 saying this he would allude to the "Essays of Montaigne," 
 published long before Bacon's " Moral Essays." All the more 
 he might be expected to allude to Montaigne, because, at the 
 time of the publication of the first edition of Montaigne's Essays, 
 Francis and Anthony Bacon were living in the South of France, 
 and on very intimate terms with the good mayor, "the kind 
 patron of learned men," as we learn from Anthony Bacon's 
 correspondence. But, although the friendship between these 
 men continued to the end of Montaigne's life, and although the 
 old man made a pilgrimage to Verulam to visit his younger 
 friend, yet Bacon, in his enumeration of deficiences, makes no 
 allusion to him as the author of essays which were in their day 
 most famous, and which ran through a surprising number of 
 editions within a few years. 
 
 John Florio is supposed to have translated these French 
 Essays into English. Now, we have documentary evidence 
 that Florio translated " all the works of Bacon " into foreign 
 languages (we suppose French and Italian), and "published 
 them beyond the seas." Bacon, then, must have been intimately 
 acquainted with Florio. Yet he never mentions him. James L 
 gave Florio an annuity of £50 per annum, because he had 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 41 
 
 "translated the King's work, and all the works of Viscount 
 St. Albans." So, James, also, was deeply interested in Bacon's 
 proceedings. It might have been supposed that the circumstance 
 of his having pensioned Florio because the latter translated 
 Bacon's works, would have been noted by Bacon's biographers, 
 and that more inquiries would have been made concerning 
 Florio and some remarkable works in English which are 
 attributed to him. But no ; the whole matter seems to have 
 been studiously kept in the background. The documents which 
 record the fact of the translation and subsequent pensioning 
 have been printed by the Historical Manuscripts Commission. 
 But, although the editors and publishers must know of them, 
 their purport lies unheeded, uncommented on. A paragraph 
 inserted in Notes and Queries, in which the inquiry was made 
 as to any book or books of Bacon's known to have been trans- 
 lated by Florio, and published on the continent, has never been 
 answered. Yet, amongst the transcribers, editors and publishers 
 of the " Pembroke Papers " by the Historical Commission, there 
 must have been men who are acquainted with the current 
 history of Bacon, and who must have seen something strange in 
 the fact that James I. granted an annuity to the supposed 
 translator of Montaigne's Essays, on the ground of his being the 
 translator of all Bacon's works. 
 
 Then, again, the sixteen folio volumes of Anthony Bacon's 
 correspondence which rest in peace on the shelves of the library 
 at Lambeth Palace — how comes it that these, too, have been 
 so kept in the background that, on tracing a letter of Nicholas 
 Faunt to Anthony Bacon, — the first alluded to by Spedding 
 (and this in a foot-note), we find it to be one of a large and 
 important collection which throws great light upon the position 
 and aims of the Bacons? Two or three references to this 
 voluminous correspondence are all that have been found. 
 
 A sense of mystery is again perceptible in the explanations 
 given by Bacon's biographers of his system of philosophy, or 
 " methods," treated of as applying merely to the science which 
 is their ostensible aim. The evident and intentional obscurity 
 has been rightly attributed to two causes. First, he hoped, by 
 his method of teaching by means of parables, similitudes, and 
 analogies, to avoid all occasion of dispute and controversy, 
 things always abhorrent to his nature. 
 
 D 
 
42 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Next, his doctrine was to be veiled in an abrupt and obscure 
 style, such as, to use his own expression, would " choose its 
 reader " — that is, would remain unread excepting by worthy 
 recipients of its hidden meaning. Obscurity appears in the 
 De Interpretation Naturce Prozmium, where he speaks of his 
 peculiar method as a thing not to be published but to be com- 
 municated orally to certain persons, and the same veil of mystic 
 language is thrown over Valerius Terminus, the Temporis 
 Partus Masculus, and the New Atlantis. The whole of the 
 notes in the Sylva Sylvarum, the Histories of Dense and Rare, 
 of Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt, of Principles and Origins 
 according to the Tables of Cupid and Coelum, even the Thema 
 Cceli, the History of the Winds, the Interpretation of Nature, 
 the History of Life and Death, the New Atlantis, are, we believe, 
 written with a double meaning and for a double purpose, the 
 same ambiguity pervading the collections of letters to and from 
 Anthony Bacon and Francis himself. 
 
 Upwards of sixty letters from Anthony Standen to Anthony 
 Bacon previous to the one from which Spedding extracts his 
 first quotation, — and there are other correspondents whose 
 letters will, undoubtedly, at some future date, be held of great 
 value and interest. The drift of these letters must have been 
 understood by the compilers of the printed catalogue of the 
 Tenison manuscripts, and by biographers who have quoted 
 from some of them. What satisfactory reason can be given for 
 the fact that a hint of the existence of this correspondence is 
 here and there given, and letters are published which bear 
 directly upon politics or the passing history of the day, but that 
 the true purport of the collective correspondence is everywhere 
 concealed ? For these letters, taken collectively, have a distinct 
 and harmonious aim and drift. They teach us that Francis 
 Bacon was the recognised head of a secret society bound 
 together to advance learning and uphold religion, and that 
 Anthony Bacon was his brother's propagandist and correspond- 
 ing manager on the continent. 
 
 It seems possible that future research will prove Anthony 
 Bacon to have been " a concealed poet," as well as his brother. 
 If this was not the case, then Anthony must have been another 
 of the many masks behind which Francis screened his own 
 personality ; but the former is the more common conjecture. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 43 
 
 Amongst the " Tenison manuscripts " at Lambeth Palace, there 
 is a large sheet covered on three sides with French verses, 
 headed " Au Seigneur Antoine Bacon — Elegie," and signed La 
 Tessee. These verses describe " Bacon " as the flower of 
 Englishmen, the honour of the nine Muses, who, without his aid, 
 wandered sad and confused in the wilderness, without guide, 
 support, or voice. The waiter laments the want of more 
 Mecenases who should- value the favourites of Phoebus, Mercury, 
 and Themis, and " lend a shoulder " to help poets ; in future, 
 he trusts that the number of these will be glorified not less 
 beyond the seas than in these islands, remembering a time 
 "when our swans surpassed those of the Thames" — alluding 
 to the loss of Bousard, Gamier, Aurat, Bayf, and Saluste. 
 Himself, the surviving poet, sees a new Age of Iron after their 
 Age of Gold. He alludes to "Bacon" as "a brilliant star 
 seen in tranquil nights as through a thick veil " ; so a man 
 of honour, virtue, and wit shines amongst these " milords," and 
 so does " Bacon," the " oracle of his isle," one whom to praise is 
 an honour. 
 
 Such a man, continues the poet, is the hope and ornament 
 of his country. To him Themis, the Wise (by the messenger 
 Mercury, who expounds her message), entreats heaven, earth, 
 and the infernal regions to forward his steps. To him " devout 
 Piety, the Pillar of the Church, offers her most precious gifts, 
 that he may rank with immortal heroes," for " so rare a spirit, 
 continually bent upon safely steering the helm of the State in 
 the stormiest times, is not unworthy that the State should 
 care for his interests. Baccon [sic], the eye of wisdom, in whom 
 goodness abounds, raises men above themselves and above the 
 world. He retires into himself — a perfect and holy place — his 
 soul wrapped in his reason, and his reason wrapped in God." 
 
 Surely, though the poetry is poor, the matter of these verses 
 is sufficietly remarkable for them to have been commented 
 upon by some biographer or antiquarian ? We note, then, as 
 a remarkable fact, that these verses (numbered folio 175, in 
 Vol. XV. 661) are not included in the printed catalogue. Nos. 
 174 and 176 are duly registered, but 175 is omitted. Could this 
 omission be accidental ? 
 
 In the Harleian MSS. is the collection of notes described as 
 the "Promus of Formularies and Elegancies." These papers 
 
44 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 consist of fifty sheets, numbered from 83 to 132, and the collec- 
 tion is marked No. 7017. It is omitted in the catalogue* Yet, 
 within the last few years, these MBS. have been frequently seen 
 and studied. 
 
 By-and-by there will be occasion to return to these questions ; 
 they involve a great many others which we must not, at present, 
 stop to consider. But the list of inquiries in other directions is 
 still a long one, and should incline those who heartily desire to 
 get at the pith and truth of these matters, to be very humble as 
 to their own knowledge, very cautious about adopting ready- 
 made opinions or assertions, which, when tested, are found 
 incapable of supporting themselves. 
 
 What was the cause of Bacon's great poverty at times when he 
 was living very quietly, and at small personal expense ? Why 
 did his elder brother Anthony never remonstrate or disapprove 
 of his unexplained expenditure, or of the straits to which he 
 himself was sometimes put, in order to meet the claims upon 
 Francis? Did the brothers' money go chiefly in publishing? 
 And again we say, what share did Anthony Bacon take in his 
 brother's works ? If, as Dr. Rawley declared, his learning was 
 not so profound, but his wit was as high as Francis's, did he, 
 perhaps, frame the plots of many of the plays which Francis 
 polished and finished? Where did Anthony die? Where is he 
 buried ? The absence of knowledge on this point draws our 
 attention to the number of "great writers" and personal friends 
 of Francis Bacon who died and were buried without notice or 
 epitaph ; a plain slab sometimes marking the grave, but no 
 mention being made of any works of which they were the 
 authors. Yet " monuments of brass and stone " were then, as 
 now, the rule, rather than the exception. On comparing the 
 tombs of Bacon's friends, certain singular resemblances strike 
 the eye, and are peculiar (so we think) to them and to their 
 descendants. 
 
 Such coincidences ought, one would think, to be easily 
 explained where such a man is concerned ; but search the 
 records of the time which are, up to the present date, published, 
 
 * Rather it was omitted until June, 1890, when a gentleman, who 
 became aware of the omission, requested that the MSS. No. 7017 should 
 "be duly registered in the catalogue. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 45 
 
 and see how far you can enlighten yourselves as to any particu- 
 lars of Bacon's domestic life. It becomes, after long search, im- 
 possible to resist the idea that Bacon had some great purpose to 
 serve by keeping himself always in the background — behind the 
 curtain. Whenever you catch a glimpse of him " he goes away 
 in a cloud." 
 
 It likewise seems that the whole of his most dear and loving 
 friends combined to conceal "fiis true personality, to assist him to 
 enact the part of Proteus, and to ensure that when he would 
 appear here, there, and everywhere, he should be able to pass 
 unrecognised. Amongst Anthony's correspondents, Francis is 
 rarely mentioned, but often alluded to as " the Hermit," the 
 character which perhaps he himself undertook in the Gesta 
 Grayorum. Some short poems, especially one with the device 
 of a hermit spurning a globe, seem also to apply to Francis 
 Bacon, and to have been written by him. 
 
 When the French ambassador, the Marquis Fiet, visited him 
 during an illness, he said that his lordship had ever been to him 
 like the angels, of whom he had often heard and read, but never 
 seen. " After which visit they contracted an intimate acquaint- 
 ance, and the Marquis did so much revere him, that besides his 
 frequent visits [of which history tells us nothing] they wrote 
 letters under the appellations of father and son." * 
 
 With regard to Bacon's life, it is impossible to study it with 
 any degree of care, without observing how often in his bio- 
 graphies we come upon questions or doubts such as these : 
 " Was he the author of Notes on the present state of Christen- 
 dom ?' * j" " Reasons for suspecting him to be author of a 
 1 Letter of Advice to the Queen.' " if " This alleged authorship of 
 * A Discourse touching the Low Countries, etc' " § " Resemblance 
 between Bacon's style and that of writings imputed to Essex," 
 etc. 
 
 We read of his reluctance to devote himself to the practice of 
 a lawyer, and of the difficulty of understanding what else he 
 proposed to himself, or to what course he actually turned in the 
 year 1595-6. ^T "I do not find," says his biographer, " any 
 letter of his that can be assigned to the winter of 1596, nor have 
 
 * Rawley's Life of Bacon. f Let. Life, I. 16, 17. $ 16. 43, 56, etc. 
 § lb. 67. || lb. 391. «j[ lb. II. 1. 
 
46 FKANCIS BACON 
 
 I met, among his brother's papers, with anything which indicates 
 what he was about. I presume, however, that he betook him- 
 self to his studies/ ' He then gives a list of a few fragments 
 written at this time. " But there are," he continues, " some 
 other compositions with which (though they do not pass under 
 his name) there is reason to believe he had something to do, and 
 which, considering the possibility that they are entirely his work, 
 and the probability that they have some of his work in them, and 
 their intrinsic value, I have determined to lay before the reader 
 in this chapter. 1 ' * The biographer then enumerates the con- 
 tents of a box of letters and other papers dated from this time, 
 and which were in charge of Dr. Tenison in 1682. Amongst 
 these, one of the most important was " The Earl of Essex's 
 Advice to the Earl of Rutland on his journey," of which three 
 versions seem to exist,! and which Spedding shows to be written 
 so much in Bacon's style as to be indistinguishable from it. " If 
 Essex wrote a letter of grave advice to a young relative going on 
 his travels, it would, no doubt, have a good deal of Bacon in it ; 
 if Bacon drew up a letter for Essex to sign, it would be such a 
 one as Essex might naturally have written. Still, there is a 
 character in language as in handwriting, which it is hardly pos- 
 sible to disguise. Little tricks of thought, like tricks of the 
 hand, — peculiarities of which the writer is unconscious, — are 
 perceptible to . the reader." J Presently a similar question of 
 authorship arises with regard to a" Letter of advice from the 
 Earl of Essex to Foulke Greville ; " § and again the true author 
 seems to be Bacon. 
 
 Then we find a " Letter of advice to the Earl of Essex," which, 
 "like several others we shall meet with, has been preserved 
 through two independent channels, and in two different forms ; 
 one in the collection kept by himself, and printed by Eawley in 
 the Resuscitatio, the other in a collection made, tee do not know 
 by whom, and printed very incorrectly in the ' Remains ' (1648), 
 and afterward in the ' Cabala ' (1654)." || 
 
 There is a mystery about Sir Tobie Matthew's collection of 
 
 * 16. II. 2. 
 
 t One is in the Harleian MSS. (6265, p. 428). Sped. Let. Life, I. 4. 
 t lb. 5. § lb. 21. 
 
 || Spedding, Let. Life, II. 94. This letter is suspected of cipher and 
 should be examined. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 47 
 
 letters to and from Bacon. These letters are, as a rule, not only 
 without a date, but likewise they appear to have been " stripped 
 of all particulars that might serve to fit the occasion " for which 
 they were penned ; sometimes, even, the person to whom they 
 were addressed. One such letter, " Desiring a friend to do him 
 a service," is remarkable, as showing that, although the matter 
 which it concerns was of some importance, and might bring 
 serious consequences to Baton (he says that it will probably 
 " fall and seize on " him), yet it had been put out of his mind 
 by some great " invention " or work of imagination, which at the 
 time wholly engrossed him. What was the particular occasion 
 upon which this letter was written, it is, says Spedding, " prob- 
 ably impossible to guess," but it was as follows: 
 
 " Sir : — The report of this act, which I hope may prove the last 
 of this business, will, probably, by the weight it carries, fall on 
 and seize me. And, therefore, not at will, but upon necessity, it 
 will become me to call to mind what passed ; and, my head being 
 then wholly employed upon invention, I may the worse put things 
 upon the account of mine own memory. I shall take physic to-day, 
 upon this change of weather and vantage of leisure ; and I pray 
 you not to allow yourself so much business, but that you may 
 have time to bring me your friendly aid before night," etc.* 
 
 Another letter, dateless, but which has been referred to 
 1605-6, is all written in a tone of mystery and double entente ; 
 there seems to be no good reason why Bacon should plainly 
 mention by name one work which he had accomplished, and 
 carefully omit the name of another, or others, in which it is clear 
 that his friend was interested. 
 
 " Sir : — I perceive you have some time when you can be con- 
 tent to think of your friends, from whom, since you have 
 borrowed yourself, you do well, not paying the principal, to send 
 the interest at six months day. The relation which here I send 
 you enclosed carries the truth of that which is public ; and 
 though my little leisure might have required a briefer, yet the 
 matter would have endured and asked a larger. 
 
 " I have now at last taught that child to go, at the swadling 
 
 * See Sir Tobie Matthew's collection of letters, p. 20, or Spedding, Let. 
 and Life, III. 216. 
 
48 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 whereof you were. My work touching the Advancement of 
 Learning I have put into two books ; whereof the former, which 
 you saw, I count but as a page to the latter, 1 ' etc.* 
 
 In another ambiguous letter to Sir Tobie Matthew {circa 1609), 
 Bacon says : " I have sent you some copies of the Advancement 
 which you 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 there- 
 fore I conceived that you had sent me a hind 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 reading more than your publishing them to 
 others. Thus, in extreme haste, I have scribbled to you I know 
 not what," etc.t 
 
 " What these works of the alphabet may have been, I cannot 
 guess," says Spedding, 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 least five times as many letters 
 as the concealed." J 
 
 In the Promus, the mysterious letter has been compared with 
 an entry in which Bacon seems to connect the plays with an 
 alphabet : Ijsdem ^Uteris efficitur tragozdia et comedia (Tragedies 
 and comedies are made of one alphabet), § and the first im- 
 pression conveyed by this entry was that the alphabet was a 
 secret term to express the comedies and tragedies, since Bacon 
 quotes Aristotle to the effect that " 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 a 
 bifold allusion to the nature of the tragedies and comedies, and 
 a double fitness. 
 
 * Spedding, III. 255 ; Sir T. M/s coll., p. 11. 
 
 t Spedding, I. 134, and Sir T. M. p. 14. X Let. Life, IV. 134. 
 
 § Promus, 516. The Latin quotation from Erasmus' Adagia, 725. 
 
 II This was written in 1889. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 49 
 
 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 
 place the alphabet, as you can do it right well, in a frame, to 
 express my love, faithful and ardent, to him/' 
 
 It has been suggested that this was a proposal (not carried 
 out) that Sir Tobie shoulcf collect and edit the plays, and fit 
 them to be presented as a tribute to the Marquis. Or it is 
 possible that the mysterious words express a wish that some 
 message should be introduced in the alphabet cipher, which the 
 Marquis would, supposing him to be a member of the secret 
 society, be able to interpret. If so, this letter gives a hint of 
 the system which the present writer believes to have been 
 pursued with regard to nearly all these cipher notes or narra- 
 tives, namely, that Bacon provided the materials or substance 
 of the information to be conveyed, but that his " sons," or 
 disciples, did the mechanical work of fitting type, and other 
 particulars, for the reception of the matter. 
 
 We turn to a consideration of Bacon's character, his motives 
 and aims in life, about which one would suppose that at this 
 hour there could be no difficulty in arriving at a definite 
 conclusion. How many distinguished pens have been busy 
 with lives, treatises, and essays on Francis Bacon ! Here, at 
 least, it may be expected that the mists of doubt and darkness 
 shall have been cleared away, and that we may rest upon 
 positive authority. We are prepared to receive many shocks 
 to our feelings, to find flaws in the character which we would 
 wish to be an entire and perfect chrysolite ; still, it will be 
 at least satisfactory to know that the whole truth is laid out 
 before us, even if the contraries of good and evil must appear in 
 this as in all things human. 
 
 But here the confusion is worse than ever ; the contradictions, 
 the divergencies of opinion, are as extraordinary amongst those 
 who have read much or something about Bacon as they are 
 amongst those who have read little or nothing. Who has been 
 more admired, more shamed, more spitefully or conscientiously 
 abused, more revered and loved than Francis Bacon? A strange 
 
50 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 and wonderful man surely, who can be the subject of so many 
 opposed opinions ! Somebody is right and somebody is wrong, 
 that is clear, and we proceed to relieve the oppression produced 
 by this cloud of witnesses, by putting down on paper some of 
 the verdicts delivered by the numerous self-constituted judges 
 who are the great authorities of the present day. To these we 
 will add the utterances of Bacon's friends and contemporaries, 
 who surely have an equal right to be heard. 
 
 The startling result is this : That it is hardly possible to 
 produce a single statement concerning Bacon's character, dis- 
 position, motives or aims, made by one "great authority," which 
 is not contradicted by another authority, equally great. The 
 following are specimens of this kind of comparison — they might 
 be trebled in volume — but they are enough to show that in 
 this, as in other particulars, there is a mystery, and a want 
 of accurate knowledge concerning our great subject. 
 
 THE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF FRANCIS BACON 
 AS DESCRIBED BY GREAT AUTHORITIES. 
 
 He was mean, narrow, and wanting in moral courage. 
 
 " The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." (Pope, Essay 
 on Man.) 
 
 " A serenity bordering on meanness . . . his fault was 
 meanness of spirit. The mind of Waller coincided with that 
 of Bacon ... a narrowness to the lowest degree, an abjectness 
 and want of courage to support him in any virtuous under- 
 taking. ... Sir Anthony Weldon ... is likely enough to 
 have exaggerated the meanness of Bacon." (Macaulay.) 
 
 " He was anything rather than mean." 
 
 " On the other hand, he was generous, open-hearted, affec- 
 tionate, peculiarly sensitive to kindness, and equally forgetful 
 of injuries. The epithet of ' great,' which has been so un- 
 grudgingly accorded to him as a writer, might, without any 
 singular impropriety, be applied to him as a man." (Prof. 
 Fowler's Bacon, p. 28.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 51 
 
 " Greatness he could not want." (Ben. Jonson, Discoveries.) 
 " A man splendid in his expenses." (Sir Tobie Matthew.) 
 " Weighted by the magnificence of his character." (Dr. 
 Abbott's Introduction to Bacon's Essays.) 
 
 Servile — A flatterer, fawning on the great — A courtier by choice. 
 
 "Fearful to a fault of offending the powerful, ... his 
 supplications almost servile. ... A servile advocate, that he 
 might be a corrupt judge. ... He excused himself in terms 
 which . . . must be considered as shamefully servile." 
 (Macaulay.) - 
 
 " Mixed up with servile entreaties for place." (Sortaine, Life 
 of Lord Bacon, 40, etc. Followed by Lord Campbell, pp. 3, 12, 
 26, etc.) 
 
 " For his want of leisure he was himself to blame, because he 
 deliberately preferred the life of a courtier and a politician to 
 the life of a seeker after truth." (Abbott, Francis Bacon, 413. 
 See infra.) 
 
 Neither servile nor a flatterer. 
 
 " He must have been most of all a stranger amid the alien 
 servility imposed upon him by the court of James I. . . . He 
 was altogether too vast and grand for an easy flatterer." (Dr. 
 Abbott, Introduction to the Essays.) 
 
 Bacon seems to have been several times in disgrace with his 
 relations and others for not sufficiently cultivating the courtly 
 subservience which was required in those days. See his letter 
 to his uncle and aunt, Lord and Lady Burghley, who have 
 reproached him with this. (Spedding, L. L. I. 12 — 59, and 
 Spedding's Evenings with a Reviewer, I. 69.) 
 
 Intriguing, selfish, money-loving — Hunting after place and power 
 from vanity and ambition. 
 
 " The boldest and most useful of innovators . . . the most 
 obstinate champion of the foulest abuses ... a heart set 
 on things which no man ought to suffer to be necessary to his 
 happiness, on things which can be obtained only by the sacrifice 
 of integrity and honour. . . . All availed him nothing, while 
 some quibbling special pleader was promoted before him to the 
 bench, while some heavy country gentleman took precedence of 
 
52 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 him, by virtue of a purchased coronet, . . . could obtain a more 
 cordial salute from Buckingham ; or while some buffoon, versed 
 in all the latest scandal of the court, could draw a louder laugh 
 from James. 1 ' (Macaulay, 336, 317, 429 ; Campbell, pp. 3, 5, 
 25, etc. ; Sortaine, 93, etc.) 
 
 Generous, open-hearted — Regardless of money, place or pomp, 
 for their own sakes. 
 
 " I will hereafter write to your lordship what I think of that 
 supply ; to the end that you may, as you have begun, to your 
 great honour, despise money where it crosseth reason of state or 
 virtue." (Francis Bacon to Villiers, Nov. 29, 1616.)* 
 
 " Money is like muck — not good except it be spread. 1 ' (Essay 
 of Seditions. See Essays, Riches, Expense, etc.) 
 
 " To his easy liberality in the spending, was added a care- 
 lessness in the keeping, which would be hardly credible," etc. 
 (See Spedding, L. L. VII. 563, etc.) 
 
 Basil Montagu, Prof. Fowler , Hep worth Dixon, Storr, all bear 
 the same witness. 
 
 "He was most desirous to obtain a provision which might 
 enable him to devote himself to literature and politics. . . . His 
 wishes were moderate/' (Macaulay, 298.) 
 
 He strove for money, position, etc., that by their means he 
 might advance learning, science, and religion. (Anthony 
 Bacon's correspondence. Dr. Rawley, Basil Montagu, Spedding, 
 Fowler, Craik, Abbott, Wigston, etc.) 
 
 " Having all the thoughts of that large heart of his set upon 
 adorning the age in which he lives, and benefiting, as far as 
 possible, the whole human race." (Sir T. Matthew's preface to 
 an Italian translation of the Essays.) 
 
 He was successful in his endeavours after wealth and place. 
 
 " During a long course of years Bacon's unworthy ambition 
 was crowned with success. . . . He was elated if not intoxi- 
 cated by greatness." (Macaulay, 336, 347, etc.) " Bacon 
 deliberately sat down to build his fortunes . . . and, as we 
 shall see, succeeded." The truth is, admiration for place and 
 
 * Compare Coriolanus, II. 2. Money or wealth " the muck of the world." 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 53 
 
 power had dazzled his intellect and confounded his judgment. 
 (Dr. Abbott's Introduction to Essays.) 
 
 He was singularly unsuccessful — There must have been some 
 unexplained cause which kept him back. 
 
 " He stood long at a stay in the days of his mistress 
 Elizabeth." (Dr. Rawley, JLife.) "But though Bacon's repu- 
 tation rose, his fortunes were still depressed. He was still in 
 great pecuniary difficulties." (Macaulay, 309.) " Countenance, 
 encourage and advance men in all kinds, degrees and pro- 
 fessions, for in the time of the Cecils, the father and the son, 
 able men were, by design, and of purpose, suppressed." (Letter 
 from Bacon to Villiers ; see, also, Dr. Church's Bacon, pp. 33, 
 58-9, 100.) 
 
 He married for money. 
 
 " He made a bold attempt to restore his position by matri- 
 mony. Instead of offering incense to Venus he was considering 
 a scheme to make his pot boil." (Campbell, Bacon, p. 40.) 
 " He had some thoughts of making his fortune by marriage. 
 . . . Bacon was disposed to overlook her faults for the sake of 
 her ample fortune." (Macaulay, 310.) " Just at this period he 
 was offering his heart to the daughter of a rich alderman." 
 (Devey's ed. of Essays, Introduction, xix.) 
 
 He married a lady on whom he settled double the amount of 
 her dowry. 
 
 (See Carleton to Chamberlain, May 11, 1606 ; Spedding's 
 L. L, I. 8 ; Hepworth Dixon's Story of Bacon's Life, pp. 218, 
 219, and same in Personal Life ; Bacon's Will, Dec. 19th. 1624.) 
 
 His patient, conciliating, pliable nature blamed as weakness and 
 servility. 
 
 " He bore with a patience and serenity which, we fear, 
 bordered on meanness, the morose humours of his uncle . . . 
 the sneering reflections . . . cast on him " [as a " speculative " 
 man]. (Macaulay, p. 301.) 
 
 " There was in Bacon an invariable pliancy, in the presence 
 of great persons, which disqualified him for the task of giving 
 wise and effectual counsel. In part this obsequiousness arose 
 
54 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 from his mental and moral constitution, in part it was a habit 
 deliberately adopted, as one among many means by which a 
 man may make his way in the world . . . that he must 
 'avoid repulse.'" (Abbott, Life of Bacon, p. 21.) Compare 
 the passage quoted before on Bacon as "no flatterer " from the 
 same author's Introduction to the Essays.) 
 
 His patient, conciliating, pliable nature praised as excellent and 
 admirable. 
 
 " A man most sweet in his conversation and ways ; an enemy 
 to no man." (Sir Tobie Matthew's character of Bacon.) 
 
 "He was no dashing man, . . . but ever a countenances 
 and fosterer of other men's parts. ... He contemned no 
 man's observations, but would light his candle at every man's 
 torch." (Dr. Eawley's character of Bacon.) 
 
 "Eetiring, nervous, sensitive, unconventional, modest," etc. 
 (Spedding, L. L. VII. 567-8.) 
 
 " The habit of self-assertion was not at his command. . . . 
 When a man who is naturally modest attempts to put on the 
 air of audacity, he only makes himself offensive. The pliancy 
 or submissive attitude toward his official superiors ... is 
 generally blamed in him as an unworthy condescension, . . . 
 but I am not so sure that he would have acknowledged it as a 
 fault. As the world was in Bacon's time, and as it still is, 
 if you want a man to help you in your work, you must beware 
 of affronting him, and must show him the respect to which he 
 thinks himself entitled." (lb. 368-9.) 
 
 His faith in his own cause, his self-confidence, and his sanguine, 
 hopeful spirit, blamed as arrogance and pride. 
 
 "To an application to his uncle, Lord Burleigh, to entitle him 
 to come within bars," " he received a churlish answer ; the old 
 Lord taking the opportunity to read Francis a sharp lecture 
 on his ' arrogancy and overweening.' " (Campbell, 15 ; and 
 Macaulay, 301.) 
 
 Campbell, throughout his "Life of Bacon," clings to the 
 " evil opinion of them that do misaffect " Bacon, and treats his 
 natural gentleness as mere hypocrisy. "A touch of vanity, 
 even, is to be found in this composition — a quality he hardly 
 ever betrays elsewhere, although he had an inward conscious- 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 55 
 
 ness of his extraordinary powers. Boasting of his great 
 influence, etc., ... in three days Bacon was obliged hypo- 
 critically to write," etc. ..." The following is Bacon's 
 boastful account," etc. (Campbell's Bacon, pp. Ill, 152.) 
 
 "Bacon's overweening self-confidence," etc. (Storr, Essays, 
 Introduction.) 
 
 His self-confidence, fixed purposes, and hopeful spirit praised. 
 
 " I find that such persons as are of nature bashful as myself 
 is . . . are often mistaken for proud. But I know well . . . 
 that arrogancy and overweening is so far from my nature, as if 
 I think well of myself in anything, it is this, that I am free from 
 that vice." (Reply by F. B. to Ld. B.'s letter.) 
 
 " A hopeful, sensitive, bashful, amiable boy . . . glowing 
 with noble aspirations." (Spedding, L. L. I. 6.) 
 
 " Even as a philosopher ... he thought that he had struck 
 into the right path by accident, and that his merit lay in 
 endeavouring to keep in it. The qualities for which he gave 
 himself credit were only patience and faith, and love of truth, 
 carrying with it confidence in the power of truth. . . . Bacon 
 had by nature a large faculty of hope ; but it was hope from 
 things that lay out of and beyond himself ; ... he attached 
 little importance to himself except as an instrument for their 
 accomplishment. No correct notion can be formed of Bacon's 
 character till this suspicion of self-conceit is scattered to the 
 winds." (Abbott, Introduction to Essays, XXXVI.) (lb. VII. 
 568.) 
 
 Averse to details. 
 
 " A nature indifferent to details." (Abbott, Introduction to 
 Essays, XIX.) 
 
 " Lord Macaulay speaks in admiration of the versatility of 
 Bacon's mind as equally well adapted for exploring the heights 
 of philosophy, or for the minute inspection of the pettiest detail. 
 But he has been imposed upon by Bacon's parade of detail?" 1 
 etc. (lb. LXXXVII.) 
 
 Careful about details. 
 
 " The secret of Bacon's proficiency was that, in the smallest 
 matters, no less than in the greatest, he took a great deal of 
 
56 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 pains." (Spedding, Works, VII. 197.) See the evidence of 
 this in Bacon's Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, his 
 collections of Proverbs and Quotations, the Sylva Sylvarum, the 
 History of Winds, and other collections of minute particulars 
 and jottings. See, also, an excellent page in Macaulay's Essay, 
 417. 
 
 Without elevation of sentiment — His philosophy low and utili- 
 tarian. 
 
 " The moral qualities of Bacon were not of a high order. We 
 do not say that he was a bad man ; . . . his faults were . . . 
 coldness of heart, and meanness of spirit. He seems to have 
 been incapable of feeling strong affection, of facing great 
 dangers, of making great sacrifices. His desires were set on 
 things below, etc. (Macaulay, pp. 320 — 327, etc.) 
 
 "There is nothing that savours of the divine in Bacon's 
 philosophy ; ... it began in observation and ending in arts ; 
 ... a low object." (See lb., 373—396.) 
 
 Lofty in sentiment — Truly great. 
 
 " Greatness he could not want." (Ben Jonson, Dominus 
 
 Verulamius.) 
 
 " That mind lofty and discursive ... as a politician no less 
 grand and lofty in theory, than as a philosopher." (Dr. Abbott, 
 Introduction to Essays.) 
 
 " In his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild; . . . 
 he loved to picture to himself the world. . . . Cowley, in one 
 of his finest poems, compared Bacon to Moses standing on Mount 
 Pisgah, . . . the great lawgiver looking round from his lonely 
 elevation on an infinite expanse," etc. (Macaulay, 423, 429.) 
 
 Commenting on Bacon's observation that " assuredly the very 
 contemplation of things ... is more worthy than the fruits of 
 inventions," etc. (Nov. Org. I. 129.) Spedding says, in a foot- 
 note to the Latin edition : " This is one of the passages which 
 show how far Bacon was from what is now called a utilitarian." 
 (Spedding's Works, I. 222.) 
 
 His statements about himself not to be credited. 
 
 " We have this account only from himself, and it is to be 
 regarded with great suspicion." (Campbell, p. 53.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 57 
 
 His statements, even against himself, always candid and accurate. 
 
 " Never was a man franker in committing to paper his defects 
 and infirmities." (Abbott, Francis Bacon, p. 317.) Dr. Abbott 
 enters at some length into Bacon's " habit of thinking with a 
 pen in his hand," and reviews the Essays as being documentary 
 evidence of Bacon's own mental experiences. " Perhaps no man 
 ever made such a confidantx>f paper as he did," and, note, he 
 compares him to Montaigne. (See Essays, pp. xvii. — xxi.) 
 
 He was cold, calculating, without any strong affections or feelings. 
 
 " His fault . . . coldness of heart . . . not malignant, but 
 wanted warmth of affection and elevation of sentiment." 
 (Macaulay, p. 321.) " It was as the ministers or tools of science 
 that Bacon regarded his friends ; ... it was an affection of a 
 subdued kind, kept well under control, and duly subordinated 
 to the interests of the Kingdom of Man. Bacon could not 
 easily love friends or hate enemies, though he himself was loved 
 by many of his inferiors with the true love of friendship. . . . 
 He liked almost everybody with whom he was brought into close 
 intercourse, . . . but he loved and could love no one." (Abbott's 
 Introduction to Essays, XXVIII.) " Instinct and emotion were 
 in him unduly subordinated to reason. ... No one of 
 ordinary moral instinct would accept Bacon's oft-repeated 
 precept of Bias — ' Love as if you were sometime to hate, and 
 hate as if you were sometime to love." (Abbott's Francis 
 Bacon, 326.) 
 
 Affectionate — A firm friend — Peculiarly sensitive to kindnesses. 
 
 " But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it 
 extendeth ; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a 
 gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there 
 is no love ; ... it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true 
 friends, without which the world is but a wilderness. . . . 
 Whosoever, in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for 
 friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. 
 . . . It was a sparing speech of the ancients to say that a 
 friend is another himself, for that a friend is far more than him- 
 self," etc. (Bacon's Essay of Friendship.) Bacon places the 
 love of friends, or true sympathy of souls, far above the mere 
 
 E 
 
58 FKANCIS BACON 
 
 love or passion of "the Ancient Cupid." The "more close 
 spmpathy of the younger Cupid . . . depends upon deeper, 
 more necessitating and more uncontrollable principles, as if 
 they proceeded from the Ancient Cupid, on whom all exquisite 
 sympathies depend." (Wisdom of the Ancient Cupid.) "A 
 very sensitive man, who felt accutely both kindness and 
 unkindness." (Spedding, L. L. VII. 567.) 
 
 A faithless, time-serving friend — Ungrateful. (Chiefly regarding 
 Essex.) 
 
 " The person on whom, during the decline of [Essex's] influ- 
 ence, he chiefly depended, to whom he confided his perplexities, 
 . . . whose intercession he employed, was his friend Bacon. 
 . . . This friend, so loved, so trusted, bore a principal part 
 in ruining the Earl's fortunes, in shedding his blood, and in 
 blackening his memory. But let us be just to Bacon ; ... to 
 the last he had no wish to injure Essex. Nay, we believe that 
 he sincerely exerted himself to save Essex, as long as he thought 
 that he could serve Essex without injuring himself" etc. 
 (Macaulay, p. 311.) This miserable view, exhibiting Francis 
 Bacon as an utterly selfish creature, is repeated by Campbell 
 and others. 
 
 " No one who reads his anxious letters about preferment and 
 the Queen's favour, about his disappointed hopes, about his 
 straitened means and distress for money, . . . can doubt that 
 the question was between his own prospects and his friend ; 
 and that to his own interest he sacrificed his friend and his own 
 honour." (Dr. Church, Bacon, p. 57.) 
 
 See also Dr. Abbott's Francis Bacon, p. 277, of Yelverton's 
 trial : " Bacon's behaviour was peculiarly cold-blooded and 
 ungrateful." 
 
 "A friend unalterable to his friends." (Sir Tobie Matthew's 
 character of Bacon.) 
 
 "No man knew better, or felt more deeply, the duties of 
 friendship." (Basil Montagu.) 
 
 See also the whole subject argued in Spedding's Evenings with 
 a Reviewer, Vol. I., and Letters and Life, I. 104—106, 250—254, 
 295, 370—375 ; II. 69—105, 123—132, 105, 367. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 59 
 
 " The fictitious biography paints him as bound by the sacred 
 ties of gratitude and affection to the Earl of Essex, who, after 
 striving, in the most disinterested spirit, to procure for him a 
 great office and a wealthy wife, had, failing in these efforts, 
 generously bestowed upon him Twickenham Park ; as helping 
 and advising that Earl, so long as he could do it safely and 
 with profit, but as going over to his enemies when the hour of 
 danger came ; and when tKe Earl's rash enterprise gave those 
 enemies a legal advantage over him, as straining his utmost 
 skill as an advocate and a writer, to take away the life and to 
 damn the memory of a noble and confiding friend. A plain 
 story of the times will show that the connexion of Bacon with 
 Essex was one of politics and business ; that this connexion was 
 in the highest degree injurious to Bacon and to Bacon's family ; 
 that Essex caused him to lose for fourteen years the post of 
 Solicitor ; that Twickenham Park had never been the property 
 of Essex, and was not given by him to Bacon ; that the 
 connexion between them ceased with Essex's own acts ; . . . 
 that ' the rash enterprise ' for which Essex suffered on the 
 block was treason of so black a shade, — so odious in the con- 
 ception, so revolting in the details, as to arm against him every 
 honest man ; . . . that while Essex was yet free from overt and 
 unpardonable crimes, Bacon went beyond the extremest bounds 
 of chivalry to save him. That in acting against Essex, when 
 Essex had stained his hands with blood and his soul with 
 treason, Bacon did no more than he was bound to do as a public 
 man ; that, though he could not save the guilty chief, he strove, 
 and not in vain, to rescue from the gallows his misled accom- 
 plices ; finally, that to the generous suppressions of the State 
 Paper, which he drew up under her Majesty's command, was 
 due to the fact that Essex's name should be pronounced without 
 a, curse, and that his son could one day be restored in blood." 
 (Hep worth Dixon, Story, I., 6. See the same book, pp. 46 — 186.) 
 
 Unloved as he was unloving, he had but few friends and was 
 little reverenced. 
 
 This is the impression conveyed by most of Bacon's anti- 
 pathetic biographers — a view of his character which Dr. Abbott 
 tries hard to reconcile with "the spirit of genuine affection 
 which breathes" through the records of his friends and con- 
 
60 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 temporaries, and, we may add, through all the letters which 
 refer to him, written to him or of him, where his personal 
 relations with intimate friends and acquaintances are touched 
 upon. (See infra.) It is difficult, sometimes, to decide whether 
 to place the criticisms upon Bacon's character on the side of the 
 goats or of the sheep. They are often so self-contradictory and 
 neutralising that the writers appear to be writing against their 
 own convictions — rejecting the evidence patent and unchallenged 
 of eye-witnesses, in favour of theories and personal antipathies 
 found long after their great subject had passed away. As to 
 forming a judgment upon detached expressions, notes or senti- 
 ments, culled from Bacon's works with a special purpose, 
 and with special glosses attached, to suit certain theories, we 
 protest that no author's private character can be rightly so 
 judged ; and with regard to Bacon, in particular, passages 
 to prove the exact opposite to everything so advanced could 
 be produced. 
 
 "All icho were good and great loved and honoured Mm." (John 
 Aubrey.) 
 
 * My conceit of his person was never increased towards him 
 by his place or honours ; but I have and do reverence him for 
 the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed 
 to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest of men, and most 
 worthy of admiration, that hath been in many ages. In his 
 adversity I ever prayed God would give him strength, for 
 greatness he could not want. Neither could I condole a word 
 or syllable for him, as knowing no accident can happen to 
 virtue, but rather help to make it manifest." (Ben Jonson, 
 Dominus Verulamius.) 
 
 The same is echoed by Dr. Rawley, Osborne, Peter B6ener> 
 and Sir Tobie Matthew, all personal friends. (See Spedding, 
 L. L. VII. 576 ; Hepworth Dixon, Story, 482, etc.) 
 
 The following rather grinding version is from a usually 
 hostile critic of Francis Bacon : " Bacon's better traits have 
 to be inferred from the brief testimony of one or two of his most 
 intimate friends, whose disinterested eulogies, after his disgrace 
 and death, prove that, to them, at least, he seemed not only 
 genial, kindly, and affectionate, but also a bright example of 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 61 
 
 lofty virtue. There seems something in the nature of a problem 
 in the contradiction between Bacon as he appeared to his 
 friends, and Bacon as he appears to us.* We have already 
 noted the spirit of genuine affection which breathes through the 
 short memoir of him written by his chaplain, Rawley. His 
 domestic apothecary and secretary, Peter Boener, expresses a 
 wish that a statue of him may be erected, not for his learning 
 and researches, but ' as a Inemorable example to all of virtue, 
 kindness, peacefulness, and patience.' Ben Jonson speaks in 
 the same strain of his ' virtue.' ... To the same effect writes 
 Sir Tobie Matthew, one of his most intimate friends, who was 
 in the secret of his philosophic projects, and to whom he 
 dedicated his Essay on Friendship. ' It is not his greatness 
 that I admire, but his virtue. It is not the favours that I have 
 received of him that have enthralled and enchained my heart, 
 but his whole life and character ; which are such that, if he 
 were of an inferior condition, I could not honour him the less, 
 and if he were mine enemy, I could not the less love, and 
 endeavour to serve him.' With all his faults . . . neither his 
 formal works nor his private letters convey more than a fraction 
 of the singular charm with which his suavity of manner and 
 gracious dignity fascinated his contemporaries and riveted the 
 affections of some whom it must have been hardest to deceive. 
 . . . His enthusiasm for truth in Nature ennobled his inter- 
 course with his associates, and placed them on a footing of such 
 cordial fellowship with his brother workers that he really loved 
 them. At least it is certain that he made them love him." 
 (Abbott, Francis Bacon, 319, 33, etc.) 
 
 His cruelty — Want of feeling for animals — Vivisection. 
 
 "He seems to have no liking for birds or beasts, wild or tame. 
 The torture of a long-billed fowl by a waggish Christian, who 
 called down on himself the resentment of the Turks by his 
 cruelty, inspires him with no deeper feeling than amusement." 
 (See the passage quoted below, of which this is the exposition, 
 in the Introduction to Dr. Abbott's edition of the Essays.) 
 
 * This must depend upon who the " us, 11 the modern reporter and 
 critic, may be. The " us " at present writing sees nothing inharmonious 
 in the character of Bacon, but " we " do perceive that, as a rule, very 
 little is known of his real life and character, and that accounts of him 
 have been intentionally "disguised and veiled." 
 
62 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 " The restrictions on aviaries have been treated as an indica- 
 tion that Bacon had a strong love for animals ; but it would 
 seem he did not object to cages, provided the want of ' nestling ' 
 and ' foulness ' do not obtrude themselves on the spectator." 
 (Abbott, Notes to Ess. of Gardens.) 
 
 " While condemning vivisection of men, he assumes its 
 lawfulness when applied to animals, without restriction or 
 justification." (Abbott, Notes to Ess. of Goodness.) 
 
 Macaulay, Campbell, and others, charge Bacon with aiding 
 and abetting the torturing of Peacham. 
 
 His kindness and tenderness of heart — Love of animals, flowers 
 — Vivisection. 
 
 Bacon is showing that " The inclination to goodness is 
 imprinted deeply in the nature of man ; insomuch that, if it 
 issue not towards men, it will take unto other living creatures : 
 as it is seen in the Turks, a cruel people, who nevertheless are 
 kind to beasts, and give alms to dogs and birds ; insomuch, as 
 Busbechius reporteth, a Christian boy in Constantinople had 
 like to have been stoned for gagging, in a waggishness, a long- 
 billed fowl." (Essay of Goodness and Goodness of Nature.) 
 
 "I love the birds as the French king doth." (Spedding, 
 L. L. V. 444. Bacon's Notes.) 
 
 " In his face a thought for the bird on the tree, the insect 
 on the stream, ... he pursued his studies, sniffing at a 
 flower or listening to a bird. In the bright country air, among 
 his books, fish, flowers, collections, and experiments, with his 
 horse, his dog. Bacon slowly regained some part of his lost 
 health. . . . 
 
 " Sure, yet subtle, were the tests by which Bacon judged of 
 men. Seeing Win wood strike a dog for having leaped upon a 
 stool, he very justly set him down as of ungentle nature. ' Every 
 gentleman,' he said loudly, ' loves a dog.' " (H. Dixon, Story, 
 pp. 23, 29, 331.) 
 
 " And now," in Bacon's account, " we see the lover of birds 
 and fowls : 
 
 "To the washerwoman for sending after the crane that flew into the 
 Thames, five shillings. 
 
 " The Lord Chancellor was as fond of birds as of dress, and 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 63 
 
 he built in the gardens of York House a magnificent aviary at a 
 cost of three hundred pounds. From this aviary the poor crane 
 had flown into the Thames," etc. (lb. page 355.) 
 
 " Then, again, the accounts make visible, as he lived in the 
 flesh, the tender and compassionate man." (lb. 355 — 357.) 
 
 " He was not inhuman or tyrannical." (Macaulay, 320.) 
 
 " For aviaries, I like them not, except they be of that largeness 
 as they may be turfed, and Kave living plants and bushes set in 
 them, that the birds may have more scope and natural nestling, 
 and that no foulness appear on the floor of the aviary." (Ess. 
 of Gardens.) 
 
 In the New Atlantis the Father of Solomon's House (who 
 had " an aspect as though he pitied men ") is explaining the 
 " preparations and instruments " for study and experiment at 
 the " House." " We have," he says, " also parks and inclosures 
 for all sorts of beasts and birds ; which we use not only for view 
 or rareness, but likewise for dissections and trials, that whereby 
 we may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man ; 
 wherein we find many strange effects : as continuing life in 
 them, though divers parts which you account vital be perished 
 and taken forth ; resuscitating of some that seem dead in 
 appearance, and the like. We try also poisons and other 
 medicines upon them, as well as surgery and physic." (New 
 Atlantis.) 
 
 " Of that other defect in anatomy, that it has not been 
 practised on human bodies, what need to speak ? For it is a 
 thing hateful and inhuman, and has been justly reproved by 
 Celsus. . . . Wherefore, that utility may be considered, as well 
 as humanity, the anatomy of the living subject . . . may well 
 be discharged by beasts alive," etc. (De Aug. IV. 2.) 
 
 Montagu, Spedding, Abbott, Anton, and others, show that 
 Bacon was in no way responsible for the torturing of Peacham. 
 
 He did not study human nature. 
 
 "Human nature and the human passions were not sciences 
 in which Bacon was versed. He wanted that pliancy and 
 congenial feeling which identifies itself with the pains and 
 pleasures, the cares and solicitudes, the frailties and imperfec- 
 tions, whims and caprices, sympathies, passions, emotions, and 
 affections which variously agitate and disturb, rouse and irritate, 
 
64 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 terrify and calm, enrapture, moderate, suspend, and enchain all 
 the faculties of our nature, and all the cravings and desires of 
 the human heart — for it is only in the delineation of the heart 
 and its affections that we can expect to discover the soul and 
 spirit of poetry." (Ess. by S. N. Carvalho, in New York Herald, 
 Oct. 5, 1874.) 
 
 He was a profound student of human nature. 
 
 " So, then, the first article of this knowledge is to set down 
 sound and true distributions and descriptions of the several 
 characters and tempers of men's natures and dispositions, 
 specially having regard to those differences which are most 
 radical in being the fountains and causes of the rest, 1 ' etc. " I 
 cannot sufficiently marvel that this part of knowledge, touching 
 the several characters of natures and dispositions, should be 
 omitted both in morality and policy, considering it is of so 
 great ministery and suppeditation to them both. {Advancement 
 of Learning, II. ; Spedding, Works, III. pp. 432 — 473.) See, 
 also, De Augmentis, VIII. 2 — "of procuring information of 
 persons ; their natures, their desires and ends, their customs 
 and fashions, their helps and advantages," etc., etc. (Spedding, 
 
 Works, V. pp. 59—78.) 
 
 See "The Essays," which, Bacon says, "of all my other 
 works, have been most current ; for that, as it seems, they come 
 
 home to men's business and bosoms." They are all, more or 
 
 less, studies of human nature and character. 
 
 See, also, " Experiments touching the impressions which the 
 
 passions of the mind make upon the body." (Sylva Sylvarum, 
 
 Cent. VIII. 713—722), and of the effect of mind on body, and 
 
 body on mind, etc. 
 
 " His style, ... for the most part, describes men's minds 
 
 as well as pictures do their bodies : so it did his above all 
 
 men living. The course of it is vigorous and majestical . . . 
 
 in all expressing a soul equally skilled in men and nature." 
 (See A Character of the Lord Bacon — Dr. Sprat's History of 
 
 the Royal Society, Part I. sec. 16, pages 35, 36.) 
 
 See, also, Cowley's poem on Bacon, addressed to the Royal 
 
 Society, for evidence that Bacon painted human nature " to 
 
 the life." 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 65 
 
 Wanting in boldness and independence of character. 
 
 " He had no political back-bone, no power of adhering to his 
 convictions and pressing them on unwilling ears." 
 
 "Young or old, from twenty to sixty, he was always the 
 same; . . . from the beginning to the end of his career his 
 wiser counsels were neglected, and he was little better than an 
 instrument in the hands of the unwise." (Abbott, Francis 
 Bacon, p. 22.) 
 
 " He had no moral courage, and no power of self-sacrifice or 
 self-denial." (Campbell, Bacon, p. 220.) 
 
 A patriot — Politically bold and independent in matters which 
 he esteemed important. 
 
 " It is creditable alike to his statesmanship and to his inde- 
 pendence of character that, at a time when all deviations from 
 the forms of the prayer-book were known to be distasteful to 
 the Queen, Bacon should have pleaded for elasticity, and that 
 'the contentious retention of custom is a turbulent thing." 1 
 (Abbott, Francis Bacon, p. 26.) 
 
 " Bacon, who now sat for Middlesex, barred his own path by 
 a speech in the House of Commons . . . upon subsidies, which 
 he considered too burdensome for a people overlaid with taxes. 
 ... It was, therefore, in entire good faith that Bacon pro- 
 tested against the subsidies, declaring that the gentlemen must 
 sell their plate and the farmers their brass pots before this 
 should be paid. The House was unanimously against him. 
 . . . But the speech, though made in manifest sincerity, did 
 not, on that account, conciliate the Queen ; and Bacon's 
 conscientious opposition brought on him the penalty of exclu- 
 sion from the royal presence/' (lb. p. 35.) 
 
 "Bacon's fame as a patriot was fixed in these transactions. 
 The breadth of his views, the comprehensiveness of his politics, 
 the solidity of his understanding were observed by his con- 
 temporaries." (Hep worth Dixon, Story, p. 37.) 
 
 " The House had not sat a week . . . before he hinted at 
 his scheme for amending the whole body of English law. . . . 
 Reform the code ! Bacon tells a House full of Queen's Serjeants 
 and utter barristers that laws are made to guard the rights of 
 the people, not to feed the lawyers. . . So runs his speech. 
 ... a noble thought ... a plan developed in his maxims 
 
66 FBANCIS BACON 
 
 of the law . . . universally read . . . the Code Napoleon is 
 the sole embodiment of Bacon's thought. Ten days later he 
 gave a check to the Government, which brought down on his 
 head the censures of Burghley and Puckering, which are said 
 to have represented the personal anger of the Queen. . . . 
 Burghley asked the Peers to confer on a grant of money for the 
 Queen's service, and Cecil reported to the Commons that the 
 Peers had decided for them what they were to give. . . . Who 
 rose to warn the minister of this grave mistake ? . . Bacon 
 stood up. A few clear words declared that ... to give was 
 the prerogative of the people — to dictate what they should give 
 was not the duty of the Peers." (lb. 65, 66.) 
 
 Bacon compared unfavourably with Coke. 
 
 Bacon as Attorney-General " holding up to posterity for ever 
 the contrast between his courtier-like servility, and Coke's 
 manly independence." (Abbott, Introduction to Essays, lvi.) 
 
 Bacon compared favourably with Coke. 
 
 " Some of the judges, and amongst them Egerton, wished to 
 make Bacon Attorney-General, for the great common-lawyer, if 
 a giant in legal erudition, had the manners of a bully, and the 
 spirit of a slave. In the long succession of English judges, it is 
 doubtful whether any one has left on the bench so distinct an 
 impression of having been a cold, harsh, brawling, ungenerous 
 man as Coke," etc., etc. (Hepworth Dixon, 79, 80.) 
 
 " Wanting the warmth of heart, the large round sympathies, 
 which enabled his rival at the bar to see into political questions 
 with the eye of a poet and a statesman, Coke could only treat 
 a constituted court as a thing of words, dates, readings, and 
 decisions, not as a living fact in close relation to other living 
 facts, and having in itself the germs of growth and change." 
 (lb. 231.) See Spedding, Let. and Life, I. 232. 
 
 An inequitable judge — His judgments questioned. 
 
 " Unhappily he was employed in perverting laws to the vilest 
 purposes of tyranny." (Macaulay, 330.) 
 
 " He did worse than nothing in politics. He degraded him- 
 self, he injured his country and posterity by tarnishing the 
 honourable traditions of the bench." (Abbott, Introduction to 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 67 
 
 Essays, xcvi. And see, by the same, " Francis Bacon,'' pp. xx., 
 xxi., xxix.) 
 
 An equitable judge — His judgments neither questioned nor 
 reversed. 
 
 " His favourites took bribes, but his Lordship always gave 
 judgment secundum cequum et bonum. His decrees in chancery 
 stand firme ; there are fewer of his decrees reverst than of any 
 other Chancellor." (John Aubrey, Sped. L. L. VII. 557.) 
 
 " A most indefatigable servant to the King, and a most 
 earnest lover of the public." (Sir Tobie Matthew.) 
 
 " Bacon was the first of a new order of public men. . . . 
 Bad men kill offices and good men found them." (See Hep- 
 worth Dixon's Story, p. 210, etc. See also Lord Chief Justice 
 Hale on the Jurisdiction of the Lords' House, 1716.) 
 
 Apologises abjectly to the Queen about his speech on the subsidy. 
 
 " The young patriot condescended to make the most abject 
 apologies; . . . he bemoaned himself to the Lord Keeper, in a 
 letter which may keep in countenance the most unmanly of the 
 epistles which Cicero wrote during his banishment. The lesson 
 was not thrown away. Bacon never offended in the same manner 
 again:' (Macaulay, Essays, pp. 303-4.) 
 
 " The Queen was deeply incensed, and desired it to be inti- 
 mated to the delinquent . . . that he must never look to her for 
 favour or promotion. An eloquent eulogist says that ' he heard 
 them with the calmness of a philosopher,' but his answers shoio 
 that he was struck with repentance and remorse, and that, in the 
 hope of obtaining pardon, he plainly intimated that he should 
 never repeat the offence." (Campbell, p. 23.) 
 
 " His compunction for his opposition to the subsidy." (lb. 24.) 
 
 Does not offer any apology to the Queen about his speech on the 
 subsidy. 
 
 The letter is extant and contains not a word of apology. 
 " This letter is a justification and no apology" (Spedding, 
 L. L. i. 233.) 
 
 "It is worthy of note that, among the many expressions of 
 regret at the royal displeasure, there is no record of any apology 
 
68 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 tendered by Bacon for his speech." (Abbott, Introduction to 
 Essays, I. xxix.) 
 
 See also the polite but independent letter which Bacon wrote 
 not long afterwards to the Queen herself, ignoring the obnoxious 
 matter of the speech, and applying directly to be employed in 
 the Queen's service. (Spedding, L. L. i. p. 240.) 
 
 His speech charging Essex, and his connection with the trial, 
 condemned as perfidious and unpardonable. 
 
 " The lamentable truth must be told. This friend, so loved, 
 so trusted, bore a principal part in ruining the EarVs fortunes, 
 in shedding his blood, and in blackening his character," etc. 
 (Macaulay's Essay.) 
 
 " To deprive him of all chance of mercy . . . Bacon compared 
 him to the Duke of Guise. . . . The Queen wished a pamphlet 
 to be written to prove that Essex was properly put to death, and 
 she selected Francis Bacon to write it. He, without hesitation, 
 undertook the task. . . . No honourable man would purchase 
 Bacon's subsequent elevation at the price of being the author of 
 this publication," etc. (Campbell, p. 64.) 
 
 His speech charging Essex commended as lenient — His con- 
 ducting of the trial explained as being obligatory ; an official 
 duty, etc. 
 
 " Bacon closed the case in an eloquent and memorable speech. 
 His own relations with the Earl of Essex, he said, were at an 
 end. Yet, in spite of this avowal, he spoke as the EarVs advocate, 
 rather than as the Queen's ; charging him with hasty expressions, 
 but distinctly freeing him from the charge of disloyalty. Bacon's 
 speech at York House saved Essex in his fortunes and his 
 fame." (Hepworth Dixon's Story of Bacon, p. 162, quoting from 
 Chamberlain to Carleton, July 1 — 26, 1600, Record Office ; 
 Confessions of D. Hayward, July 11, 1600, R. O. ; Abstract of 
 Evidence against Essex, July 22, 1600; Examination of Thos. 
 Wright, July 24, 1600, R. O. ; Moryson, Part II. 68 ; Sydney 
 Papers, II. 200; and see Personal Life.) Basil Montagu and 
 Spedding, II. 367. 
 
 " Yet, even when it was made thus sternly and just by the 
 Queen, the ' Declaration of the practises and treasons attempted 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 69 
 
 committed by Robt. Devereux, late Earl of Essex, and his 
 complices,' was, perhaps, the most gentle and moderate state 
 paper ever published in any kingdom" etc. (Hepworth Dixon's 
 Story, pp. 186-7 ; see, also, Prof. Fowler's Bacon, pp. 8, 9.) 
 
 He incurred the indignation and contempt of his contemporaries 
 on account of the part which he took in Essex's trial. 
 
 if 
 
 " The base ingratitude and the slavish meanness manifested 
 by Bacon on this occasion called forth the indignation of his 
 contemporaries. . . . For some time after Essex's execution, 
 Bacon was looked upon with aversion," etc. (Campbell, pp. 
 66, 68.) 
 
 "It is certain that his conduct excited great and general 
 disapprobation." (Macaulay, p. 323.) 
 
 " The multitude loudly condemned him." (lb. 325 and 326.) 
 
 No indignation was exhibited against him on account of the part 
 which he took in Essex 1 s trial. He was now honoured more 
 highly than before. 
 
 " That the lofty and gentle course which Bacon pursued 
 through these memorable events commanded the admiration of 
 all his contemporaries, save a faction of the defeated band, is a 
 fact of which the proofs are incontestible. . . . If he were 
 thought of with aversion, here were the means, the opportunities 
 for condign revenge. . . . Did the friends of Lord Essex 
 rise on his adversaries ? Was the . . . stone flung at Bacon ? 
 Just the reverse. . . . 
 
 " The world had not been with the rebellious Earl, either in 
 his treason at Temple Bar or in his suffering at Tower Hill, and 
 those who had struck down the Papist plot were foremost in the 
 ranks of the new Parliament. Four years ago Bacon had been 
 chosen to represent Ipswich, and the chief town of Suffolk again 
 ratified its choice. But his public acts now won for him a 
 second constituency in St. Albans. Such a double return, 
 always rare in the House of Commons, was the highest compli- 
 ment that could be paid to his political life." (Hep. Dixon, 
 " Story," p. 183. See 184-5, of the Queen revising Bacon's 
 " Declaration " as being too lenient to Essex ; and Notes, 
 Part III. 149.) 
 
70 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Sh*uck to the earth by the discovery of his corruption — Confessing 
 the truth of the charges brought against him — Treated as a 
 degraded man. 
 
 " Overwhelmed with shame and remorse." (Macaulay, p. 353 ) 
 Lord Campbell quotes passages from Bacon's letter to the 
 King and Buckingham (where Bacon expresses his resolution to 
 indulge in no excuses if he has " partaken of the abuses of the 
 times ") as a clear negative pregnant, admitting that the bribes 
 had been received. (See Campbell's Bacon, p. 172.) 
 
 Overwhelmed with horror and surprise at the charges brought 
 against him — Acknowledges carelessness — Utterly repudiates 
 the charge of bribery — Never shows any remorse for guilt, but 
 even in his " prayer " regrets that he had wasted and misspent 
 his life in trying to follow the profession of the law and the 
 pursuits of a politician, for which by nature he was least fit — 
 Not treated as degraded, but as one who would return to power. 
 
 " The law of nature teaches me to speak in my own defence. 
 With respect to this charge of bribery I am as innocent as any 
 born upon St. Innocent's day. I never had bribe or reward in 
 my eye or thought when pronouncing sentence or order." (B. 
 Montagu, Works, V. 549.) 
 
 See also his straightforward, modest appeal to the King, 
 repudiating the idea that he had " the troubled fountain of a 
 corrupt heart in a depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert 
 justice, . . . howsoever I be frail and partake of the abuses of 
 the times." Resolving to defend nothing in himself, and praying- 
 God that " no hardness of heart steal upon me under show of 
 more neatness of conscience than is cause." (Montagu, Spedding, 
 and others.) 
 
 Montagu, XII. 457—459; XVI., Part II. 426. See also 
 Spedding's Evenings with a Reviewer, Vol. II. Abbott, Francis 
 Bacon, pp. 306, 320. Hepworth Dixon, " Story," pp. 410-411, 
 412—447, 466, 482 ; and " Personal Life." Council Registers, 
 Dec. 30, 1617; Mar. 17—27, 1618; June 19, 1619; Jan. 20, 
 1620. Bacon Memoranda, Lambeth MSS., 936, fol. 146. 
 
 Without a sense of humour — Never made a pun or a quibble. 
 
 " What is said by Dr. Rawley [see below] of Bacon's avoidance 
 of all mere verbal conceits is true, and the fact merits especial 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 71 
 
 attention as notably discriminating the wit of Bacon from that 
 of every other English writer eminent for that quality in his age. 
 Probably nothing resembling a pun, or any quibble of that class, 
 is to be found in all that he has written." (Craik, I. 30.) 
 
 " The idea of robbing the world of Shakespeare for such a 
 stiff, legal-headed old jack-ass as Bacon, is a modern invention 
 of fools." (Essay on " The Humbug of Bacon," signed B. J. A., 
 in the New York Herald, Oct. 5, 1874.) This extract is given as 
 a good specimen of the kind of knowledge and criticism dis- 
 played by the press articles of this date. 
 
 The most prodigious wit that ever lived — Fond of quibbles — 
 Could not pass by a jest. 
 
 " His speech, when he could pass by a jest, was nobly cen- 
 sorious." (Ben Jonson, Dominus Vendamius.) 
 
 Bacon's paradoxical manner of turning a sentence so as to 
 read two ways has been the frequent subject of comment. A 
 large number of puns and quibbles are to be found even in his 
 graver works, and Ben Jonson's remark shows that, however 
 much he might try to exclude these plays upon words from his 
 writings, the habit of punning was so confirmed in him as to be, 
 in Jonson's opinion, a disfigurement to his oratory. 
 
 " The most prodigious wit that ever I knew ... is of your 
 Lordship's name, albeit he is known by another." (Sir Tobie 
 Matthew, letter to Bacon.) 
 
 Want of imagination of the higher type. 
 
 "Of looks conversing with the skies, of beauty born of mur- 
 muring sound that passes into the face, he takes no account. It 
 is the exclusion of the higher type that leads him to doubt 
 whether beauty is a hindrance or a help in running the race of 
 life." (Storr of Ess. of Beauty.) 
 
 " There is hardly a trace in Bacon of that transfusing and 
 transforming imagination which creates a new heaven and a 
 new earth ; which reveals the elemental secrets of things, and 
 thrills us with a shock of surprise and delight as a new revela- 
 tion. . . . There is more of poetry in Browne's Hydriotaphia 
 than of poetry in Bacon's collected works. Yet of poetry, in all 
 but the strictest and highest sense of the word, Bacon is full." 
 (lb., Introduction lxxxiii. See below.) 
 
72 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Imagination of the highest type. 
 
 " Bacon, whose vast contemplative ends embraced the image 
 of the universal world." (Storr.) 
 
 " His life of mind was never exceeded, perhaps never equalled. 
 The extent of his views was immense. . . . His powers were 
 varied and in great perfection, his senses exquisitely acute. . . . 
 His imagination was most vivid and fruitful," etc., etc. (Basil 
 Montagu, Vol. XVI., 451—463.) 
 
 " He was a man of strong, clear, and powerful imaginations. 
 His genius was searching and inimitable, and of this I need 
 give no other proof than his style itself, which, as for the most 
 part it describes men's minds as well as pictures do their 
 bodies : so it did his above all men living. The course of it is 
 vigorous and majestical : the wit bold and familiar. The com- 
 parisons fetched out of the way, and yet the most easy : in all 
 expressing a soul equally skilled in men and nature. . . . 
 He seems to take all that comes, and to heap together rather 
 than to register. But I hope this accusation of mine can be no 
 great injury to his memory ; seeing at the same time that I say 
 he had not the strength of a thousand men. I do also allow 
 him to have had as much as twenty." (See Character of Lord 
 Bacon, by Dr. Sprat ; History of the Royal Society, Part I., sec. 
 16, pp. 35, 36.) 
 
 Highly poetical — Possessing every faculty and gift of the true 
 poet. 
 
 " It is he that filled up all numbers, and performed that which 
 may be compared or preferred to insolent Greece or haughty 
 Rome." (Ben Jonson.) 
 
 " His Lordship was a good poet, but concealed, as appears by 
 his letters." (John Aubrey.) 
 
 The author of " The Great Assises Holden in Parnassus " 
 ranks Lord Verulam next to Apollo. 
 
 " The poetic faculty was strong in Bacon's mind. No 
 imagination was ever at once so strong and so subjugated. In 
 truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world 
 . . . magnificent day-dreams . . . analogies of all sorts," etc., 
 etc. (Macaulay.) 
 
 " Few poets deal in finer imagery than is to be found in 
 Bacon. . . . His prose is poetry." (Campbell.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 73 
 
 " The varieties and sprightliness of Bacon's imagination, an 
 imagination piercing almost into futurity, conjectures improving 
 even to prophecy. . . . The greatest felicity of expression, 
 and the most splendid imagery,'' etc., etc. (Basil Montagu.) 
 
 " The Wisdom of the Ancients, ... a kind of parabolical 
 poetry. The fables abounding with the deepest thought and 
 beauty. . . . To the Advancement of Learning he brings 
 every species of poetry by which imagination can elevate the 
 mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying of its own 
 essence. . . . Metaphors, similitudes, and analogies make 
 up a great part of his reasoning. . . . Ingenuity, poetic 
 fancy, and the highest imagination and fertility cannot be 
 denied him." (Craik.) 
 
 " The creative fancy of a Dante or Milton never called up 
 more gorgeous images than those suggested by Bacon, and we 
 question much whether their worlds surpass his in affording 
 scope for his imagination. His extended over all time. His 
 mind brooded over all nature, . . . unfolding to the gaze of the 
 spectator the order of the universe as exhibited to angelic 
 intelligences." (Devey.) 
 
 " The tendency of Bacon to see analogies ... is characteristic 
 of him, the result of . . . that mind not truly philosophic, but 
 truly poetic, which will find similitudes everywhere in heaven 
 and earth." (Dr. Abbott.) 
 
 " He had the liveliest fancy and most active imagination. 
 But that he wanted the sense of poetic fitness and melody, he 
 might be almost supposed, with his reach and play of thought, 
 to have been capable, as is maintained in some eccentric modern 
 theories, of writing Shakespeare's plays. No man ever had a 
 more imaginative power of illustration drawn from the most 
 remote and most unlikely analogies ; analogies often of the 
 quaintest and most unexpected kind, but often, also, not only 
 felicitous in application, but profound and true." (Church, pp. 
 21, 22 ; see also pp. 19, 24, 173, 197, 200, 204, 217, 171, 201 ; 
 and note that Dr. Church here gives Bacon every attribute of 
 the poet excepting the power to write poetry.) 
 
 " Gentle and susceptible in genius. ... A mind susceptible 
 of all impressions. . . . Trott, a lover of poetry and wit, 
 advanced him money. ... As a bencher Bacon became the 
 light and genius ... of Gray's Inn; . . . dressed the dumb 
 
74 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 show, led off the dances, invented the masques ; a genial and 
 original nature." (Hepwortli Dixon, Story, 21, 23, 33, etc.) 
 
 "I infer from this sample that Bacon had all the natural 
 faculties which a poet wants : a fine ear for metre, a fine feeling 
 for imaginative effect in words, and a vein of poetic passion. 
 . . . The truth is that Bacon was not without the ' fine 
 phrensy' of a poet," etc. (Spedding, Works, VII., 267—272.) 
 
 Sir Francis Bacon is also enumerated, by Edmund Howes, 
 amongst a list of " Our modern and present excellent poets, 
 which worthily flourish in their owne works ; and who, accord- 
 ing to their priorities as neere as I could, I have orderly set 
 downe." In this curious list Bacon stands eighth and Shake- 
 speare fifteenth in order. 
 
 See also Sir Tobie Matthew's account of Bacon's " sprouting 
 invention," his " ravishing way of words, metaphors, and 
 allusions as perhaps the world hath not seen since it was a 
 world ; " his pre-eminence as the " Genius of England." 
 
 See Halliwell Phillips's Outlines, p. 512. 
 
 Dr. Fischer, of Heidelberg, endorses these opinions in his 
 work on Bacon. 
 
 lie had little or no religion. 
 
 "Bacon's zeal against persecution and intolerance arose 
 probably in no small measure from vagueness, uncertainty or 
 indifference in his own religious beliefs." (Fowler's Bacon, 
 p. 185, and see p. 182.) 
 
 " He was guarded by every sentinel but those of virtue and 
 God's favour. . . . May we not humbly, but urgently, say, 
 'Remember Lord Bacon' . . . whenever any effort or com- 
 bination of human faculties awakes your admiration and 
 applause. . . . Let such qualities be found in union with 
 1 repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.' We 
 cannot but believe that all that was low, . . . degrading, . . . 
 treacherous, . . . subservient, . . . and dishonest ... in 
 the life of Lord Bacon could never have blotted his noble 
 escutcheon if he had walked humbly with his God, . . . with a 
 confidence in God as a Father ; . . . a jealousy for the honour 
 of his Saviour, and an hourly reference ... to the guidance of 
 the Holy Ghost," etc. (Life of Bacon, by the Rev. J. Sortain, 
 1790.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 75 
 
 It is science that makes him in any sense a religious man — 
 non-religious in conduct, etc. (Abbot, Introduction to Essays.) 
 
 He was truly religious. 
 
 " This lord was religious ; for though the world be apt to suspect 
 and prejudge great wits and politiques to have somewhat of the 
 atheist, yet he was conversant with God, as appeareth through- 
 out the whole current of his writings. ... No man will 
 deny him ... to have been a deep philosopher. And not only 
 so, but he was able to render a reason for the hope which was in 
 him, which that writing of his of the Confession of Faith doth 
 abundantly testify. He repaired frequently (when his health 
 would permit him) to the services of the church to hear sermons, 
 to the adminstration of the sacrament of the blessed body and 
 blood of Christ ; and died in the true faith, established in the 
 Church of England." (Dr. Rawley's Life of Bacon, 1670.) 
 
 His toleration in religious matters blamed. 
 
 Bacon's toleration showed a fatal want of religious enthusiasm. 
 (Storr, Introduction to Essays.) 
 
 His toleration applauded. 
 
 We do not pretend that he ever became a violent partisan 
 against the Church of Rome ; . . . neither, on the other hand, 
 was he an exclusive advocate for the Church of England in 
 opposition to the Puritans. ... In the whole range of ecclesi- 
 astical history we can recall no one whose mind looked down 
 upon church controversies with more anxious concern. His 
 was not the latitudinarianism of indiffei'enee. . . . We should 
 feel that we were performing a high duty to the Church of 
 Christ, at the present times, to transcribe the whole of Bacon's 
 enlarged view of church controversies. ... In thus stating 
 his comprehensiveness of charity, we must again add that it was 
 most remote from indifferentism." (Rev. J. Sortain.) 
 
 This is the same author who shows in the same book (Life of 
 Francis Bacon) that Bacon's weak point was want of religion 
 and earnest faith. 
 
 Amongst the many proofs of the intense admiration and 
 affection, esteem and reverence, which Francis Bacon inspired in 
 
76 FBANCIS BACON 
 
 those who were personally intimate with him, none are more 
 satisfactory than those contained in the voluminous, but still 
 unpublished, correspondence of Anthony Bacon, in the library 
 at Lambeth Palace. 
 
 Here we find his extreme kindness, sweetness of disposition 
 and heavenly-mindedness, continual subjects of comment. His 
 followers and disciples vow fidelity to him from simple love of 
 him and his cause ; they are willing to go through the greatest 
 perils and sufferings, as indeed we find them doing, in order to 
 aid in the objects and plans which are most dear to him — the 
 propagation of Christian truth and of a wide-spread and liberal 
 education.* 
 
 " For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable 
 speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages ; " or, as in 
 another copy of his will, " and to mine own countrymen, after 
 some time he past." 
 
 These prophetic words seem now to be in process of fulfil- 
 ment. Englishmen must regret that with " foreign nations " 
 lies the honour of first and fully appreciating the genius of 
 Francis Bacon, and of being the first willing or eager to hear, 
 and to investigate the claims which have been brought forward 
 with regard to his authorship of the " Shakespeare Plays." 
 What Dr. Rawley said in 1657 is true even now : " His fame is 
 greater and sounds louder in foreign parts abroad, than at 
 home in his own nation ; thereby verifying that divine sentence, 
 A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in 
 his own house." Yet Bacon had a just confidence " in that old 
 arbitrator, Time," and in the verdict of the " next ages." He 
 had assured himself, long before he made his will, that " the 
 monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the 
 monuments of power, or of the hands ; " that learning, " by 
 which man ascendeth to the heavens, is immortal," for " the 
 images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted 
 from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation." 
 
 We appeal to those into whose hands this outline of a great 
 and wonderful life may fall, to lay aside prejudice acquired at 
 second hand, and to study for themselves the life and character 
 
 * The following is reprinted from a little pamphlet published by the 
 present writer in 1884. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 77 
 
 of Francis Bacon, as displayed, not in any one or two question- 
 able transactions, not from a few picked passages of his volumi- 
 nous works, or in a few letters written under exceptional cir- 
 cumstances, but as the characters and lives of other great men 
 are studied, and as we humbler individuals would wish posterity 
 to study and so judge our own. Let Bacon be judged by the 
 whole general tenor of his Kfe, and works, and letters ; and by 
 their influence on his contemporaries and on posterity for good 
 or for evil. 
 
 It has unhappily become habitual to Englishmen to criticise 
 and represent this "glory of his age and nation" in such a 
 manner that the few blemishes which dim that glory are magni- 
 fied and intensified so as to obscure the picture itself. The result 
 is that, perhaps, no other great man has been so much talked of, 
 and so little generally know or understood, as Bacon. Probably, 
 also, there are few men of any kind of whom, whilst contemporary 
 biographers agree in recording so much that is great and good, 
 writers of 150 years later date have delighted in ignoring the 
 good, and in bringing to the front and dwelling upon every 
 circumstance, or action, or word, which can admit of a base or 
 evil interpretation. Rather let us consider first his many great 
 virtues, his amiability, gentleness, sweetness of temper, and con- 
 sideration for others, his readiness to forgive injuries and to 
 acknowledge any error in himself, his generosity and liberality 
 as soon as he had any means at his disposal, his magnanimity 
 and fortitude under calamity, his ardour in pursuit of truth, his 
 endless perseverance and patience, (an acquired virtue, since he 
 felt that by nature he was impatient and over-zealous), his 
 bright, hopeful spirit and large-hearted toleration, his modesty, 
 and absence of self-importance or self-assertion. This last virtue 
 has been held by his biographers to have been almost a weak- 
 ness, and in some respects a disadvantage to him, as well as to 
 the world at large, since the pliancy of his disposition and the 
 submissive attitude which he maintained toward his official 
 superiors, and which were part of his nature, have been brought 
 against him as proofs of " cringing " and " servility." Let us 
 also remember the threefold aims which he had set before him as 
 the object of his life — " an object to live for as wide as humanity 
 and as immortal as the human race ; an idea vast and lofty 
 enough to fill the soul for ever with religious and heroic aspira- 
 
78 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 tions. ... Of Bacon's life no man will ever form a correct idea 
 unless he bear in mind that, from very early youth, his heart 
 was divided between these three objects, distinct but not dis- 
 cordant — the cause of reformed religion, the cause of his Queen 
 and country, and of the human race through all their genera- 
 tions." * 
 
 If we also bear in mind that not only was he profoundly 
 learned, laboriously hard-working, and painstaking in search of 
 truth, but that he was intensely sensitive and highly imagina- 
 tive ; his mind, as he said, " nimble and versatile, quick to 
 perceive analogies " (the poet's faculty), and ingenious in their 
 application, we shall acknowledge that such a character is not 
 one to be harshly judged in the portion of his career for which 
 he repeatedly confesses himself " unfit" as a lawyer and a 
 chancellor. For our own sakes, for justice' sake, let us first 
 contemplate and know him at his best, as " the pioneer of truth," 
 the " patriot born," the poet-philosopher, the man who wished to 
 spend and be spent for the advancement of learning and the 
 benefit of the human race. 
 
 Theobald, in the preface to his edition of " Shakespeare," 
 says kindly : " The genius that gives us the greatest pleasure 
 sometimes stands in need of our indulgence. Whenever this 
 happens with regard to Shakespeare, I would willingly impute 
 it to a vice in his times." 
 
 So said Bacon of himself (though it was never his manner to 
 excuse himself) : " This is all I can say for the present concern- 
 ing my charge. ... I do not fly to say that these things are 
 vitia temporis, and not vitia hominis." But may not the same 
 indulgence which has been accorded to " Shakespeare " be 
 accorded equally to Bacon? 
 
 Of Shakespeare we know nothing creditable ; he was vulgar, 
 jovial, and money-loving. Of Bacon we have the testimony of 
 contemporaries whose opinion is above all suspicion of interested 
 motives, and we know that those who saw him nearest, and 
 those who knew him longest, give him the best character. 
 
 Sir Tobie Matthew (writing, 1618, to the Grand Duke of 
 Tuscany) gives some account of his career and position, and a 
 description of his immense intellectual powers. He goes on to say 
 
 * Condensed from Spedding, L. L. I. 5. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 79 
 
 that the praise applies not only to the qualities of the intellect, 
 but as well to those " which are rather of the heart, the will, and 
 the moral virtue ; being a man most sweet in his conversation 
 and ways, grave in his judgments, invariable in his fortunes, 
 splendid in his expenses ; a friend unalterable to his friends ; an 
 enemy to no man ; a most hearty and indefatigable servant to 
 the King, and a most earnest lover of the public — having all 
 the thoughts of that large heart of his set upon adorning the age 
 in which he lives, and benefiting, as far as possible, the whole 
 human race." 
 
 "And I can truly say," he adds, " having had the honour to 
 know him for many years, as well when he was in his lesser for- 
 tunes as now that he stands at the top and in the full flower of his 
 greatness, that I never yet saw any trace in him of a vindictive 
 mind, whatever injury were done him, nor ever heard him utter 
 a word to any man's disadvantage which seemed to proceed from 
 personal feeling against the man, but only (and that too very 
 seldom) from judgment made of him in cold blood. It is not his 
 greatness that I admire, but his virtue : it is not the favours I 
 have received from him (infinite though they be) that have thus 
 enthralled and enchained my heart, but his whole life and 
 character ; which are such that if he were of an inferior con- 
 dition I could not honour him the less, and if he were mine 
 enemy I should not the less love and endeavour to serve him." 
 
 Dr. Rawley's short Life of Bacon deals more with his circum- 
 stances and works than with his character, yet his opinion is 
 the same as Sir Tobie's. During his residence in Gray's Inn, 
 Bacon "carried himself," says Dr. Rawley, " with such sweet- 
 ness, comity, and generosity, that he was much revered and 
 loved by the Readers and Gentlemen of the House " (or Inn). 
 Again, " When his office called him, as he was the King's Council 
 Learned, to charge any offenders, ... he was never insulting or 
 domineering over them, but always tender-hearted, and carrying 
 himself decently towards the parties (though it was his duty 
 to charge them home), as one that looked upon the example 
 with the eye of severity, but upon the person with the eye of 
 pity and compassion. And in civil business, as he was Councillor 
 of State, he had the best way of advising, . . . the King giving 
 him this testimony, ' That he ever dealt in business suavibus 
 modis, which was the way that was most according to his heart.'" 
 
80 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Having borne testimony to his " prime and observable parts, 
 . . . abilities which commonly go singly in other men, but 
 which in him were conjoined " — sharpness of wit, memory, 
 judgment, and elocution, together with extraordinary celerity 
 in writing, facility in inventing and " caution in venting the 
 imagination or fancy of his brain" — Dr. Rawley records his 
 industry, his anxiety to write so as to be easily understood, the 
 charm of his conversation, and his power of " drawing a man on 
 so as to lure him to speak on such a subject as wherein he was 
 peculiarly skilful, and would delight to speak, contemning no 
 man's observation, but lighting his torch at every man's candle. 
 . . . His opinions and assertions were, for the most part, bind- 
 ing, and not contradicted by any. . . . As he was a good 
 servant to his master " (being never in nineteen years' service 
 rebuked by the King for anything), " so he was a good master to 
 his servants, . . . and if he were abused by any of them in their 
 places, it was not only the error of the goodness of his nature, 
 but the badge of their indiscretions and intemperances.'' After 
 speaking of Bacon as a " religious " man, able to given a reason 
 of the hope which was in him, and observant of the services and 
 sacraments of the Church of England, Dr. Eawley continues : 
 " This is most true. He was free from malice, no revenger of 
 injuries, which, if he had minded, he had both opportunity and 
 high place enough to have done it. He was no hearer of men 
 out of their places. He was no defamer of any man to his 
 Prince, . . . which I reckon not among his moral but his 
 Christian virtues." 
 
 John Aubrey, in his MS. notes, jotting down several pleasant 
 anecdotes of Bacon and his friends, adds : "In short, all that 
 were great and good loved and honoured him [the italics are 
 Aubrey's own] ; his favourites took bribes, but his Lordship 
 always gave judgment secundem cequum et bonum. His decrees 
 in Chancery stand firm : there are fewer of his decrees reversed 
 than of any other Chancellor." 
 
 The tributes to Bacon's personal worth by his physician, 
 Peter Boener, and by Sir Thomas Meautys, have already been 
 noticed. We conclude this brief sketch with the last clause in 
 the posthumous record which Ben Jonson wrote, under the title 
 of Dominus Verulamius, in his notes on " Discoveries upon Men 
 and Matter " : 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 81 
 
 " My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by 
 his place, or honours ; but I have and do reverence him for the 
 greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed 
 to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest men, and most 
 worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. In his 
 adversity I ever prayed that God would give him strength ; for 
 greatness he could not want, neither could I condole in a word 
 or syllable for him, as kno~wing no accident could do harm to 
 virtue, but rather help to make it manifest." 
 
 If, as we have been told, such heartfelt words as these are 
 merely the effusions of personal attachment, or of " partial " 
 and " admiring " friendship, what can any of us desire better 
 ourselves than that we may so live as to win such admiration 
 and to attach and retain such devoted friends ? And yet the 
 friendship of those who lived in the presence of Bacon, who 
 worked with and for him, who knew him in his struggles and in 
 his triumphs, in his greatness and in his fall, is not the only 
 friendship which he has secured. Those still revere and love 
 him best who, like Basil Montagu, James Spedding, and Hep- 
 worth Dixon, have devoted years of their lives to the study of his 
 works and the contemplation of his life and character. 
 
 Lord Macaulay, who wrote one Essay on Bacon, is astonished at 
 the enthusiasm with which a prolonged intimacy with the works 
 and life of that great man had inspired his biographer, Basil 
 Montagu. " The writer," says Macaulay, " is enamoured of his 
 subject. It constantly overflows from his lips and his pen." 
 But this is the impression made upon most thoughtful persons 
 who read and read again (without previous prejudice or the aid 
 of a commentator) the works and letters of Bacon, until they 
 come to know not only the matter, but the man himself. 
 
 There can, we think, be but one issue to such a study : 
 admiration deepening into esteem, sympathy, and a feeling of 
 personal friendship, which no hostile or piecemeal criticism will 
 avail to shake. 
 
 The admiring warmth with which " Shakespeare " scholars 
 have justly extolled the character of their ideal author is pre- 
 cisely that which creeps over and possesses the soul of the 
 earnest disciple of the " myriad-minded " Bacon. We may be 
 incapable of following, even in imagination, " the vast contem- 
 plative ends " which he proposed to himself, and to the accom- 
 
82 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 plishment of which his life was actually consecrated. But no 
 one who can apprehend, however dimly, the plan and purpose 
 of such a life, can withhold from it a tribute of admiration, or 
 can remain insensible of the influence for good which that man 
 must by personal example have shed around him, and which 
 through his works he still diffuses. And, says Ben Jonson at 
 the conclusion of his sketch of Bacon's genius, " There is not 
 one colour of the mind and another of the works." Such as 
 works are as a whole, such on the whole is their author. 
 Goodness, as well as greatness, is impressed upon the writings 
 of Bacon. We may be awe-struck in the contemplation of his 
 magnificent powers of mind, enchanted with his language, and 
 with the consummate ability with which he treats of all 
 subjects, great or small ; but we feel that this is not all. Mere 
 intellect may attract attention and admiration, but it does not 
 win esteem. Eunning through the whole of his works there is 
 a thread of genuine goodness. It is a thread rather underlying 
 the substance than superficially exhibited, but it is inextricably 
 interwoven. Everywhere from Bacon's works there radiates 
 this goodness, kindness of heart, large-minded toleration, 
 " enthusiasm of humanity," respect for authority, reverence for, 
 and trust in, a great and good God. This it is which "en- 
 thralled V his personal friends and " enamoured " his later 
 biographer. This it is which prompts us to exclaim of him as 
 Holofernes did of Virgil : 
 
 " Who understandeth thee not. loveth thee not." 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 83 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " All is not in years to me ; somewhat is in hours well spent." — Promus. 
 
 " Yet hath Sir Proteus, for that's his name, 
 Made use and fair advantage of his days ; 
 His head unmellow'd, but his judgment ripe." 
 
 — Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. 4. 
 
 MANY and various opinions have been expressed in modern 
 times concerning Francis Bacon, and the motives and 
 aims supposed to have influenced his course and 
 actions in public capacities. We may safely pass by these 
 phases of his wonderful career, so carefully and devotedly 
 recorded in the calm pages of James Spedding,* and will for the 
 present consider the personality and life of Bacon from two 
 different aspects : first, as the poet ; secondly, as the most 
 ardent promoter, if not the founder, of a vast secret society 
 destined to create a complete reformation in learning, science, 
 literature, and religion itself, throughout the whole wide 
 world. In the lively works of Hepworth Dixon, and in scattered 
 episodes in Spedding's Life of Bacon, we get occasional peeps 
 behind the scene. But, in the last named work especially, it 
 appears as if we were not meant to do so. That Bacon in his 
 youth " masked and mummed," and led the revels at Gray's Inn 
 — that throughout his life he was appealed to on all great 
 occasions to write witty speeches for others to deliver at the 
 gorgeous " entertainments '' which were the fashion of the day 
 (and in which, doubtless, he took a leading part, in the bach- 
 gound) — that he and his brother Anthony, who was living with 
 him in 1594, actually removed from their lodgings in Gray's 
 Inn to a house in Bishopsgate Street, in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood of The Bull Inn, where plays and interludes were 
 
 * See " Letters and Life of Bacon," seven vols., 8vo, or the abridgment 
 of them, " Life and Times of Bacon, 1 ' and especially " Evenings with a 
 Reviewer/' two volumes, 8vo. — James Spedding. 
 
84 , FRANCIS BACON 
 
 acted — these and many such important factors in his private 
 history are slipped over, or altogether omitted in most accounts 
 of him. They should not be so passed by, for Bacon's theatrical 
 proclivities were no mere boyish or youthful taste ; they grew 
 with him and formed a very important part of his " method of 
 discourse," a means by which he could inform those who could 
 not read, instilling through the eyes and ears of the body sound 
 teaching on all sorts of subjects. The stern morality which was 
 often thus inculcated would not for one instant have been 
 listened to, with patience, from the pulpit or the professed 
 teacher by the class of persons for whose benefit we believe that 
 Francis Bacon wrote his earliest (and unacknowledged) plays. 
 It will be seen that this love and respect for the theatre was with 
 him to the end of his life. Nearly fifty metaphors and figures 
 based upon stage-playing are to be found in his grave scientific 
 works, and in the Latin edition of the Advancement of Learning, 
 published simultaneously with the collected edition or " Folio " 
 of the Shakespeare plays in 1623, he inserts a brave defence of 
 stage-playing and a lament for the degradation of the theatre in 
 his day. 
 
 Most persons who peruse these pages are probably acquainted 
 with the outlines of Bacon's life. We therefore merely piece 
 together particulars extracted from the works of his most pains- 
 taking and sympathetic biographer, James Spedding, and from 
 the shorter " lives " and biographies of his secretary, Dr. 
 Rawley, Hepworth Dixon, Prof. Fowler, and others. 
 
 Francis Bacon was born on the 22nd January, 1561, at York 
 House, in the Strand. His father, Sir Nicholas (counsellor to 
 Queen Elizabeth, and second prop in the kingdom), was a lord 
 of known prudence, sufficiency, moderation and integrity. His 
 mother, Lady Anne Cooke, a choice lady, was eminent for piety 
 and learning, being exquisitely skilled, for a woman, in the 
 Greek and Latin languages. " These being the parents," says 
 Dr. Rawley, " you may easily imagine what the issue was like 
 to be, having had whatsoever nature or breeding could put 
 in him." 
 
 Sir Nicholas is described as " a stout, easy man, full of con- 
 trivance, with an original and projective mind." The grounds 
 laid out by him at Gorhambury suggested to his son those ideas 
 of gardening which he himself afterwards put into practice, 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 85 
 
 and which, developed in his essays and other writings, have 
 led to the foundation of an English style of gardening.! So 
 with regard to cultivation of another kind. The scheme which 
 Sir Nicholas presented to Henry VIII. for the endowment of a 
 school of law and languages in London, is thought to have been, 
 perhaps, the original germ of the New Atlantis, the idea being 
 transferred from statecrarft to nature. In politics the Lord 
 Keeper held to the English party; that party which set its 
 face against Rome, and those who represented Rome; against the 
 Jesuits, the Spaniards, and the Queen of Scots. If he felt warm 
 against any one it was against the latter, whom he detested, not 
 only as a wicked woman, but as a political tool in the hands of 
 France and Spain. By the help of his clear head and resolute 
 tongue, the great change of religion, which had recently taken 
 place, had been accomplished, and it may easily be believed 
 that " Burghley himself was scarcely more honoured by invec- 
 tive from Jesuit pens." But on the bench he had neither an 
 equal nor an enemy. Calm, slow, cautious in his dealings, he 
 was at the same time merry, witty, and overflowing with 
 humour and repartee ; qualities which recommended him very 
 highly to the irritable, clever Queen, who loved a jest as well as 
 he, and who seems to have appreciated the value of a faithful 
 minister imbued with so much strong common sense, and with 
 no dangerous qualities. Francis Bacon records a saying con- 
 cerning his father, which was, doubtless, to the point, or he 
 would not have entered it amongst his apophthegms : " Some 
 men look wiser than they are, — the Lord Keeper is wiser than 
 he looks." 
 
 So many circumstances and little particulars crop up as these 
 things are looked into, allusions and hints about Sir Nicholas as 
 well as doubts and obscurities concerning his early life and 
 doings, and such particulars all tend toward making us regard 
 with more attention, and to attach more importance to this note 
 of Francis Bacon. The thought suggests itself, Was it, perhaps, 
 this wise, witty, cautious man, " full of contrivance, and with an 
 original, projective mind," who first contrived and projected a 
 
 * There seem to be many books of gardening and kindred subjects 
 which will some day be traced to Bacon. 
 
 J Hepworth Dixon's " Story of Bacon's Life," p. 17, from which we shall 
 make large extracts, the book being out of print. 
 
86 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 scheme for the accumulation, transmission, and advancement of 
 learning, which it was left to his two sons, Anthony and Francis, 
 to develop and perfect ? 
 
 This is amongst the problems which at present we cannot 
 answer, because so little is known — or perhaps it should be said, 
 so little is published — concerning Sir Nicholas and Anthony. 
 Later on we hope to contribute to the general stock all the 
 information about Anthony which we have been able to collect 
 from unprinted MSS., and to show that there can be no doubt of 
 his having been a poet and a considerable author, as well as an 
 active propagandist for the secret society of which he seems 
 always to acknowledge his still more talented and versatile 
 brother, Francis, to have been the head. 
 
 For the full and satisfactory elucidation of many difficulties 
 and obscurities which will arise in the course of this study, it is 
 of imperative importance that the histories and private life 
 of Sir Nicholas and Anthony Bacon shall be submitted to a 
 searching and exhaustive investigation;* for the present we 
 must pass on. 
 
 The mother of Anthony and Francis was an important and 
 interesting personage. She was the second wife of Sir Nicholas. 
 The first wife seems to have been a quiet, ordinary woman, of 
 whom there is little or nothing to say excepting that she left 
 three sons and three daughters. Of these half-brothers and 
 sisters, not one appears to have been in any way " brotherly," 
 kind, or useful to Francis, excepting the second son, Nathaniel, 
 who took to the arts, and painted a portrait of his mother 
 standing in a pantry, habited as a cook. It is probable that 
 
 * The notices of Anthony in ordinary books, such as Spedding, Hep- 
 worth Dixon, etc., are quite brief and imperfect. A good summary of all 
 these is to be found in the Dictionary of National Biography, edited by 
 Leslie Stephen (Smith, Elder & Co., 1885). See Vol. II., Nicholas Bacon 
 and Anthony Bacon. See also Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
 Vols. I. and II. (A. Miller, Strand, 1754), and Historical View of the 
 Negotiations between the Courts of England, France, and Brussels from 
 the year 1592—1617 (London, 1749). Both of these by Thomas Birch. 
 They are out of print and should be republished. The hard worker 
 will also find plenty of material in the sixteen folio vols, of Anthony 
 Bacon's unpublished correspondence — Tenison MSS., Lambeth Palace, and 
 in the British Museum the following : Harleian MSS. No. 286, Art. 144, 
 145, 146, 147, 148. Cotton Lib., Calig. E, VII. 205 ; Nero, B, VI. 290, 
 291, 293—303, 337, 371, 380, 383—395, 398, 403, 413 b. Lansdown MSS. 
 Nos. 38, 53, 87; 29, 44, 74, 87, 107; 11, 12. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 87 
 
 Nathaniel assisted his younger brother by making some of the 
 designs and pictures which will be explained further on. 
 
 Lady Anne Bacon was a woman of higher birth, of loftier 
 character, than her husband. If the three life-like terra-cotta 
 busts at Gorhambury and other existing portraits are compared, 
 it will be seen that it is from the mother that the boy derived 
 the chiselled features and: the fine development of the brow. 
 From the father came the softer expression, the side-long look, 
 the humorous twinkle in the eye. Lady Anne, though we 
 know her to have been a tender mother and a woman of strong 
 affections, was yet a somewhat stern, masterful and managing 
 head of the house, and so she appears in her portraits. The 
 daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, of Geddy Hall, in Essex, scholar 
 and tutor to Edward VI. , she inherited the whole of her father's 
 religious creed, and not a little of his accomplishments in Greek. 
 That religion was to fear God and hate the Pope. For a Papist 
 she had no tolerance, for this indiscriminating repugnance had 
 been born in her blood and bred in her bone. 
 
 The importance of these particulars can hardly be over- 
 estimated when taken in connection with what we know of 
 the development of Francis Bacon's character, and with the 
 aims and aspirations which he set up for himself. There never 
 was a period in his life when judgment seems to have been 
 lacking to him. His earliest and most childish recorded 
 speeches are as wise, witty, and judgmatical in their way as 
 his latest. "His first and childish years/' says Dr. Rawley, 
 " were not without some mark of eminency ; at which time he 
 was enslaved with that pregnancy and towardness of wit, as 
 they were presages of that deep and universal apprehension 
 which was manifest in him afterwards." 
 
 Having, then, this excellent gift of discernment or "judgment," 
 Francis Bacon was never intolerant, for intolerance is a sign of 
 want of judgment, of that power or desire to grasp both sides 
 of a question and to judge between them which was a pre- 
 eminent faculty and characteristic of Bacon's mind. The 
 tendency to turn every question inside out, hind-side before 
 and wrong side upwards, is perceptible, not only in his argu- 
 ments, theories, and beliefs, but it pervades the whole of his 
 language, and is the cause of that antithetical style which is so 
 peculiarly characteristic in his writings. 
 
88 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Although he must, from his earliest infancy, have been 
 influenced by the mother whom he esteemed as a " saint of 
 God," with a deep interest in the condition of the Church, 
 Francis Bacon never allowed fervour to degenerate into the 
 " over-weening zeal or extremes" in religion which " do dissolve 
 and deface the laws of charity and of human society." Lady 
 Anne perfectly believed that the cause of the Non-Conformists 
 was the whole cause of Christ.* Francis never believed that ; 
 and it seems to be a reasonable explanation of much that took 
 place between mother and son, that he was forever putting in 
 practice his own injunctions regarding the necessity for great 
 tenderness and delicacy in matters of religion, and urging that 
 unity could only be hoped for in the Church when men should 
 learn that " fundamental points are to be truly discerned and 
 distinguished from matters not merely of faith, but of opinion, 
 order, or good intention." On fundamental points, on all that 
 is " of substance," they were of one accord ; but Francis Bacon's 
 religion was built upon a far wider and broader basis than that 
 of his pious, Calvinistic mother, or of many of her relations. 
 For the Greys, | the Burleighs, Eussells, Hobys, and Nevilles, in 
 short, the whole kindred of Francis Bacon by the male and 
 female lines, professed the severest principles of the Reforma- 
 tion. Some of them had been exiled (amongst them Lady 
 Anne's father, Sir Anthony Cooke), some even sent to the block 
 in the time of Queen Mary. " In her own fierce repugnance 
 to the Italian creed she trained her sons," says Hepworth Dixon. 
 She may have made them intolerant to the errors of the Roman 
 creed, but she certainly did not make them so to the believers 
 themselves ; for in after years Francis Bacon's intercourse with 
 and kindness to members of the Roman Catholic Church was 
 a great cause of anxiety to his mother, yet his intimacy and 
 correspondence with these friends continued to the end of his 
 life. 
 
 Little Francis was ten years old when he attracted the atten- 
 tion of the Queen, and paid her his pretty compliment : " How 
 old are you, my child ? " "I am just two years younger than 
 your Majesty's happy reign." We see him in these early days, 
 
 * Spedding, Let. and L. I. 3. 
 
 f The wife of William Cooke (Lady Anne's brother) was cousin to 
 Lady Jane Grey. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 89 
 
 a man amongst boys ; now playing with the daisies and speed- 
 wells, and now with the mace and seals ; cutting posies with 
 the gardener, or crowing after the pigeons, of which, his mother 
 tells us, he was fond, roast or in a pie. Every tale told of him 
 wins upon the imagination, whether he hunts for the echo in 
 St. James' Park, or eyes the jugglers and detects their tricks, 
 or lisps wise words to the Queen.* 
 
 " At twelve years of age he was sent to Cambridge and 
 entered with his brother Anthony as fellow-commoner of Trinity 
 College, of which John Whitgift, afterwards Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, was then master. Repeated entries in Whitgift's 
 accounts prove the brothers to have been delicate children, and 
 the state of their health a continual cause of anxiety to their 
 mother, Lady Anne. Many of her letters are extant, and show 
 her, even to the end of her life, feeding them from her cellars 
 and her poultry yard, looking sharp after their pills and ' con- 
 fections,' sending them game from her own larder, and beer 
 from her own vats, lecturing them soundly on what they should 
 eat and drink, on their physic and blood-lettings, on how far 
 they might ride or walk, when safely take supper, and at what 
 hour of the morning rise from bed. From notices, scant but 
 clear, of the Lord Keeper's household, we may see the two boys 
 growing up together ; both gentle and susceptible in genius ; 
 as strong in character as they were frail in health.! One sees 
 Francis by the light of Hilyard's portrait, as he strolled along 
 the lawn or reclined under the elms, with his fat round face, 
 his blue-grey eyes, his fall of brown curls, and his ripe, jesting 
 mouth; in his face a thought for the bird on the tree, the 
 fragrance in the air, the insect in the stream ; a mind susceptible 
 to all impressions." J 
 
 " Brief and barren as the record of his childhood appears, 
 it may yet help us," says Spedding, "when studied in the light 
 which his subsequent history throws back upon it, to under- 
 stand in what manner, and in what degree, the accidents of 
 his birth had prepared him for the scene on which he was 
 
 * Rawley's Life of Bacon. Hepworth Dixon's Story of Bacons Life. 
 
 1 16. From Whitgift's Accounts, in Brit. Mag. XXXII. 365. Heywood's 
 University Transactions, I. 123 — 156. Athenae Cantabrigiensis, II. 314. 
 Lambeth MSS. 650, fol. 54. 
 
 X Dixon. Spedding, Letters and Life, 1, 2, 3. 
 
 G 
 
90 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 entering. When the temperament is quick and sensitive, the 
 desire of knowledge strong, and the faculties so vigorous, 
 obedient, and equally developed, that they find almost all things 
 easy, the mind will commonly fasten upon the first object of 
 interest that presents itself, with the ardour of a first love." 
 The same sympathetic writer goes on to describe the learned, 
 eloquent, religious mother trying to imbue her little son with 
 her own Puritanic fervour in Church matters ; the affectionate 
 father, the Lord Keeper, taking him to see and hear the open- 
 ing of Parliament, and instilling into him a reverence for the 
 mysteries of statesmanship, and a deep sense of the dignity, 
 responsibility, and importance of the statesman's calling. 
 Everything that he saw and heard, — the alarms, the hopes, the 
 triumphs of the time, the magnitude of the interests that 
 depended upon the Queen's government ; the high flow of 
 loyalty which buoyed her up and urged her forward ; the 
 imposing character of her council, — must have contributed to 
 excite in the boy's heart a devotion for her person and cause, 
 and aspirations after the civil dignities in the midst of which 
 he was bred up. For the present, however, his field of ambition 
 was in the school-room and library, where, perhaps, from the 
 delicacy of his constitution, but still more from the bent of his 
 genius, he was more at home than in the playground. His 
 career there was victorious ; new prospects of boundless extent 
 opening on every side,* until at length, just about the age at 
 which an intellect of quick growth begins to be conscious of 
 original power, he was sent to the University, where he hoped 
 to learn all that men knew. By the time, however, that he had 
 gone through the usual course, he was conscious of a disappoint- 
 ment, and came out of college at fifteen, by his own desire, 
 apparently, and, without waiting to take a degree, in precisely 
 the same opinion as Montaigne when he left college, as he 
 says, " having run through my whole course, as they call 
 it, and, in truth, without any advantage that I can honestly 
 brag of." 
 
 Francis stayed at Cambridge only for three years, being more 
 
 * It seems probable that in these early days the ideas and schemes of 
 Sir Nicholas regarding an improved system of education and learning- 
 were discoursed of to his little son, and that the germs of his own great 
 plans were thus planted. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 91 
 
 than once driven away by outbreaks of the plague ; once for so 
 long as eight or nine months. Yet he had made such progress 
 in his studies that he seems to have begged his father to 
 remove him, because he had already found that the academical 
 course which he was pursuing was " barren of the production 
 of fruits for the life of man." Leaving the University before 
 he was sixteen and without taking a degree, he yet carried 
 with him the germs of his plan for reconstituting the whole 
 round of the arts and sciences, a plan from which he never 
 departed, and upon which he was still working at the time 
 of his death. 
 
 That this should have been possible, argues an unusually 
 extensive reading, and an acquaintance with branches of 
 learning far beyond the subjects prescribed by the University 
 authorities, and taking together all the facts concerning his 
 great schemes, and the indications which he gives as to the 
 origin of one of them, it is probable that during his sixteenth 
 year, and perhaps earlier, he embarked in the study of the 
 Indian, Arabian, Egyptian, and other ancient philosophers and 
 religious writers, who gained such an influence over his imagi- 
 nation, and from whom he seems to have derived many hints for 
 the symbolism employed in the teaching of his secret society. 
 
 However this may be, it is certain that Francis Bacon was, 
 in very early childhood, possessed with an extraordinary clear- 
 headedness, and with a maturity of judgment which caused 
 him to form, when he was but a mere boy, those "fixed and 
 unalterable and universal opinions " upon which the whole of 
 his after life-work and philosophy were based — opinions as 
 characteristic as they were in advance of his age ; theories and 
 ideas which we shall presently find claimed for others, but 
 which, wherever they make themselves heard, echo to our ears 
 the voice of the " Great Master." 
 
 During his three years' stay at the University, Francis fell, 
 says Dr. Rawley, "into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle, 
 not for the unworthiness of the author, to whom he would ascribe 
 all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way, being a 
 philosophy (his lordship used to say) only strong for disputa- 
 tions and contentions, but barren of the production of works for 
 the benefit of the life of man, in which mind he continued to his 
 dying day." 
 
92 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 It seems not a little strange that this "dislike" of Bacon,, 
 which, has been even made the subject of reproach to him, and 
 which is decidedly treated as an unreasonable prejudice, pecu- 
 liar to himself, should not have been equally observed in the 
 writings of nearly every contemporary author who makes men- 
 tion of Aristotle. Let this point be noted. To cite passages 
 would fill too much space, but readers are invited to observe for 
 themselves, and to say if it is not true that every distinguished 
 " author " of Bacon's day, and for some years afterwards, even 
 whilst ascribing to Aristotle " all high attributes," decries his 
 system of philosophy, and for the same reasons which Bacon 
 gives, namely, that it was " fruitless " — that it consisted more 
 of words than of matter, and that it did not enable followers of 
 Aristotle to rise above the level of Aristotle. Yet this had not 
 hitherto been the general opinion. 
 
 "It seemed that toward the end of the sixteenth century, 
 men neither knew nor desired to know more than was to 
 be learned from Aristotle ; a strange thing at any time ; more 
 strange than ever just then when the heavens themselves seemed 
 to be taking up the argument on their behalf, and by suddenly 
 lighting up within the region of ' the unchangeable and incor- 
 ruptible,' and presently extinguishing a fixed star * as bright 
 as Jupiter, to be protesting by signs and wonders against the 
 cardinal doctrine of the Aristotelian philosophy. 
 
 "It ivas then that a thought struck him, the date of which 
 deserves to he recorded, not for anything extraordinary in the 
 thought itself, which had perhaps occurred to others before him, 
 hut for its influence upon his after life. If our study of nature 
 be thus barren, he thought, our method of study must be wrong : 
 might not a better method be found ? The suggestion was simple 
 and obvious, and the singularity was in the way he took hold of 
 it. With most men such a thought would have come and gone 
 
 * The new star in Cassiopeia which shone with full lustre on the youth- 
 ful Bacon's freshmanship (and to which he is said to have attached great 
 importance as an augury of his own future) was the same star — or, as some 
 think, comet — which guided the wise men of the East, the Chaldean astrono- 
 mers and astrologers to the birth-place of our blessed Saviour. This star 
 of Bethlehem has since appeared thrice, at intervals varying slightly in 
 length. According to astronomical calculations, it might have re-entered 
 Cassiopeia in 1887, but its uninterrupted movements will correspond with 
 those previously recorded if it appears again in 1891. We should then 
 say truly that Bacon's star is still in the ascendant. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 93 
 
 in a passing regret. . . . But with him the gift of seeing in 
 ■prophetic vision what might be and ought to be was united with 
 the practical talent of devising means and handling minute 
 details. He could at once imagine like a poet, and execute like a. 
 clerk of the works. Upon the conviction, This may be done, 
 followed at once the question, How may it be done? Upon 
 that question answered, •followed the resolution to try to 
 do it." * 
 
 We earnestly request the reader to observe that the subject of 
 this paragraph is a little boy twelve or thirteen years old. The 
 biographer continues : 
 
 "Of the degrees by which the suggestion ripened into a 
 project, the project into an undertaking, and the undertaking 
 unfolded itself into distinct proportions and the full grandeur of 
 its total dimensions, I can say nothing. But that the thought 
 first occurred to him at Cambridge, therefore before he had com- 
 pleted his fifteenth year, we know upon the best authority — his 
 own statement to Dr. Rawley. I believe it ought to be regarded 
 as the most important event of his life ; the event which had a 
 greater influence than any other upon his character and future 
 course." 
 
 This passage seems, at first sight, rather to contradict the 
 former, which says that the thought came to Bacon when first 
 he went to Cambridge. But the discrepancy appears to have 
 been caused by the difficulty experienced, as well by biographer 
 as reader, in conceiving that such thoughts, such practical 
 schemes, could have been the product of a child's mind. 
 
 All evidence which we shall have to bring forward goes to 
 confirm the original statement that Francis conceived his plan 
 of reformation soon after going up to the university ; that he 
 matured and organised a system of working it by means of a 
 secret society, before he was fifteen years old, by which time he 
 had already written much which he afterwards disdained as 
 poor stuff, but which was published, and which has all found a 
 respectable or distinguished place in literature. 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine what would have been the effect 
 upon such a mind as this of grafting on to the teaching received 
 
 * Let. and Life, I. 4. Again we would remind the reader of the great 
 probability that Sir Nicholas Bacon had implanted this idea in the mind 
 of his brilliant little son. 
 
94 FKANCIS BACON 
 
 in a strict Puritan home the study, by turns, of every kind of 
 ancient and pagan philosophy. And it is clear that Francis Bacon 
 plunged with delight into these occult branches of learning, his 
 poetic mind finding a strong attraction in the figurative language 
 and curious erudition of the old alchemists and mystics. Did 
 such studies for awhile unsettle his religious ideas, and prepare 
 him to shake off the bands of a narrow sectarianism ? If so, 
 they certainly never shook his faith in God, or in the Bible as 
 the expression of " God's will.'' Such researches only increased 
 his anxiety and aspiration after light and truth. He never wrote 
 without some reference to the Divine Wisdom and Goodness, 
 some " laud and thanks to God for His marvellous works, with 
 prayers imploring His ayde and blessing for the illumination of 
 our labours, and the turning of them to good and holy uses." 
 
 Bright, witty, and humorous as Francis naturally was, san- 
 guine and hopeful as was his disposition, there is yet a strain of 
 melancholy in most of his writings. " A gravity beyond his 
 years " in youth — in mature age a look " as though he pitied 
 men." And he did pity them ; he grieved and was oppressed at 
 the thought that " man, the most excellent and noble, the prin- 
 cipal and mighty work of God, wonder of nature, created in 
 God's image, put into paradise to know Him and glorify Him, 
 and to do His will — that this most noble creature, O pitiful 
 change ! is fallen from his first estate, and must eat his meat in 
 sorrow, subject to death and all manner of infirmities, all kinds 
 of calamities which befall him in this life, and peradventure 
 eternal misery in the life to come." * 
 
 The more he cogitated, the more he was assured that the 
 cause of all this sin and misery is ignorance. " Ignorance is the 
 curse of God, but knowledge is the wing by which we fly to 
 heaven." f 
 
 He reflected that " God created man in His own image, in a 
 reasonable soul, in innocency, in free-will, in sovereignty. That 
 He gave him a law and commandment which was in his power 
 to keep, but he kept it not ; but made a total defection from 
 God. . . . That upon the fall of man, death and vanity 
 entered by the justice of God, and the image of God was defaced, 
 and heaven and earth, which were made for man's use, were 
 
 * Anatomy of Melancholy, I. 174. f 3 Henry VI. iv. 7. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 95 
 
 subdued to corruption by his fall, . . . but that the law of 
 nature was first imprinted in that remnant of light of nature 
 which was left after the fall ; . . . that the sufferings and 
 merits of Christ, as they are sufficient to do away the sins of 
 the whole world, so they are only effectual to those who are 
 regenerate by the Holy Ghost, who breatheth where He 
 will, of free grace whiclr quickeneth the spirit of a man. 
 That the work of the Spirit, though it be not tied to any 
 means in heaven or earth, yet is ordinarily dispensed by the 
 preaching of the Word, . . . prayer and reading, by God's 
 benefits, His judgments and the contemplation of His 
 creatures/' 
 
 Since most of these means are cut off from those who are 
 plunged in dark, gross ignorance, an improved method of study 
 must precede the universal reformation which Bacon contem- 
 plated in literature, science, philosophy, and in religion itself. 
 To bring about such a reformation would be the greatest boon 
 which could be conferred upon suffering humanity. By God's 
 help he could and would bring it about. 
 
 It would be almost unreasonable to suppose that the boy- 
 philosopher did not communicate the germs of such thoughts 
 and aspirations to the father to whom he was deeply attached, 
 and whose ideas are known to have been in close sympathy with 
 those of his favourite son. Dr. Eawley says, significantly : 
 " Though he was the youngest son in years, he was not the 
 lowest in his father's affection ; " and, as has been said in a 
 previous chapter, the visions of Francis seem to have been in 
 some degree foreshadowed by or based upon earlier plans of the 
 old Treasurer. At all events, the sagacious father seconded the 
 plans, and perceived the growing genius of his favourite son, 
 and when Francis complained that he was being taught at Cam- 
 bridge mere words and not matter, Sir Nicholas allowed him to 
 quit the university, and Francis, after lingering a year or more 
 at home, at his own desire, and, most probably, in accordance 
 with a conviction which he afterwards expressed, that " travel 
 is in the younger sort a part of education," was sent in the train 
 of Sir Amias Paulet, the Queen's Ambassador to France, " to 
 see the wonders of the world abroad." 
 
 Hitherto we have scarcely mentioned Anthony Bacon, the elder 
 of the two sons of Sir Nicholas by his second wife, Lady Anne ; 
 
96 FEANCIS BACOxNF 
 
 and, indeed, very little is known to the world in general of this 
 man, who yet, we have reason to believe, was a very remarkable 
 person, and who, although he rarely appeared upon the scene, 
 yet played a very important part behind the curtain, where by 
 and by we will try to peep. Anthony was two years older than 
 Francis, and the brothers were deeply attached to each other. 
 They never address or speak of each other but in words of 
 devoted affection — " my dearest brother," " Antonie my com- 
 forte." As they went together to Cambridge, so probably they 
 left at the same time, but even of this we are not sure. What 
 next befell Anthony is unknown to his biographers, and there is 
 a strange obscurity and mystery about the life of this young 
 man, who, nevertheless, is described by Dr. Eawley as " a gentle- 
 man of as high a wit, though not of such profound learning, as 
 his brother." That he was a generous, unselfish, and admiring- 
 brother, who thought no sacrifice great which could be made for 
 the benefit of Francis, and for the forwarding of his enterprises, 
 we know, and there is abundant proof of the affection and 
 reverence which he had for his younger and more gifted brother. 
 The mystery connected with Anthony appears to be consequent 
 upon his having acted as the propagandist on the continent of 
 Francis Bacon's secret society and new philosophy. He con- 
 ducted an enormous correspondence with people of all kinds 
 who could be useful to the cause for which the brothers were 
 labouring. He seems to have received and answered the large 
 proportion of letters connected with the business part of the 
 society; he collected and forwarded to Francis all important 
 books and intelligence which could be of use, and devoted to his 
 service not only his life, but all his worldly wealth, which we 
 see mysteriously melting away, but which, no doubt, went, like 
 that of Francis, into the common fund which was destined, as 
 one of the correspondents expresses it, to " keep alight this fire " 
 so recently kindled. 
 
 Sixteen folio volumes of Anthony Bacon's letters lie, almost 
 unknown, in the library at Lambeth Palace. These leave no 
 loophole for doubt as to his real mission and purpose in living 
 abroad. We hope to return to them by and by, in a chapter 
 devoted to these letters alone. For the present they are only 
 mentioned to indicate the source of much of our information as 
 to Anthony's life and aims. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 97 
 
 Neither of the brothers was strong in health. Anthony, 
 especially, soon became a martyr to gout and other ailments 
 which were supposed to explain the fact of the comparative re- 
 tirement in which he lived at home and abroad. Francis seems 
 chiefly to have suffered from those nervous disorders — toothache, 
 sleeplessness, and " vapours,' ' " clouds and melancholy," — which 
 too often beset the body wkere the spirit over-crows it. In later 
 life, looking back, he speaks of having had good health in his 
 youth ; so the " puddering with the potigarie " was probably 
 entailed by the overstrain of such unremitting and exciting work 
 as he undertook. His natural constitution must have been singu- 
 larly good, and his strength unusual, for to the labours of 
 Hercules he added those of Atlas, cleansing and restoring the 
 world, and bearing the weight of the whole tremendous work 
 upon his own shoulders. 
 
 But for the present we may look on Francis Bacon as free 
 from care or anxiety. " We must picture him as in the season of 
 all-embracing hope, dreaming on things to come, and rehearsing 
 his life to himself in that imaginary theatre where all things go 
 right ; for such was his case when — hopeful, sensitive, bashful, 
 amiable, wise and well-informed for his age, and glowing with 
 noble aspirations — he put forth into the world with happy 
 auspices in his sixteenth year." * 
 
 What a change of scene, what a revulsion of ideas, what an 
 upsetting of habits, opinions and prejudices, for a boy to be sent 
 forth from the quiet college life under the supervision of 
 Whitgift, and from the still more strict routine of a Puritan 
 home, into the gaiety, frivolity, dissipation of the life of courts 
 and camps! True, Sir Amias and Lady Margaret Paulet, in 
 whose suite Francis was to travel, were kind and good, and, if 
 young in years, Francis was old in judgment. But all the more, 
 let us picture to ourselves the effect on that lively imagination, 
 and keenly observant mind, of the scenes into which he was now 
 precipitated. For the English Ambassador was going on a mis- 
 sion to the court of Henri III. at Paris, and from thence with the 
 throng of nobles who attended the King of France and the Queen 
 
 * Spedding, Letters and Life, I. 6. This account will doubtless have to 
 be revised. Further research induces the belief that Francis was already 
 deeply engaged in framing his Secret Fraternity, and that as he says he 
 had " travelled " (in books) " one year in the East." 
 
98 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Mother. The English embassy, with Francis in its train, went 
 in royal progress down to Blois, Tours and Poictiers, in the midst 
 of alarms, intrigues, and disturbances, intermixed with festivities 
 and licence, such as he could never have dreamed of. The French 
 historian of the war, though a witness of and actor in this comedy, 
 turned from it in disgust.* " When two courts which rivalled 
 each other in gallantry were brought together the consequence 
 may be guessed. Every one gave himself up to pleasure ; feasts 
 and ballets followed each other, and love became the serious 
 business of life." f 
 
 At Poictiers, which he reached in 1577, Francis Bacon set up 
 headquarters for three years. Yet we are quite sure, from 
 remarks dropped here and there, that, during these three years, 
 he made various excursions into Spain and Italy, learning to 
 speak, or, at least, to understand, both Spanish and Italian. 
 He also made acquaintance with Michel de Montaigne, then 
 Mayor of Bordeaux, and perhaps he travelled with him, and 
 kept his little record of the travels 4 For during the time of 
 Francis Bacon's sojourn in France we still hear of him as study- 
 ing and writing. Plunged for the first time into the midst of 
 riotous courtly dissipation, the record of him still is, that he 
 was observing, drawing up a paper on the state of Europe — and 
 what else ? We think also that he was writing Essays on the 
 society which was spread out before him, and which he regarded 
 as a scene in a play. He wrote as the throughts ran into his 
 pen, with never-failing judgment and perception, with the 
 naivete of youth, with much enjoyment, but with mistrust of 
 himself, and with profound dissatisfaction, not only with the 
 state of society, but with his own enjoyment. Society, he knew, 
 would neither relish nor be improved by essays which were 
 known to be written by a youth of eighteen or nineteen ; he 
 would, therefore, borrow the robe of respected eld, and the 
 Essays should come forth with authority, fathered by no less 
 a person than the Mayor of Bordeaux. § 
 
 * Hepworth Dixon. f Sully's Memoirs. 
 
 X The Journal du Voyage de Michel de Montaigne en Italie, par la 
 Suisse et l'Allemagne, 1579 (Old Style), is written in the third person : 
 " He, M. de Montaigne, reported," etc. 
 
 § Of course it will be understood that the first edition only of the 
 Essays is supposed to have been written at this time. The large and 
 unexplained additions and alterations are of a much later period and the 
 enlarged edition did not appear in England till long afterwards. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 99 
 
 These are by no means the only works which were (in our 
 opinion) products of those light-hearted, exciting days, when 
 with youth, health, genius, keen powers of enjoyment, of 
 observation, and of imagination, with endless energy and in- 
 dustry, and ample means at his disposal, — "Wealth, honour, 
 troops of friends," — he caught the first glimpses of a dazzling 
 phase of life, and of ther" brave new world that hath such 
 people in it." We may judge of the impression made by his 
 conversation upon those who heard it from the inscription on 
 a miniature painted by Hilliard in 1578. There is his face, 
 as it appeared in his eighteenth year, and round it may be 
 read the graphic words— the natural ejaculation, we may pre- 
 sume, of the artist's own emotion : Si tabula daretur digna, 
 animum mallem ; if one could but paint his mind ! 
 
 He was still at Paris, and wishing to be at home again, when, 
 on February 17, 1579, Francis dreamed that his father's country 
 house, Gorhambury, was plastered over with black mortar. 
 About that time, Sir Nicholas, having accidentally fallen asleep 
 at an open window, during the thaw which followed a great 
 fall of snow, was seized with a sudden and fatal illness of 
 which he died in two days. The question whether in future 
 Francis " might live to study " or must " study to live," was 
 then trembling in the balance. This accident turned the scale 
 against him. Sir Nicholas, having provided for the rest of his 
 family, had laid by a considerable sum of money, which he 
 meant to employ in purchasing an estate for his youngest son. 
 His sudden death prevented the purchase, and left Francis with 
 only a fraction of the fortune intended for him, the remainder 
 being divided amongst his brothers and sisters. 
 
 Thenceforward, for several years, we find him making 
 strenuous efforts to avoid the necessity of following the law 
 as a profession, and endeavouring to procure some service 
 under the Queen, more fitted to his tastes and abilities. But 
 the Cecils, now in power, not only refused to help their kinsman 
 (of whom it is said they were jealous), but, that he might receive 
 no effectual assistance from higher quarters, they spread reports 
 that he was a vain speculator, unfit for real business. Bacon 
 was thus driven, " against the bent of his genius," to the law 
 as his only resource. Meanwhile he lived with his mother at 
 Gorhambury, St. Albans. 
 
100 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Anyone who will be at the pains to study the Shakespeare 
 plays, in the order in which Dr. Delius has arranged them (and 
 which he considered to be the most correct chronological order), 
 will see that they agree curiously with the leading events of 
 Bacon's external life. So closely indeed do the events coincide 
 with the plots of the plays, that a complete story of Bacon's true 
 life has been drawn from them. The following notes may be 
 suggestive : — 
 
 1st Henry VI. The plot is laid in France, and the scenes 
 occur in the very provinces and districts of Maine, Anjou, 
 Orleans, Poictiers, etc., through which Bacon travelled in the 
 wake of the French court. 
 
 2nd Henry VI. The battle of St. Albans. The incident 
 recorded on the tomb of Duke Humphrey, in an epitaph 'written 
 circa 1621 (when Bacon was living at St. Albans), of the 
 impostor who pretended to have recovered his sight at St. 
 Alban's shrine, is the same as in the play. See 2 Henry VI. 
 ii. 1. 
 
 The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, etc., 
 Romeo and Juliet, and The Merchant of Venice, all reflecting 
 Francis Bacon's studies as a lawyer, combined with his corre- 
 spondence with his brother Anthony, then living in Italy. 
 When Francis fell into great poverty and debt, he was forced 
 to get help from the Jews and Lombards, and was actually cast 
 into a sponging-house by a "hard Jew," on account of a bond 
 which was not to fall due for two months. Meanwhile Anthony, 
 returning from abroad, mortgaged his property to pay his 
 brother's debts, taking his own credit and that of his friends, in 
 order to relieve Francis, precisely as the generous and unselfish 
 Antonio is represented to do in The Merchant of Venice. This 
 play appeared in the following year, and the hard Jew was 
 immortalised as Shylock. The brothers spent the summer and 
 autumn of 1592 at Twickenham. 
 
 The Midsummer Night's Dream appears shortly afterwards. 
 In this piece Bacon seems, whilst creating his fairies, to have 
 called to his help his new researches into the history of the 
 winds, and of heat and cold. 
 
 The plays and their various editions and additions enable 
 us to trace Bacon's progress in science and ethical and 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 101 
 
 metaphysical studies. The politics of the time also make their 
 mark. 
 
 Richard II. was a cause of dire offence to the Queen, since it 
 alluded to troubles in Ireland, and Elizabeth considered that it 
 conveyed rebukes to herself, of which Essex made use to stir up 
 sedition. The whole history of this matter is very curious, and 
 intimately connected with JBacon, but it is too long for repetition 
 here.* 
 
 Hamlet and Lear contain graphic descriptions of melancholia 
 and raving madness. They appeared after Lady Anne Bacon 
 died, having lost the use of her faculties, and " being," said 
 Bishop Goodman, " little better than frantic in her age." She 
 
 Fell into a sadness, then into a fast, 
 Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness, 
 Thence to a lightness, and by this declension 
 Into the madness wherein, 
 
 like Hamlet, she raved, and " which her children wailed for." 
 
 The particulars of the death of Queen Elizabeth, which Bacon 
 learned from her physician, bear a striking resemblance to 
 passages in King Lear. 
 
 Macbeth appears to reflect a combination of circumstances 
 connected with Bacon. About 1605-6 an act of Parliament was 
 passed against witches, James implicitly believing in their 
 existence and power, and Bacon, in part, at least, sharing that 
 belief. James, too, had been much offended by the remarks 
 passed upon his book on demonology, and by the contemptuous 
 jokes in which the players had indulged against the Scots. 
 Mixed up with Bacon's legal and scientific inquiries into witch- 
 craft, we find, in Macbeth, much that exhibits his acquaintance 
 with the History of the Winds, of his experiments on Dense and 
 Rare, and his observations on the Union of Mind and Body. 
 
 A Winter's Tale is notably full of Bacon's observations on 
 horticulture, hybridising, grafting, etc., and on the virtues of 
 plants medicinal, and other matters connected with his notes on 
 the Regimen of Health. 
 
 Cymbeline, and Antony and Cleopatra, show him studying 
 vivisection, and the effects of various poisons on the human 
 body. The effects of mineral and vegetable poisons are also 
 
 * See Bacon's Apophthegms, Devey, p. 166, and the Apologia of Essex. 
 
102 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 illustrated in Hamlet, and if these plays were written so early as 
 some commentators suppose, then we may believe that certain 
 portions were interpolated after Bacon's investigations into the 
 great poisoning cases which he was, later on, called upon to 
 conduct.* 
 
 The Tempest describes a wreck on the Bermudas, and Caliban, 
 the man-monster or devil. It was published soon after the loss 
 of the ship Admiral, in which Bacon had embarked money to 
 aid Southampton, Pembroke, and Montgomery in the colonisation 
 of Virginia. The ship was wrecked on the Bermudas, the " Isle 
 of Divils." About this time the History of the Winds and of 
 the Sailing of Ships was said to be written. 
 
 Timon of Athens, showing the folly of a large-hearted and 
 over-generous patron in trusting to " time's flies " and " mouth- 
 friends," who desert him in the time of need, seems to have 
 been written by Bacon after his fall and retirement, to satirise 
 his own too sanguine trust in parasites, who lived upon him so 
 long as he was prosperous, but who, on his reverse of fortune, 
 deserted, and left him to the kindness of the few true friends 
 and followers on whom he was absolutely dependent. 
 
 Henry VIII. completes the picture. In a letter from Bacon 
 to the King, in 1622, he quotes (in the original draft) the words 
 which Wolsey utters in the play of Henry VIII., III. ii., 454 — 
 457, though Bacon adds : " My conscience says no such thing ; 
 for I know not but in serving you I have served God in one. 
 But it may be if I had pleased men as I have pleased you, it 
 would have been better with me." This passage was cut out of 
 the fair copy of the letter ; its original idea appeared next year 
 in the play of Henry VIII. 
 
 Ben Jonson describes, in well-known lines, the labour and 
 artistic skill necessary for the production of mighty verse so 
 richly spun and woven so fit as Shakespeare' s. To a profound 
 study of Nature, which is exalted by, "made proud of his 
 designs," must be added the art which arrays Nature in " lines 
 so richly spun and woven so fit " : 
 
 " For though the poet's matter Nature be, 
 His art must give the fashion ; and that he 
 
 * See Did Francis Bacon Write Shakespeare, Part II., p. 26, and Bacon's 
 Apologia and Apophthegms. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 103 
 
 Who casts to write a living line must sweat 
 (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat 
 Upon the Muses' anvil ; turn the same 
 And himself with it, that he thinks to frame ; 
 Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn ; 
 For a good poet's made as well as born. 
 And such wert thou." 
 
 But, as a mere child, fie seems to have written, not words 
 without matter, but matter without art, and we can well imagine 
 him saying to himself in after years : 
 
 " Why did I write ? What sin to me unknown 
 Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own ? 
 As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, 
 I lisped in numbers, and the numbers came." 
 
 There is not one, not even the poorest, amongst the Shake- 
 speare plays, which could possibly have been the first or nearly 
 the earliest of its author's efforts in that kind. A careless 
 perusal of some of the " mysteries " or play interludes which 
 were in favour previous to the year 1579 will enable anyone to 
 perceive the wide chasm which lies between such pieces and — 
 say — Titus Andronicus and the plays of Henry VI. There are 
 passages in these plays which no tyro in the arts of poetry and 
 of playwriting could have penned, and for our own part we look, 
 not backward, but forward, to the crowd of " minor Elizabethan 
 dramatists " in order to find the crude, juvenile effusions which, 
 we believe, will prove to have been struck off by Francis Bacon * 
 at the first heat upon the Muses' anvil. These light and 
 unlaboured pieces were probably written, at first, chiefly for his 
 own amusement, or to be played (as they often were) in the Inns 
 of Court, or by the private " servants " of his friends, and in 
 their own houses. 
 
 Later on, we know that he took a serious view of the important 
 influence for good or for bad which is easily produced by shows 
 and "stage-plays," set before the eyes of the public. As has 
 been said, he always, and from the first, regarded the stage, not 
 as a mere " toy," but as a powerful means of good — as a glass 
 in which the whole world should be reflected — " a mirror held 
 up to nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own 
 
 * Again we add a saving clause in favour of the little-known Anthony, 
 also " a concealed poet." 
 
104 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 image, and the very age and body of the time his form and 
 pressure." 
 
 "Men," he said, "had too long 'adored the deceiving and 
 deformed imagery which the unequal mirrors of their own 
 minds had presented to them,' " the " deformities " of ignorance, 
 superstition, affectation, and coarseness. They should see these 
 deformities of vice and ignorance reflected so truly, so life-like, 
 that virtue should charm, whilst vice should appear so repulsive 
 that men should shrink from it with loathing. 
 
 Many of the plays which we attribute to Francis Bacon and 
 his brother Anthony treat of low life, and contain not a few 
 coarse passages. But the age was coarse and gross, and it must 
 be observed that, even in such passages, vice is never attractive ; 
 on the contrary, it is invariably made repelling and contemptible, 
 sometimes disgusting, and in every case Good and the Right are 
 triumphant. It is a matter for serious consideration whether 
 the pieces which are exhibited before our lower and middle 
 classes possess any of the merits which are conspicuous in the 
 plays (taken as a whole) of the time of Elizabeth. We see them, 
 we admire or laugh, and we come away, for the most part, with- 
 out having heard a single phrase worthy of repetition or record. 
 We remember little of the play twenty-four hours after we have 
 seen it, and we are no whit the wiser, though at the time we 
 may have been the merrier, and that is not a bad thing. 
 
 Bacon perceived, doubtless by his own youthful experience, 
 that men are far more readily impressed by what they see than 
 by what they hear or read. That, moreover, they must be 
 amused, and that the manner and means of their recreation are 
 matters of no slight importance. For the bow cannot always be 
 bent, and to make times of leisure truly recreative and profitable 
 to mind as well as body, was, he thought, a thing much to be 
 wished, and too long neglected. The lowest and poorest, as 
 well as the most dissipated or the most cultivated, love shows 
 and stage plays. He loved them himself. Would it not be 
 possible to make the drama a complete (though unrecognised) 
 school of instruction in morals, manners, and politics, and at the 
 same time so highly entertaining and attractive that men should 
 unconsciously be receiving good and wholesome doctrines, whilst 
 they sought merely to amuse themselves ? 
 
 There is no question that such things were to him true 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 105 
 
 recreation and delight. Sports and pastimes have for one object 
 " to drive away the heavy thoughts of care," and to refresh the 
 spirits dulled by overwork, and by harping on one string. Idle- 
 ness, especially enforced idleness, is no rest to such a mind as 
 Bacon's ; and we know that he was always weariest and least 
 well in " the dead long vacation." So we are sure that he often 
 exclaimed, like Theseus, in the Midsummer Night's Dream : 
 
 " Come, now ; what masques, what dances shall we have, 
 To wear away this long age of three hours 
 Between our after-supper and bedtime ? 
 Where is our usual manager of mirth ? 
 What revels are in hand ? Is there no play 
 To ease the anguish of a torturing hour ? 
 Say, what abridgment have you for this evening ? 
 What masque ? what music ? How shall we beguile 
 The lazy time, if not with some delight ? " 
 
 Like Theseus and his friends, he finds little satisfaction in 
 the performance of the ancient play which is proposed, and 
 which he knows by heart, or in the modern one, in which 
 " there is not one word apt or one word fitted." He mourns, 
 the degradation of the stage — in ancient times so noble, and 
 even in the hands of the Jesuits wisely used, as a discipline for 
 the actor, and a means of wide instruction for the spectators. 
 
 There is reason to think that Francis, in childhood, showed 
 great talent for acting, and that he took leading parts in the 
 Latin plays which were performed at college. At home, such 
 doings were checked by Lady Anne's Puritan prejudices. The 
 strong tendency which Anthony and Francis evinced for the 
 theatre, and for " mumming and masquing " with their com- 
 panions, was a source of great anxiety and displeasure to this- 
 good lady. She bewailed it as a falling-off from grace, and 
 prayed yet that it might not be accounted a sin that she should 
 permit her dear son Francis to amuse himself at home in getting 
 up such entertainments, with the help of the domestics. All this, 
 renders it improbable that he ever had the opportunity of going 
 to a public theatre until he went abroad, and perhaps the very 
 coarseness and stupidity of what he then saw put on the stage 
 may have disgusted him, acting as an incentive to him to 
 attempt something better. 
 
 At all events, hardly had he settled down in Gray's Inn, before 
 
 H 
 
106 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 the plays began to appear. From this time there are frequent 
 allusions, in the records of the Gray's Inn Revels, to the assist- 
 ance which he gave, and which seems, in most cases, to have 
 consisted in writing, as well as managing, the whole entertain- 
 ment. If any names are mentioned in connection with such 
 revels, or with the masques and devices which were performed 
 at court, these names almost always include that of Francis 
 Bacon. Sometimes he is the only person named in connection 
 with these festivities. 
 
 All this might be taken as a matter of course, so long as 
 Bacon was but a youth, though even at that time the fact of 
 his being a playwright, or stage-manager, would seem to be 
 remarkable, considering the horror with which his mother, and 
 no doubt many others of his near and dear Puritan relatives, 
 regarded the performance of stage-plays and masques. 
 
 Lady Anne, in a letter written to Anthony, just before the 
 Revels and the first performance of the Comedy of Errors, at 
 Gray's Inn, in 1594, exhorts him and Francis that they may 
 " not mum, nor mask, nor sinfully revel. Who were sometime 
 counted first, God grant they wane not daily, and deserve to be 
 named last." * 
 
 Considering the low estimation in which the degraded stage of 
 that date was held by all respectable people, it is not astonish- 
 ing that during Bacon's lifetime (if there were no more potent 
 motive than this) his friends should combine to screen his repu- 
 tation from the terrible accusation of being concerned with such 
 base and despised matters. But this feeling against the stage 
 passed away ; and, in some cases, we find Bacon actually instru- 
 mental in producing the works of " Shakespeare. 1 ' It is, there- 
 fore, not a little surprising that particulars and records, which 
 would have been reckoned as of the greatest interest and 
 importance, if they had concerned Shakspere or Ben Jonson, 
 should be hushed up, or passed over, when they are found 
 closely to connect Francis Bacon with theatrical topics. As an 
 illustration of our meaning, it may be mentioned that in the 
 voluminous " Life " of Spedding the index, at the end of each 
 of the Hve volumes, does not enable the uninitiated reader to 
 
 * Lambeth MSS. 650, 222, quoted by Dixon. So here again we see 
 Anthony also mixed up with play-writing. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 107 
 
 trace the fact that Bacon wrote either devices, masques, inter- 
 ludes, entertainments, or sonnets ; none of these words appear in 
 any index. Moreover, although the device of the Order of 
 the Helmet, and the Masques of the Indian Boy, and the 
 Conference of Pleasure, are partly printed and all described 
 in that work, we seek in vain for the pieces under these or any 
 other titles, and they are^only to be found by looking under 
 Gray's Inn Revels. Evidently there has been no great desire to 
 enlighten the world in general as to Bacon's connection with the 
 theatrical world of his day — perhaps it was thought that such a 
 connection was derogatory to his position and reputation as a 
 great philosopher — perhaps there are other reasons ? 
 
 Hep worth Dixon goes into opposite extremes when he speaks 
 of Lady Anne, in letters written as late as 1592, " loving and 
 counselling her two careless boys." Francis was at that date 
 thirty, and Anthony thirty-two years of age. A year later 
 Francis wrote to his uncle, Lord Burleigh : "I wax somewhat 
 ancient. One and thirty years is a good deal of sand in a man's 
 hour-glass. My health, I thank God, I find confirmed ; and I 
 do not fear that action shall impair it, because I account my 
 ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than 
 most parts of action are. 1 ' He goes on to say that he always 
 hoped to take some " middle place " in which he could serve her 
 Majesty, not for the love either of honour or business, " for the 
 contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly," but because it 
 was his duty to devote his abilities to his sovereign, and also 
 necessary for him to earn money, because, though he could not 
 excuse himself of sloth or extravagance, " yet my health is not 
 to spend, nor my course to get." Then he makes that remark- 
 able declaration which further explains his perpetual need of 
 money : "I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I 
 have moderate civil ends ; for I have taken all knowledge to be 
 my province." This, whether it be curiosity or vainglory, or, if 
 one may take it favourably, philanthropia, is so fixed in my 
 mind that it cannot be removed." 
 
 That the biographer should have thought fit to use such an 
 expression as " careless boy " in regard to the indefatigable 
 philosopher, " the most prodigious wit," who in childhood had a 
 gravity beyond his years, and who at thirty felt "ancient," 
 speaks volumes as to the impressson made on the mind of a 
 
108 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 sympathetic reader by the various small particulars which shed 
 light on the gay and sprightly side of Francis Bacon's many- 
 sided character. 
 
 In the letter to his uncle Bacon goes on to say, "I do easily 
 see that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring com- 
 mandment of more wits than a man's own, which is the thing I 
 greatly affect." Here is a reason, the only reason, why he desired 
 to gain a good position in the world. With place and wealth 
 would come power to carry out his vast contemplative ends. 
 Without money or position he could have no such hope, and he 
 adds, " If your lordship will not carry me on, I will not do as 
 Anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with contemplation unto 
 voluntary poverty ; but this I will do : I will sell the inheritance 
 that I have, and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some 
 office of gain that shall be executed by deputy, and so give over 
 all care of service, and become some sorry book-maker, or a true 
 pioneer in that mine of truth which he said lay so deep. This 
 which I have writ unto your Lordship is rather thoughts than 
 words, being set down without art,* disguising, or reservation, 
 wherein I have done honour, both to your Lordship's wisdom, in 
 judging that that will best be believed by your Lordship which 
 is truest, and to your Lordship's good nature, in retaining 
 nothing from you." 
 
 Bacon wrote this letter from his lodging at Gray's Inn at the 
 beginning of the year 1592. He was now just entering his 
 thirty-second year, and, on the surface, little had appeared of 
 his real life and action. But still waters run deep. He had 
 already accomplished enough to have filled the measure of a 
 dozen ordinary lives, and apart from his own actual writings we 
 have now abundant evidence to show how his vast plans for 
 universal culture and reformation were spreading — more abroad 
 than at home, but everywhere, manifesting themselves in the 
 revival, the " renaissance " of literature and science. 
 
 The rearing of the new " Solomon's House " was begun. Poor 
 as he was, almost solitary on the heights of thought, but yet with 
 many willing minds struggling to approach and relieve him, he 
 knew with prophetic prescience that his work was growing, im- 
 perishable, neither " subject to Time's love nor to Time's hate." 
 
 * Spedding, L. L., I. 109. Comp. Hamlet, II. ii., 95—99, etc. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 109 
 
 No, it was builded far from accident ; 
 
 It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls 
 "Under the blow of thralled discontent, 
 
 Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls : 
 It feels not policy, that heretic, 
 
 Which works on leases of short-numbered hours ; 
 But all alone stands hugely politic. * 
 •~ 
 To witness this he calls the fools of time. What was it to him 
 that he had " borne the canopy, with his exteme the outward 
 honouring " ? Whilst living thus externally, as fortune forced 
 him to do, as mere servant to greatness, a brilliant but reluctant 
 hanger-on at the court, he was meanwhile collecting materials, 
 digging the foundations, calling in helpers to " lay great bases 
 for eternity." 
 
 ♦Sonnets CXXIV., CXXV. 
 
110 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PLAYWRIGHT AND POET-PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 " Playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 
 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her 
 own image, and the very age and bod} 7 of the time his form and pressure." 
 
 — Hamlet. 
 
 ABOUT the year 1592 Bacon wrote a device entitled The 
 Conference of Pleasure* It was evidently prepared for 
 some festive occasion, but whether or not it was ever 
 performed in the shape in which it is seen in the existing 
 manuscript, is not known. 
 
 The paper book which contained this device bore on its out- 
 side leaf a list of its original contents, but the stitches which 
 fastened the sheets together have given way, or were intentionally 
 severed, and the central pages are gone — a great loss, when 
 we know that these pages included copies of the plays of 
 Richard II. and Richard III., of which it would have been 
 interesting to have seen the manuscript. 
 
 The Conference of Pleasure represents four friends meeting 
 for intellectual amusement, when each in turn delivers a speech 
 in praise of whatever he holds " most worthy." This explains 
 the not very significant title given to this work in the catalogue 
 which is found upon the fly-leaf of the paper book : " Mr. Fr. 
 Bacon Of Giving Tribute, or that which is due." 
 
 The speeches delivered by the four friends are described as 
 The Praise of the Worthiest Virtue, or Fortitude, " The Worthiest 
 Affection," — Love ; " The Worthiest Power," — Knowledge ; and 
 the fourth and last, " The Worthiest Person." This is the came 
 that was afterwards printed and published under the title of 
 " Mr. Bacon in Praise of his Soveraigne." It bears many 
 points of resemblance to Cranmer's speech in the last scene of 
 
 * This device was edited by Mr. Spedding (1867) from the manuscript, 
 which he found amongst a quantity of paper belonging to the Duke of 
 Northumberland. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. Ill 
 
 Henry VIII.,* and is ostensibly a praise of Queen Elizabeth. 
 Covertly it is a praise of Bacon's Sovereign Lady, the Crowned 
 Truth. The editor of the Conference observes, as so many 
 others have done, that there is in the style of this piece a 
 certain affectation and rhetorical cadence, traceable in Bacon's 
 other compositions of this kind, and agreeable to the taste of the 
 time. He does not, however, follow other critics in saying that 
 this courtly affectation was Bacon's style, or that the fact of his 
 having written such a piece is sufficient to disprove him the 
 author of other compositions written more naturally and easily. 
 On the contrary, he describes this stilted language as so alien to 
 his individual taste and natural manner, that there is no single 
 feature by which his own style is more specially distinguished, 
 wherever he speaks in his own person, whether formally or 
 familiarly, whether in the way of narrative, argument, or oration, 
 than the total absence of it. 
 
 The truth is that the style of Francis Bacon was the best 
 method, whatever that might be, for conveying to men's minds 
 the knowledge or ideas which he was desirous of imparting. 
 There should, he says, be " a diversity of methods according to 
 the subject or matter which is handled." This part of knowledge 
 of method in writing he considers to have been so weakly 
 inquired into as, in fact, to be deficient. He explains that there 
 must be, in this " method of tradition," first the invention or 
 idea of that which is to be imparted ; next, judgment upon the 
 thing thought or imagined, and, lastly, delivery, or imparting 
 of the thought or idea. Then he shows that knowledge is not 
 only for present use, but also for its own advancement and 
 increase. With regard especially to present use, he points out 
 that there are times and seasons for knowledges, as for other 
 things. How to begin, to insinuate knowledge, and how to 
 refrain from seeming to attempt to teach ? " It is an inquiry of 
 great wisdom, what kinds of wits and natures are most apt and 
 proper for most sciences." He is actually speaking of the use 
 of mathematics in steadying the mind, " if a child be bird- 
 witted and hath not the faculty of attention " ; but he leads this 
 
 * Further on we shall have occasion to show how in many of Bacon's 
 poems, sonnets, etc., where " the Queen " is praised, the allusion is 
 ambiguous, referring chiefly, though covertly, to Bacon's Sovereign 
 Mistress, Truth. 
 
112 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 argument into another which again brings before us his ideas 
 about the immense importance of the stage. " It is not amiss to 
 observe, also, how small and mean faculties, gotten by education, 
 yet when they fall into great men and great matters, do work 
 great and important effects ; whereof we see a notable example 
 in Tacitus, of two stage players, Percennius and Vibulenus, who, 
 by their talent for acting, put the Pannonian armies into extreme 
 tumult and combustion. For, there arising a mutiny amongst 
 them upon the death of Augustus Caesar, Blsesas, the lieutenant, 
 had committed some of the mutineers, which were suddenly 
 rescued ; whereupon Vibulenus got to be heard speak — (and 
 charged Blazsas, in pathetic terms, with having caused his brother 
 to be murdered) — with which speech he put the army into an 
 infinite fury and uproar ; whereas, truth was, he had no brother, 
 neither was there any such matter ; but he played it merely as 
 if he had been on the stage." 
 
 This anecdote is partly an illustration of what Bacon has 
 previously been saying, that the duty of rhetoric is " to apply 
 reason to imagination for the better moving of the will." 
 Rhetoric, therefore, may be made an aid to the morality whose 
 end is to persuade the affections and passions to obey reason. 
 He shows that " the vulgar capacities " are not to be taught by 
 the same scientific methods which are useful in the delivery of 
 knowledge " as a thread to be spun upon, and which should, if 
 possible, be insinuated" in the same method wherein it was 
 invented. In short, matter, and not words, is the important 
 thing ; for words are the images of cogitations, and proper 
 thought will bring proper words. It may in some cases be well 
 to speak like the vulgar and think like the wise. This was an 
 art in which Bacon himself is recorded to have been especially 
 skilful : he could imitate and adopt the language of the person 
 with whom he was conversing and speak in any style. If so, 
 could he not equally well write in any style which best suited 
 the matter in hand, which would most readily convey his 
 meaning to educated or uneducated ears, to minds prosaic or 
 poetical, dull in spirit, and only to be impressed by plain and 
 homely words, or not impressed at all, except the words were 
 accompanied by gesture and action as if the speaker were 
 " upon the stage " ? 
 
 And so Bacon was " content to tune the instruments of the 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 113 
 
 muses," that they should be fit to give out melodies and har- 
 monies of any pitch, and suited to every frame of mind. In his 
 acknowledged writings (which seem to be an ingenious map of, 
 or clue to, his whole body of works) we find, as it were, 
 samples of many and varied styles of writing which he desires 
 to see studied and more perfectly used ; and although in his 
 greatest productions he has 'built up a noble model of language 
 which the least observant reader must recognise as Baconian, 
 yet there are amongst his writings some so unlike what might 
 be expected from his pen, and so very unlike each other, as to 
 dispel the idea that his many-sided mind required, like ordinary 
 men, merely a one-sided language and " style " in which to 
 utter itself. 
 
 The manner of speaking or writing which pleases him best 
 was plain and simple, " a method as wholesome as sweet." 
 But, just as in the poems and plays which we attribute to him the 
 styles are so various as to raise doubts, not only of the identity 
 of the author, but even as to various portions of the same work, 
 so the style of writing of the Gesta Grayorum or the Conference 
 of Pleasure is totally unlike the New Atlantis or the Confes- 
 sion of Faith. Neither is there, at first sight, anything which 
 Avould cause the casual reader to identify the author of any of 
 these with the Wisdom of the Ancients, or Life's a Bubble, or 
 the History of the Winds, or the Essay of Friendship, or 
 many more widely different works or portions of works known 
 to have been written by Bacon. Because this is known, no one 
 is so bold or so foolish as to point to the immense differences in 
 style as proof that one man could not have written all. One man 
 did write them ; no one can challenge the statement, and conse- 
 quently no question has arisen about this particular group of 
 works ; yet they differ amongst themselves more than, individu- 
 ally, they differ with a vast number of works not yet generally 
 acknowledged to be Bacon's. They differ more essentially from 
 each other than do the works of many dramatists and poets of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their style is sometimes 
 indistinguishable from treatises by various " authors." In short, 
 nothing but a complete comparative anatomy of Bacon's writings 
 at different periods and on different topics would enable any 
 one (without evidence of some other sort) to assert of every work 
 of Bacon's that it was or was not of his composition ; so varied 
 is his style. 
 
114 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 To return to the paper book. Besides the pieces which are 
 still contained in it, eight more appear to have formed part of 
 the contents of this and another small volume of the same kind, 
 now lost. According to the list on the cover the lost sheets 
 should contain : 
 
 1. The conclusion of Leycester's Commonwealth. 
 
 2. The speeches of the six councillors to the Prince of Pur- 
 poole, at the Gray's Inn Revels, 1594. The exterior sheet of the 
 book has in the list, Orations at Graifs Inn Revels. 
 
 3. Something of Mr. Frauncis Bacon's about the Queen's Mat s . 
 
 4. Essaies by the same author. 
 
 , 5. Richard II. The editor calls these " Copies of Shakespeare's 
 Plays." The list does not say so. 
 
 6. Richard III. 
 
 7. Asmund and Cornelia (a piece of which nothing is 
 known). 
 
 8. A play called The Isle of Dogs. The induction and first act 
 of this play are said to have been written by Thomas Nashe, and 
 the rest by " the players." No copy has been found of The Isle 
 of Dogs ; and after the title in the list appears the abbreviated 
 word frmnt* 
 
 In a line beneath, " Thomas Nashe, inferior plaies." 
 It is curious and interesting to observe the pains which are 
 taken to explain away the simplest and most patent docu- 
 mentary evidence which tends to prove Bacon's connection with 
 plays or poetry. The following is an instance : Commenting 
 upon the startling but undeniable fact of the two Shakespeare 
 plays being found enumerated, with other plays not known, in a 
 list of Bacon's works amongst his papers, the careful editor 
 proceeds to make easy things difficult by explanation and 
 commentary : 
 
 " That Richard II. and Richard III. are meant for the titles 
 of Shakespeare's plays, so named, I infer from the fact — of which 
 the evidence may be seen in the fac-simile — that, the list of 
 contents being now complete, the writer (or, more probably, 
 another into whose possession the volume passed) has amused 
 
 * This seems to have puzzled the editor, but can it mean more or less 
 than " fragment " ? 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 115 
 
 himself with writing down promiscuously the names and 
 phrases that most ran in his head ; and that among these the 
 name of William Shakespeare was the most prominent, being 
 written eight or nine times over for no other reason that can be 
 discerned. That the name of Mr. Frauncis Bacon, which is alsp 
 repeated several times, should have been used for the same 
 kind of recreation, requires no explanation. . . In the upper 
 corner . . . may be seen tfie words ne vile velis, the motto of 
 the Nevilles, twice repeated, and there are other traces of the 
 name of Neville. Other exercises of the same kind are merely 
 repetitions of the titles which stand opposite, or ordinary words of 
 compliment, familiar in the beginnings and endings of letters, 
 with here and there a scrap of verse, such as : 
 
 Eevealing day through every cranie peepes, 
 "Or, 
 
 Multis annis jam transactis, 
 Nulla fides est in pactis, 
 Mel in ore, verba lactis ; 
 Fell in corde, fraus in factis. 
 
 "And most of the rest appear to be merely exercises in writing 
 th or sh ; . . . but the only thing, so far as I can see, which 
 requires any particular notice is the occurrence, in this way, of 
 the name of William Shakespeare; and the value of that depends, 
 in a great degree, upon the date of the writing, which, I fear, 
 cannot be determined with any approach to exactness. All I 
 can say is that I find nothing ... to indicate a date later than 
 the reign of Elizabeth ; and if so, it is probably one of the 
 earliest evidences of the growth of Shakspere's personal fame 
 as a dramatic author, the beginning of which cannot be dated 
 much earlier than 1598. It was not till 1597 that any of his 
 plays appeared in print ; and though the earliest editions of 
 Richard II., Richard III., and Romeo and Juliet all bear that 
 date, his name is not on the title-page of any of them. They 
 were set forth as plays which had been ' lately,' or ' publicly,' or 
 ' often with great applause,' acted by the Lord Chamberlain's 
 servants. Their title to favour was their popularity as acting- 
 plays at the Globe ; and it was not till they came to be read as 
 books, that it occurred to people unconnected with the theatre to 
 ask who wrote them. It seems, however, that curiosity was 
 speedily and effectually excited by the publication, for in the 
 very next year a second edition of both the Richards appeared, 
 with the name of William Shakespeare on the title-page ; and 
 the practice was almost invariably followed by all publishers on 
 like occasions afterwards. We may conclude, therefore, that it 
 was about 1597 that play-goers and readers of plays began to 
 talk about him, and that his name would naturally present 
 
116 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 itself to an idle penman in want of something to use his pen 
 upon. What other inferences will be drawn from its appearance 
 on the cover of this manuscript by those who start with the 
 conviction that Bacon, and not Shakespeare, was the real author 
 of Richard II. and Richard III., I cannot say ; but to myself 
 the fact which I have mentioned seems quite sufficient to account 
 for the phenomenon." * 
 
 The phenomenon does not seem to require any explanation. 
 Everything in the list, excepting the plays, is known to be 
 Bacon's. Essays, orations, complimentary speeches for festivals, 
 letters written for, and in the names of, the Earls of Arundel, 
 Sussex, and Essex. Only the plays are called " copies," because 
 in their second editions, when men first began to be curious as 
 to the "concealed poet," and Hayward, or some other, was to 
 be " racked to produce the author," the name Shakespeare was 
 printed on the hitherto anonymous title-page. The practice 
 was so common at that date as to cause much bewilderment 
 and confusion to the literary historian ; and this confusion was, 
 probably, the very effect which that cause was intended to 
 produce. 
 
 It is worthy of note that in the writing-case, or portfolio, 
 which belonged to Bacon (and which is in the possession of 
 the Howard family at Arundel) a sheet is found similarly 
 scribbled over with the name William Shakespeare. Consider- 
 ing the amount of argument which has been expended upon 
 the subject of the scribbled names on the fly-leaf of the Con- 
 ference of Pleasure, it would appear too strange for credibility 
 that this witness of Bacon's own portfolio should be ignored, 
 were it not that we now have other and such strong proofs of a 
 combination to suppress particulars of this kind. 
 
 Besides the name of Shakespeare, there are, on the outer leaf 
 of the manuscript book, some other curious jottings which are to 
 our point. The amanuensis, or whosoever he may have been, who 
 beguiled an hour of waiting by trying his pen, scribbles, with 
 the name Shakespeare, some allusions to other plays besides 
 Richard II. and Richard III. 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost satirises "the diseases of style," and 
 " errors and vanities," which Bacon complains were intermixed 
 
 * Introduction to the Conference of Pleasure, p. xxiv. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 117 
 
 with the studies of learned men, and which " caused learning 
 itself to be traduced." The utterances of Holofernes, Nathaniel, 
 Biron, and Armado, respectively, illustrate the " vain affections, 
 disputes, and imaginations, the effeminate and fantastical 
 learning," which infected all the teaching and the books of the 
 period. 
 
 Making fun of the pedantic talk of Holofernes and his friends, 
 the pert page Moth declares that " they have been at a feast of 
 languages and stolen the scraps." 
 
 Costard answers : " Oh ! they have lived long on the alms- 
 basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a 
 word ; for thou art not so long by the head as Honorificabiii- 
 tudinitatibus." 
 
 This alarming polysyllable was in the mind of the amanuensis, 
 though his memory failed before he got through the thirteen 
 articulations, and he curtails it to " Ilonorificabilitudino," yet 
 cannot we doubt that this amenuensis had seen in or about the 
 year 1592 the play of Loves Labour's Lost, which was not pub- 
 lished or acted until 1598. 
 
 The scrap of English verse, in like manner, shows the 
 amanuensis to have been acquainted with the poem of Lucrece, 
 published for the first time in 1594, or two years after the sup- 
 posed date of the scribble. Writing from memory, the copyist 
 makes a misquotation. In the poem is the line : 
 
 " Revealing day through every cranie spies." 
 
 But he writes : 
 
 11 Revealing day through every cranie peepes." 
 
 A confusion, doubtless, between this line and one which 
 follows, where the word peeping is used. 
 
 In Love's Labour s Lost, v. 2, the whole scene turns upon the 
 ideas involved in the Latin lines which are also written on this 
 communicative fly-leaf : 
 
 Mel in ore, verba lactis ; 
 Fell in corde, fraiLS in factis. 
 
 Biron's way of talking is, throughout the scene, compared, for 
 its ultra suavity, to honey and milk : 
 
 Biron. White-handed mistress, one sweet word with you. 
 Princess. Honey and milk and sugar — there are three. 
 
118 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 After a quibble or two on Biron's part, the Princess begs that 
 the word which he wishes to have with her may not be sweet : 
 
 Biron. Thou griev'st my gall. 
 Princess. Gall ? bitter. 
 
 Presently, in the same scene, the affectations of another young 
 courtier are satirised, and he is called " Honey-tongued Boyet." 
 Perhaps the scribe knew from whence his employer derived the 
 metaphors of talk, as sweet, honied, sugared, and smoother than 
 milky and, antithetically, the gall of bitter words* 
 
 There are many proofs that Bacon utilised his talents by 
 writing speeches for his friends, to deliver on important occa- 
 sions, and for public festivities. 
 
 "As Essex aspired to distinction in many ways, so Bacon 
 studied many ways to help him, among the rest by contributing 
 to those fanciful pageants or ' devices,' as they were called, 
 with which it was the fashion of the time to entertain the Queen 
 on festive occasions. On the anniversary of her coronation in 
 1595, we happen to know positively (though only by the concur- 
 rence of two accidents) that certain speeches, unquestionably 
 written by Bacon, were delivered in a device presented by Essex : 
 and I strongly suspect that two of the most interesting among 
 his smaller pieces were drawn up for some similar performance 
 in the year 1592. I mean those which are entitled * Mr. Bacon 
 in Praise of Knowledge,' and ' Mr. Bacon's Discourse in Praise 
 of his Sovereign.' t 
 
 * It is observable that the name Shakespeare on the fly-leaf of the 
 Conference, though written some dozen times, is invariably spelt as it was 
 printed on the title-pages of the plays, and not as he, or any of his family, 
 in any known instance, wrote it during his lifetime. The family of 
 Shakspere, Shakspeyr, Shakspurre, Shakespere, or Shaxpeare never could 
 make up their minds how to spell their names. Perhaps it would be more 
 accurate to say that their friends never could decide for them. There are 
 at least fourteen different spellings, of which Shaxpeare is the most 
 frequent, and appears sixty-nine times in the Stratford records. It seems 
 as if the author of the plays must have made some compact with the 
 family, which prevented them from adopting, till long after Shakspere's 
 death, the spelling of the pseudonym. The doctrine of chances, one would 
 think, must have caused one or more to hit upon the printed variety in 
 some signature or register. See, for excellent information on this matter, 
 " The Shakespeare Myth" p. 170, etc. — Appleton Morgan. 
 
 f These were found among the papers submitted to Stephens by Lord 
 Oxford, and printed by Locker in the supplement to his second collection 
 in 1734. The MSS. are still to be seen in the British Museum, fair copies 
 in an old hand, with the titles given above, but no further explanation. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 119 
 
 "My reason for suspecting they were composed, for some 
 masque, or show, or other fictitious occasion, is partly that the 
 speech in praise of knowledge professes to have been spoken in a 
 Conference of Pleasure, and the speech in praise of Elizabeth 
 appears by the opening sentence to have been preceded by three 
 others, one of which was in praise of knowledge." 
 
 The writer goes on to saythat he has little doubt about this 
 device having been written by Bacon for performance on the 
 Queen's day, though, unfortunately, no detailed account remains 
 of the celebration of that day in 1592 ; we only know that it was 
 " more solemnised than ever, and that through my Lord of Essex 
 his device."* The reporter Nicholas Faunt, "being a strict 
 Puritan, and having no taste for devices," adds no particulars, 
 but an incidental expression in a letter from Henry Gosnold, a 
 young lawyer in Gray's Inn, tells us that Francis was at this 
 time attending the court : — " Mr. Fr. Bacon is, maulgre the court, 
 your kind brother and mine especial friend." 
 
 The Praise of Knowledge, which sums up many of Bacon's 
 most daring philosophical speculations, as to the revival, spread, 
 and ultimate catholicity of learning, — the happy match which 
 shall be made between the mind of man and the nature of things, 
 and the ultimate " mingling of heaven and earth," — is printed 
 in Spedding's Letters and Life of Bacon,^ and should be read 
 and considered by all who care to understand what Dr. Rawley 
 describes as certain " grounds and notions within himself," or 
 as it is elsewhere said, " fixed and universal ideas " which came 
 to him in his youth, and abode with him to the end of his life. 
 
 This speech is succeeded by the far longer Discourse in Praise 
 of the Queen — " an oration which for spirit, eloquence, and sub- 
 stantial worth may bear a comparison with the greatest pane- 
 gyrical orations of modern times."J The biographer explains 
 that, although this oration seems too long and elaborate to have 
 been used as part of a court entertainment, yet it might have 
 
 * Nich. Faunt to A. Bacon, Nov. 20, 1592— Lambeth MSS. 648, 176. 
 
 1 1. 123—126. 
 
 X See the remarks in Spedding, Letters and Life, I. 143, on this piece. 
 The editor shows its fitness for the occasion when it was delivered. Yet 
 we are convinced that it had a second and still more important aim than 
 that which at first sight appears. There was no need to answer an invec- 
 tive against the Government, when Bacon ordered the printing and publi- 
 cation of this speech to be done after his death. 
 
120 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 been (and probably was) worked upon and enlarged afterwards, 
 and that the circumstances under which it was delivered caused 
 it to be received as something of much greater importance than 
 a mere court compliment. 
 
 Probably no one who has read the life and works of Bacon is 
 so foolish and unsympathetic as to believe that such a man, in 
 exalting the theatre, writing for it, interesting others in its 
 behalf, had no higher aim than to amuse himself and his friends, 
 still less to profit by it, or even to make himself a name as a 
 mere playwight. 
 
 Considering merely the position which he held as a man of 
 letters and a philosopher, it is impossible to conceive that for 
 such purposes he would have risked his reputation and prospects 
 — running in the face of public opinion, which was strong against 
 stage-playing, and risking the displeasure of most of the mem- 
 bers of his own Puritan family, some of whom would surely hear 
 reports of what he was doing. 
 
 In 1594 Anthony Bacon, that " dearest brother," " Antonie 
 my comforte," had lately returned from Italy and had joined 
 Francis in Gray's Inn ; but he did not stay there long. Soon 
 afterwards, to the alarm and displeasure of his mother, Lady 
 Anne, he removed from these lodgings to a house in Bishop's Gate 
 Street, close to the Bull Inn. Here there was a theatre at which 
 several of the Shakespeare plays were performed, and from this 
 date the plays of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and " twenty more 
 such names and men as these " pour on to the stage of this and 
 other theatres. What share had Anthony in the writing and 
 "producing " of these plays. 
 
 The Christmas revels in which the studens of Gray's Inn had 
 formerly prided themselves were for some cause intermitted for 
 three of four years. In the winter of 1594 they resolved to re- 
 deem the time by producing " something out of the common 
 way." As usual, Francis Bacon is called in to assist in "re- 
 covering the lost honour of Gray's Inn." The result was a device, 
 or elaborate burlesque, which turned Gray's Inn into a mimic 
 court for which a Prince of Purpoole and a Master of the Revels 
 were chosen, and the sports were to last for twelve days. 
 
 The Prince, with all his state, proceeded to the Great Hall of 
 Gray's Inn on December 20th, and the entertainment was so 
 gorgeous, so skilfully managed, and so hit off the tastes of the 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 121 
 
 times, that the players were encouraged to enlarge their plan, 
 and to raise their style. They resolved, therefore (besides all this 
 court pomp, and their daily sport amongst themselves), to have 
 certain "grand nights," in which something special should be 
 performed for the entertainment of strangers. But the excite- 
 ment produced on the first grand night, and the throng, which 
 was beyond everything which had been expected, crowded the 
 hall so that the actors were driven from the stage. They had to 
 retire, and when the tumult partly subsided, they were obliged, 
 in default of " those very good inventions and conceits " which 
 had been intended, to content themselves with dancing and 
 revelling, and when that was over, with A Comedy of Errors, 
 like to Plautus his Menazchmus, which was played by the 
 players. As this was, according to Dr. Delius, the first allusion 
 to the Comedy of Ei*rors — in other words, since this comedy was, 
 for the first time, heard of and acted in Gray's Inn, at the revels 
 of December, 1594 — we may well suppose that this play was the 
 very " invention and conceit " arranged by Francis Bacon for the 
 occasion, and that, whilst the dancing went on, he took the 
 opportunity of getting things set straight which were disordered 
 by the unexpected throng of guests, after which the comedy 
 was " played by the players," according to the original plan. 
 This was on December 28th. 
 
 The next night was taken up with a mock-legal inquiry into 
 the causes of these disorders, and after this, (which was a broad 
 parody upon the administration of justice by the Crown in Coun- 
 cil), they held a grand consultation for the recovery of their lost 
 honour, which ended in a resolution " that the Prince's Council 
 should be reformed, and some graver conceits should have their 
 places." Again Bacon is to the front, and it is a striking proof 
 of the rapidity with which he was able to devise and accomplish 
 any new thing, that in four or five days he had written and 
 " produced " an entertainment which is described as " one of the 
 most elegant that was ever presented to an audience of statesmen 
 and courtiers." It was performed on Friday, January 3, 1595, 
 and was called The Order of the Helmet. This entertainment 
 (which is in many ways suggestive of the Masonic ceremonies) 
 includes nineteen articles, which the knights of the order vowed 
 to keep ; they are written in Bacon's playful, satirical style, and 
 full from beginning to end of his ideas, theories, doctrines, 
 
 i 
 
122 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 antitheta, allusions, and metaphors. To these follow seven 
 speeches. The first, by the Prince of Purpoole, gives a sly hit 
 at other princes, who, like Prince Hal, " conclude their own 
 ends out of their own humours," and abuse the wisdom of their 
 counsellors to set them in the right way to the wrong place. 
 The prince gives his subjects free leave to set before us " to 
 what port, as it were, the ship of our government should be 
 bounden." 
 
 " The first counsellor," then evidently having Bacon's notes 
 on the subject ready to hand,* delivers a speech, " advising the 
 exercise of war ; " the second counsellor extols the study of 
 philosophy. This counsellor is very well read in Shakespeare. 
 He describes witches, whose power is in destruction, not in 
 preservation,^ and advises the Prince not to be like them or like 
 some comet or blazing star J which should threaten and portend 
 nothing but death and dearth, combustions and troubles of the 
 world. He begs him to be not as a lamp that shineth not to 
 others, and yet seeth not itself, but as the eye of the world, that 
 both carrieth and useth light. To this purpose he commends 
 to him the collecting of a perfect library of books, ancient and 
 modern, and of MSS. in all languages ; of a spacious, wonderful 
 garden (botanic and zoological gardens in one), "built about 
 with rooms to stable all rare beasts and to cage all rare birds," 
 and with lakes, salt and fresh, " for like variety of fishes. And 
 so you may have in small compass a model of universal nature 
 made private." § Thirdly, he proposes " a goodly huge cabinet," 
 a museum of all the rarities and treasures of nature and art, 
 wherein shall be collected " whatsoever singularity chance and 
 the shuffle of things hath produced." The fourth " monument " 
 whi^h is to perpetuate the fame of the Prince is to be "so 
 furnished with mills, instruments, furnaces, and vessels as may 
 be a palace fit for a philosopher's stone." Laboratories for 
 experimental science are here indicated ; they are, we see, the 
 
 * See Spedding — Military arts compatible with learning, III. 269 ; pro- 
 moted by it, III. 307—314 ; when just, successful, IV. 28, 29 ; warlike 
 disposition the strength of a nation, V. 81 ; injured by the sedentary 
 arts, V. 84 ; healthful, X. 85 ; the history of war, proposed, as deficient, 
 IV. 270. 
 
 tSee Macb. i. 3, 18—29 ; iii. 5, 24—34 ; iv. 1, 48-60. 
 
 t Jul. Cses. II. 2, 25—30. All's W. I. 3, 81—85. Macb. ii. 3, 55—60. 
 
 § "A small model of the barren earth." Richard II., III. 2. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 123 
 
 same as are more fully described in the Eosicrucian journal, 
 New Atlantis, and it appears probable that they expressed in 
 the device, as in the Rosicrucian document, a meaning and aim 
 which tended to unite the works of Vulcan (art) with those of 
 Minerva (wisdom or nature).* 
 
 Then follows the third counsellor, advising elernizement and 
 fame by buildings and foundations. This speech, is written 
 with the same metaphors and emblems which we find elsewhere 
 in Bacon's acknowledged works and in the documents of the 
 Rosicrucians and Freemasons. Wars, it is agreed, often offer 
 immoderate hopes which issue only in tragedies of calamities 
 and distresses. Philosophies equally disappoint expectation, 
 by turning mystical philosophy into comedies of ridiculous 
 frustration, conceits and curiosities. But the day for a monarch 
 to " win fame and eternize his name " is " in the visible memory 
 of himself in the magnificence of goodly and royal buildings and 
 foundations, and the new institution of orders, ordinances, and 
 societies ; that as your coin be stamped with your own image, so 
 in every part of your state there may be something new, which, 
 by continuance, may make the founder and author remem- 
 bered." | The desire " to cure mortality by fame " " caused men 
 to build the Tower of Babel, which, as it was a sin in the 
 immoderate appetite for fame, so it was punished in kind ; for 
 the diversities of languages have imprisoned fame ever since." 
 He goes on to show that the fame of Alexander, Caesar, 
 Constantine, and Trajan was thought by themselves to rest not 
 so much upon their conquests as in their buildings. "And 
 surely they had reason ; for the fame of great actions is like to a 
 land flood which hath no certain head or spring ; but the memory 
 and fame of buildings and foundations hath, as it were, a 
 fountain in a hill which continually refresheth and feedeth the 
 other waters." J 
 
 The fourth counsellor advises absoluteness of state and 
 treasure. His speech will be found paraphrased and more 
 gravely and earnestly traced in Bacon's essays of Empire and of 
 
 * See Essay of Erichthonius. Spedding, Works, VI. 736. 
 
 fThis passage aptly describes the principle upon which Bacon 
 established his orders and societies. See chapters of the Rosicrucians 
 and Freemasons. 
 
 X See Emblems— Hill, Water, etc. 
 
124 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 The Greatness of Kingdoms, and in other places which deal with 
 similar subjects. 
 
 The fifth counsellor advises the Prince to virtue and a gracious 
 government. If he would " make golden times " he must be " a 
 natural parent to the state." The former speakers have, says 
 this counsellor, handled their own propositions too formally. 
 " My Lords have taught you to refer all things to yourself, your 
 greatness, memory, and advantage, but whereunto shall yourself 
 be referred ? If you will be heavenly, you must have influence. 
 Will you be as a standing pool, that spendeth and choketh his 
 spring within itself, and hath no streams nor current to bless and 
 make fruitful whole tracts of countries whereby it cometh ? . . . 
 Assure yourself of an inward peace, that the storms without do 
 not disturb any of your repairs icithin; . . . visit all the parts 
 of your estate, and let the balm distill everywhere from your 
 sovereign hands, to the medicining of any part that complaineth ; 
 . . . have a care that your intelligence, vohich is the light of your 
 state, do not burn dim; . . . advance men of virtue, not of 
 mercenary minds ; purge out multiplicity of laws ; . . . repeal 
 those that are snaring, and press the execution of those that are 
 wholesome and necessary; . . . think not that the bridle and 
 spur loill make the horse go alone without time and custom ; . . . 
 when you have confirmed the noble and vital parts of your realm 
 of state, proceed to take care of the blood, and flesh, and good 
 habit of the body. Remedy all cankers and causes of consump- 
 tion." * The speaker ends by saying that, if he wished to 
 commend the beauty of some excelling lady, he could best do it 
 by showing her picture ; so it is in commending a virtuous 
 government, though he fears that his " pencil may disgrace it," 
 and therefore leaves the prince to fill in the picture for himself. 
 
 He is succeeded by the sixth and last counsellor, who 
 " persuades to pastimes and sports." The speeches of his 
 predecessors were, he thought, "as if a man should come to 
 some young prince, and, immediately after his coronation, be in 
 hand with him to make himself a sumptuous and stately tomb, 
 and, to speak out of my soul, I muse how any of your servants 
 can endure to think of you as of a prince past; . . . their 
 lessons were so cumbersome, as if they would make you a king 
 
 Compare Emblems and Metaphors of Bacon. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 125 
 
 in a play, who, when one would think he standeth in great majesty 
 and felicity, he is troubled to say his part. What ! nothing but 
 tasks ; nothing but working days ? No feasting, no music, no 
 dancing, no triumphs, no comedies, no love, no ladies? Let 
 other men's lives be as pilgrimages ; . . . princes' lives are, as 
 progresses, dedicated only to variety and solace." 
 
 (Again an echo of the speeches of Theseus and Philostratus in 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream, quoted before.*) 
 
 This lively counsellor entreats his prince to leave the work to 
 other people, and to attend only to that which cannot be done 
 by deputy. " Use the advantage of your youth ; ... in a word, 
 sweet sovereign, dismiss your five counsellors, and only take 
 counsel of your five senses." 
 
 The prince briefly thanks them all for their good opinions, 
 which being so various, it is difficult to choose between them. 
 " Meantime it should not be amiss to choose the last, and upon 
 more deliberation to determine of the rest ; and what time we 
 spend in long consulting, in the end we gain by prompt and 
 speedy executing." Thereupon he takes a partner, and the 
 dance begins. The rest of the night was spent in this pastime, 
 and the nobles and other auditory, says the narrator, were so 
 delighted with their entertainment, that "thereby Gray's Inn 
 did not only recover their lost credit, but got instead so much 
 honour and applause as either the good reports of our friends 
 that were present or we ourselves could desire." 
 
 In the same year, 1595, Lucrece was published, and dedicated, 
 as the poem of Venus and Adonis had been also dedicated in 
 1593 to Francis Bacon's young friend, Lord Southampton, who 
 is said to have given a large sum of money toward the erection 
 of the " Globe " theatre, which was in this year opened on Bank- 
 side with William Shakspere as its manager ? f 
 
 Until Anthony Bacon's return from Italy Francis was very 
 poor, and often in debt, and, although he lived frugally and 
 temperately, he was at one time forced to get help from the 
 
 * See Mid. N. Dream, V. 1, and Rich. II., III. 4. L. L. L. IV. 3, 370— 
 380, etc. 
 
 | This gift was held by Shakspereans to be an evidence of Southamp- 
 ton's friendship for Shakspere. Baconians see in it an evidence of the 
 young Earl's desire to assist in the production of the dramatic works of 
 his friend and associate, Francis Bacon. 
 
126 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Jews. Though Anthony was better off and able to help him, 
 Francis could hardly contrive to live as a gentleman and at the 
 same time to publish and carry forward scientific researches as we 
 find him doing. Anthony was performing the part of secretary 
 to the Earl of Essex, a work in w T hich his brother shared, Anthony 
 writing his letters and drafting his despatches to secret agents 
 in foreign lands ; Francis aiding him in getting information, and 
 in steering his course through the shifting sands of the political 
 stream. He drew up for Essex that remarkable paper on his 
 conduct at court, which should have been the rule, and would 
 certainly have been the salvation of his life ? * These services, 
 occasional on the part of Francis, daily on the part of Anthony, 
 led them into expenses with they ought to have been repaid. 
 No salary had been fixed for Francis, but Anthony was to have 
 received a thousand pounds a year, none of which was ever 
 paid him.| It was probably on account of the large outstanding 
 debt to the brothers that Essex sued to the Queen for the places 
 of Solicitor-General or Attorney-General for Francis Bacon. It is 
 probable that, had it not been for his interference, Bacon would at 
 this time have been appointed to the former of these offices. But 
 the injudicious and arrogant behaviour of Essex, which was a 
 constant subject of remonstrance from Bacon, now again 
 destroyed Bacon's hopes of obtaining a substantial position and 
 means of livelihood. The Queen would not be driven, nor sus- 
 pected of bestowing offices at the bidding of her fascinating but 
 troublesome kinsman. Bacon was again passed over, and retired 
 much hurt, and feeling disgraced in the eyes of the world, to 
 Twickenham, where, perhaps, he employed himself in writing 
 some of his comedies. For in consequence, perhaps, of this 
 episode, or in part payment of his large debt to the brothers, 
 Essex granted Francis a piece of land worth about £1,800 adjoin- 
 ing the estate of his half-brother, Edward Bacon, at Twickenham. 
 To this year, when Bacon was in retirement at Twickenham, 
 The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream are 
 attributed. In the first of these " the hard Jew " who persecuted 
 Francis Bacon is immortalised in the person of Shylock, whilst 
 
 * Hepworth Dixon, Story, p. 53. Ath. Cant. II. 315. Devereux, Lives 
 of the Earls of Essex, I. 277. Sydney Papers, I. 360. 
 
 | It is very probable in view of the Rosicrucian rules, which we shall 
 consider further on, that the Bacons would not be paid for this work. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 127 
 
 in Antonio we recognise the generous brother, Anthony Bacon, 
 who sacrificed himself and " taxed his credit w in order to 
 relieve Francis.* 
 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream is the first piece in which Bacon, 
 whilst creating his fairies from " the vital spirits of nature, " 
 brings his studies of the winds to his help.| This play, as has 
 been said, bears points of 'strong resemblance to the Device of 
 an Indian Prince, which Bacon had written a few months 
 previously, when the stormy passages between the Queen and 
 Essex had passed away, and when the Earl had apparently 
 applied to him for a device which should be performed on the 
 " Queen's Day." 
 
 January 27, 1595, is the latest date on any sheet in Bacon's 
 Promus of Formularies and Elegancies. Judged by the hand- 
 writing, it appears to be the latest sheet, although it is not 
 placed last in the collection of MSS. One entry is suggestive J 
 — "Law at Twickenham for ye merry tales." The merry 
 tales for which Bacon was thus preparing Law, are supposed to 
 be those already named, with The Taming of the Shrew, King 
 John, two parts of Henry IV. and All's Well that Ends Well, 
 soon to appear, and full of abstruse points of law, such as 
 afterwards exercised the mind of Lord Campbell. The play of 
 Richard III. is attributed to 1594 by Dr. Delius, but the list of 
 Bacon's MSS. on the outside leaf of the Conference of Pleasure 
 seems to show that Richard II. and III. were sketched together, 
 though apparently the former was not heard of till the year 
 1596. 
 
 Very little is known for some years of the private proceedings 
 of Bacon. He had no public business of importance, and it is 
 evident that the published records of his work are not by any 
 means adequate. With his tremendous energy and powers, the 
 scanty information concerning him assures us that at this time 
 he was either travelling or most busy upon his secret and 
 unacknowledged works. In 1596-7 he wrote the Colours of Good 
 and Evil, and the Meditationes Sacrce, for which preparations 
 
 * Note, Antonio, in Twelfth Night, is another impersonation of the same 
 generous and unselfish character. 
 
 t See Of Vital Spirits of Nature. 
 
 % Promus, 1165. The Promus is a MS. collection of Bacon's private 
 notes. 
 
128 FKANCIS BACON 
 
 are found amongst the Promus notes ; a speech in Parliament 
 against enclosures, and a general statement that he continued 
 his scientific studies, are all that is recorded as to his labours at 
 that time. No doubt, however, that, amongst other matters, he 
 was preparing the first edition of his essays, which were pub- 
 lished in the following year (with a dedication " to Mr. Anthony 
 Bacon, his dear e brother, you that are next myself "). Money 
 troubles still continued, which may be explained in the same 
 manner as before. All his money, and Anthony's as well, was 
 going in the expense of publishing, in getting up plays, and in 
 other enterprises connected with his great schemes. 
 
 In a letter of October 15, 1597, written to the Earl of Shrews- 
 bury from Gray's Inn, Francis Bacon requests the loan of a 
 horse and armour for some public show. In another letter to 
 Lord Mount joy, he says that " it is now his manner and rule to 
 keep state in contemplative matters." Clearly much trouble 
 was taken to obscure his history and his private proceedings 
 about this period. 
 
 In letters to Sir Tobie Matthew,** with dates and other particu- 
 lars mysteriously obliterated or garbled, Bacon, whilst alluding 
 by name to several of his acknowledged works, which Sir Tobie 
 had been reading and criticising, speaks (without naming them) 
 of his "other works," "works of his recreation." Elsewhere 
 he refers to other works, but does not specify them. They are 
 " deeds without a name," which, in this correspondence, are 
 referred to as the Alphabet, a pass- word, perhaps, for his Trage- 
 dies and Comedies, since, in his private notes, or Promus, there 
 is this entry (before 1594) : 
 
 " lisdem e* Uteris efficitur tragozdia et comedia.^ 
 
 " Tragedies and comedies are made of one alphabet.'''' 
 
 In 1598 the Queen, who had again quarrelled with Essex, was 
 greatly offended by the play of Richard II., which plainly 
 
 * Sir Tobie Matthew, son of the Bishop of Durham, afterwards Arch- 
 bishop of York, was an early friend of Bacon, and one whom he calls his 
 " kind inquisitor," since he was in the habit of sending his works for 
 Matthew's perusal and criticism. A collection of his letters (London, 
 1660) is extant. These letters are without dates. Tobie Matthew appears 
 to have purposely obliterated or disguised names and particulars. If the 
 " headings were inserted by himself, he had either forgotten the dates or 
 intended to confuse and conceal them." (Spedding, Letters and Life, 
 IV. 132.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 129 
 
 alluded to the troubles in Ireland, with which he was con- 
 cerned. Not only had this new play drawn crowds of courtiers 
 and citizens to the Globe Theatre, when first it appeared, but it 
 had a long and splendid run, being played not only in the 
 theatre, but in the open street and in the court-yards of inns. 
 The Earl of Essex (who, before his voyage, had been a constant 
 auditor at the Globe) lentfthe play his countenance ; it is even 
 said that he ordered it to be played at his own expense, when 
 Phillips, the manager, declared that the piece had been so long 
 before the public that another performance could not pay. No 
 wonder, then, that the Queen was angry and disturbed by this 
 play, which, she thought, was part of a plot to teach her subjects 
 how to murder kings. " I am Richard" she said ; " know you 
 not that ? " 
 
 A pamphlet by a young doctor of civil law, John Hay ward, 
 published almost simultaneously with the play, increased the 
 Queen's wrath and apprehension. Taking as its basis the story 
 of the play, this pamphlet drew from it morals which were 
 supposed to be seditious. In one place it even affirmed the exist- 
 ence of a title superior to the Queen.* This book proved too 
 much for Elizabeth's patience, and, sending the scribe to prison, 
 she summoned Francis Bacon " to draw up articles against 
 him," says the biographer ; but, perhaps, also, because she had 
 reason to think that Bacon would know more than others about 
 the matter. Bacon, in his Apophthegms, or witty sayings, and 
 again in his Apologia concerning Essex, relates this episode. 
 But he, apparently, intentionally and ingeniously confuses his 
 stonj, in the same manner of which examples will be given in 
 the chapter on " Feigned Histories " ; in the same way, too, as 
 the accounts of the origin of Freemasonry are garbled and mixed 
 up, in order to puzzle the uninitiated reader. 
 
 He remembers (he says in the Apologia) an answer of his 
 " in a matter which had some affinity with my Lord of Essex's 
 cause, ichich, though it grew from me, went after about in others' 
 names.^ For her Majesty, being mightily incensed with that 
 book which was dedicated to my Lord (being a story of the first 
 
 * See Emblems and Metaphors, Queen. We think that time may alter 
 the judgment and interpretation of this pamphlet. 
 
 t Does this enigmatical sentence mean that the play in question was 
 his, although it passed under the name of another? 
 
130 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 year of King Henry IV.), thinking it a seditious prelude to put 
 into the people's heads boldness and faction, said she had a 
 good opinion there was treason in it, and asked me if I could 
 not find any places in it that might be drawn within case of 
 treason ; whereunto I answered, for treason surely found I none, 
 but for felony very many. And when her Majesty hastily asked 
 me wherein ? I told her the author had committed very apparent 
 theft, for he had taken most of the sentences of Cornelius 
 Tacitus and translated them into English, and put them into 
 his text." 
 
 This we see is of the play ; but the story continues : "Another 
 time, when the Queen would not be persuaded that it was his 
 writing whose name was to it, but that it had some more 
 mischievous author, and said, with great indignation, that she 
 would have him racked to produce his author, I replied, ' Nay, 
 Madame, he is a doctor [Bacon, therefore, had note turned the 
 argument on to Dr. Hayward's pamphlet] ; never rack his person, 
 rack his stile ; let him have pens, ink, and paper, and help of 
 books, and be enjoined to continue the story where it leaves off, 
 and I will undertake, by collecting the stiles, to judge whether 
 he were the author or no.' " It should be observed that Bacon 
 does not propose to " collect " or collate the style of the 
 pamphlet with that of the play, which would be the obvious 
 thing to do if the author of the obnoxious play and the author 
 of the equally obnoxious pamphlet were supposed to be in 
 collusion. 
 
 His object, evidently, is to get the young doctor of law 
 (probably a member of his secret society) out of the difficulties 
 into which he had fallen through his complicity in the publica- 
 tion of a political squib against tyranny, which Bacon was well 
 aware that Dr. Hay ward did not write. 
 
 Does no one think it strange that Francis Bacon should have 
 told the Queen that the finest passages in Richard II. are taken 
 from Cornelius Tacitus and translated into English in that text, 
 and yet that no commentator on Shakespeare, no student of 
 Tacitus, should have been at the pains of pointing out these 
 passages ? They must be cleverly used, to be so indistinguish- 
 able to these learned readers, for they are there. 
 
 And is it to be taken as a mere matter of course that Bacon, 
 who as a rule mentions himself so little, should have recorded 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 131 
 
 this scene and his own speech amongst his collection of witty 
 sayings, when that speech (which is not very witty) would have 
 had no point if it had not been true ? 
 
 And we ask again, Did it not appear strange to Queen 
 Elizabeth that Bacon should show such intimate knowledge of 
 the sources from which some of the chief passages in Richard II. 
 were derived — a knowledge beyond any which has been dis- 
 played by the most learned and authentic Shakespeare societies 
 which have existed until now ? 
 
 These episodes about Dr. Hayward's tract and the play of 
 Richard II. incline us to a conviction, which is strengthened 
 by other evidence, that Queen Elizabeth had a very shrewd 
 suspicion, if not an absolute knowledge, that Francis was 
 intimately connected with the revival of the stage in her 
 times. Sometimes it almost seems as if she had a still deeper 
 acquaintance with the aims and objects of his life ; that some- 
 times she disapproved, and was only kept from venting upon 
 him all the vials of her wrath, first by her strong esteem and 
 regard for his father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and secondly, by 
 her admiration of Francis himself. It seems not impossible 
 that the Queen's reverence for Sir Nicholas may have been 
 increased by her knowledge of his schemes for the revival of 
 learning, and she may have known, probably did know, that it 
 was the aim of the son to carry out the plans of his father. All 
 this is conjectured, though based upon observation of small 
 particulars. Yet it does not appear that the Queen, although 
 she admired Francis, considered him equal to Sir Nicholas. 
 On the contrary, she often thwarted him, or publicly passed 
 him over in a manner which was very painful to him. 
 Probably, as is so often the case with old people, she could 
 not comprehend that the son, whom she looked on as a boy, 
 would so far outshine the father that the latter should hereafter 
 be chiefly known as " Francis Bacon's father." 
 
 On the occasion of the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth 
 with the Count Palatine, February 14, 1612-13, the usual re- 
 joicings took place ; triumphs, fire-works, sham fights upon the 
 water, masques, running at the ring, and the rest of it, "con- 
 cerning which," says Spedding,* " it would not have been 
 
 * Life and Letters, IV., 343. 
 
132 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 necessary to say anything were it not that Bacon took a principal 
 part in the preparation of one of the masques." This was the 
 joint masque presented by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn and 
 the Inner Temple, " written by Francis Beaumont," and printed 
 shortly after with the following dedication : — 
 
 " to the worthy slr francis bacon, his majesty's solicitor- 
 General, and the grave and learned Bench of the 
 
 ANCIENTLY ALLIED HOUSES OP Gray's Inn AND THE INNER 
 
 Temple, the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. 
 
 u Ye that spared no pain or travail in the setting forth, 
 ordering, and furnishing of this masque (being the first 
 fruits of honour in this kind which these two societies have 
 offered to His Majesty), will not think much now to look 
 back upon the effects of your own care and work; for that, 
 whereof the success was then doubtful, is now happily per- 
 formed, and graciously accepted ; and that which you were then 
 to think of in straits of time, you may now peruse at leisure. 
 And you, Sir Francis Bacon, especially, as you did then by your 
 countenance and loving affections advance it, so let your good 
 word grace it and defend it, which is able to add value to the 
 greatest and least matters." 
 
 There we perceive that the gentlemen (exclusive of Bacon) 
 who had taken so much pains in the setting forth of this 
 important and almost national tribute of respect to the royal 
 family are thanked for their aid in the "ordering and furnishing" 
 of a masque with which, clearly, they were not as a whole well 
 acquainted. They helped, as modern phrase has it, to " get up " 
 the masque, but of its drift they had so little knowledge that 
 what they could only think of in "straits of time," perhaps 
 during the performance, they could now enjoy by reading it at 
 leisure. None of these busy helpers, then, had contributed to 
 the writing of the masque, and the wording of the dedication, 
 although it does not say that Bacon was the author, yet seems to 
 indicate as much ; for it skilfully brings him to the front, and 
 entirely ignores Beaumont, who, however, doubtless did " write " 
 the masque — fair, with a pen and ink. 
 
 " It is easy to believe," says the biographer, " that if Bacon 
 took an active part in the preparations of a thing of this kind, 
 in the success of which he felt an interest, he would have a good 
 deal to say about all the arrangements. But as we have no means 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 133 
 
 of knowing what he did say, and thereby learning something as 
 to his taste in this department,* it will be well to give a general 
 account of the performance as described by an eye-witness." 
 
 "On Tuesday/' writes Chamberlain, February 18, 1612-13, 
 " it came to Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple's turn to come 
 with their masque, whereof Sir Francis Bacon was the chief 
 contriver; and because the former came on horseback and in 
 open chariots, they made choice to come by water from Winchester 
 Place, in Southwark ; which suited well with their device, which 
 was the marriage of the River Thames to the Rhine ; and their 
 show by water was very gallant, by reason of infinite store of 
 lights, very curiously set and placed, and many boats and barges 
 with devices of lights and lamps, with three peals of ordnance, 
 one at their taking water, another in the Temple Garden, and 
 the last at their landing; which passage by water cost them 
 better than £300. They were received at the privy stairs, and 
 great expectation there was that they should every way excel 
 their competitors that went before them, both in device, dainti- 
 ness of apparel, and above all in dancing, wherein they are held 
 excellent, and esteemed for the properer men. 
 
 " But by what ill planet it fell out I know not, they came home 
 as they went, without doing anything ; the reason whereof I 
 cannot yet learn thoroughly, but only that the hall was so full 
 that it was not possible to avoid f it, or make room for them ; 
 besides that, most of the ladies were in the galleries to see them 
 land, and could not get in. But the worst of all was that the 
 King was so wearied and sleepy with sitting almost two whole 
 nights before, that he had no edge to it. Whereupon Sir Francis 
 Bacon adventured to entreat of his Majesty that by this difference 
 he would not, as it were, bury them quick ; $ and I hear the 
 King should answer that then they must bury him quick, for he 
 could last no longer ; but withal gave them very good words, 
 and appointed them to come again on Saturday. 
 
 * Why the writer should say this we know not, for two pages farther on 
 he says : " For ivhat Bacon had to say about such things, see his essay of 
 Masques and Triumphs, which was very likely suggested by the considera- 
 tion he had to bestow on this." This essay was never published until one 
 year before Bacon's death, i.e., 1625. It shows us that Bacon's love of the 
 stage and of masquing was as keen in his old age as in his youth. In the 
 posthumous edition of the Essays, published in 1638, the essay is 
 suppressed. 
 
 t " Clear it." jj: "Alive" 
 
134 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 " But the grace of their masque is quite gone, when their 
 apparel hath been already showed, and their devices vented, so 
 that how it will fall out, God knows, for they are much dis- 
 couraged and out of countenance, and the world says, it comes 
 to pass after the old proverb, the properer man, the worse 
 luck." * 
 
 Their devices, however, went much beyond the mere exhibition 
 of themselves and their apparel, and there was novelty enough 
 behind the curtain to make a sufficient entertainment by itself, 
 without the water business for overture. Chamberlain writes 
 again on the 25th : 
 
 " Our Gray's Inn men and the Inner Templars were nothing 
 discouraged for all the first dodge, but on Saturday last per- 
 formed their part exceeding well, and with great applause and 
 approbation, both from the King and all the company. The 
 next night the King invited the masquers, with their assistants, 
 to the number of forty, to a solemn supper in the new marriage- 
 room, where they were well treated, and much graced with 
 kissing his majesty's hand, and everyone having a particular 
 accoglienza with him." f 
 
 None of Bacon's biographers or critics have expressed the 
 smallest surprise that, in days when Shakspere and Ben Jonson 
 were at the height of their fame, it was neither the one nor the 
 other of them, but the Solicitor-General, who was employed to 
 " contrive," and ultimately to manage, the first masque which 
 had been "presented" to the King. Under similar circum- 
 stances we should expect that Mr. Beerbohm Tree or Mr. Irving 
 would be invited to undertake such a management ; it would not 
 have occurred to us to apply for help to Sir Edward Clarke, 
 Q.C., M.P. 
 
 In 1613 Francis Bacon was appointed Attorney-General. This 
 happened just before the marriage of the Earl of Somerset with 
 Lady Essex, on December 26th. There were very unpleasant 
 circumstances connected with this marriage, which are now 
 known to historians, but which it is unnecessary here to enter 
 upon. As Spedding says, it is but fair to the world of rank, 
 wealth, fashion, and business, which hastened to congratulate 
 the bride and bridegroom with gifts unprecedented in number 
 
 * Court and Times of James I. i. 227. f lb. 229. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 135 
 
 and value, to remember that it does not follow that they would 
 have done the same if they had known what we know. * It was 
 proposed that during the week of festivities which celebrated 
 this marriage the four Inns of Court (the Middle and Inner 
 Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn) should join in getting up 
 a masque, but they could not manage it, and once more we find 
 Bacon called upon to supply their dramatic deficiencies. 
 
 Apparently Bacon considered that he owed Somerset some 
 complimentary offering, because Somerset claimed (though Bacon 
 doubted it) to have used his influence with the King to secure 
 Bacon's promotion. The approaching marriage gave the desired 
 opportunity for discharging an obligation to a man for whom 
 he had no esteem, whom, indeed, he disliked too much to be 
 willing to owe him even a seeming and pretended obligation. 
 
 The offering was well chosen for this purpose, although, as 
 Spedding allows, it was " so peculiar and so costly (consider- 
 ing how little he owed to Rochester, and how superficial their 
 intercourse had been), that it requires explanation." f Whilst 
 all the world were making presents — one of plate, another of 
 furniture, a third of horses, a fourth of gold — he chose a 
 masque, for which an accident supplied him with an excellent 
 opportunity. When the united efforts of the four inns of court 
 failed to produce the required entertainment, Bacon offered, 
 on the part of Gray's Inn, to supply the place of it by a masque 
 of their own. 
 
 The letter, in Bacon's own hand, which was at first supposed 
 to be addressed to Burghley, but which, upon close examination, 
 Spedding believed to be written to Somerset, acquires a new 
 value and significance from the latter circumstance, giving fresh 
 evidence both as to the tone of Bacon's intercourse with the 
 favourite, and as to the style in which he did this kind of thing. 
 " The fly-leaf being gone, the address is lost, and the docket 
 does not supply it; there is no date." (Just as we should expect 
 when the record has anything to connect Bacon with plays or 
 masques.) "The catalogue assumes that it is addressed to Lord 
 Burghley," and this erroneous assumption adds one more little 
 
 * Letters and Life, IV. 392. The following passages are nearly all 
 extracted from this volume of Spedding. 
 | Let. and Life, IV. 392. 
 
136 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 obstruction to the discovery or recognition of the letter, which 
 is a single leaf, and contains only the following words : 
 
 " It may please your good L. : 
 
 " I am sorry the masque from the four Inns of Court faileth ; 
 wherein I conceive there is no other ground of that event but 
 impossibility. Nevertheless, because it faileth out that at this 
 time Gray's Inn is well furnished of gallant young gentlemen, 
 your L. may be pleased to know that, rather than this occasion 
 shall pass without some demonstration of affection from the 
 four Inns of Court, there are a dozen gentlemen that, out of 
 the honour which they bear to your Lordship and my Lord 
 Chamberlain (to whom at their last masque they were so 
 bounden), will be ready to furnish a masque ; wishing it were in 
 their powers to perform it according to their minds. And so for 
 the present I humbly take my leave, resting 
 
 " Your L.'s very humbly 
 
 " and much bounden 
 
 " Fr. Bacon.' 1 
 
 The Lord Chamberlain was the Earl of Suffolk, who was the 
 bride's father; so that everything seems to fit. But though 
 Bacon speaks of it as a compliment from Gray's Inn, Gray's 
 Inn was in reality to furnish only the performers. The com- 
 position, the care and the charges were to be undertaken by 
 himself, as we learn from a news letter of Chamberlain's, whose 
 information is almost always to be relied upon. Writing on the 
 23rd of December, 1613, he says : 
 
 " Sir Francis Bacon prepares a masque to honour this marriage, 
 which will stand him in above £2,000; and though he have 
 been offered some help by the House, and especially by Mr. 
 Solicitor, Sir Henry Yelverton, who would have sent him £500, 
 yet he would not accept it, but offers them the whole charge 
 with the honour. Marry ! his obligations are such, as well to 
 his Majesty as to the great Lord, and to the whole house of 
 Howards, as he can admit no partner." 
 
 The nature of the obligation considered, there was judgment 
 as well as magnificence in the choice of the retribution. The 
 obligation (whether real or not) being for assistance in obtain- 
 ing an office, to repay it by any present which could be turned 
 into money would have been objectionable, as tending to coun- 
 tenance the great abuse of the times (from which Bacon stands 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 137 
 
 clear) — the sale of offices for money. There was no such objection 
 to a masque. As a compliment, it was splendid, according 
 to the taste and magnificence of the time ; costly to the giver, 
 not negotiable to the receiver ; valuable as a compliment, but as 
 nothing else. Nor was its value in that kind limited to the 
 parties in whose honour it was given. It conferred great 
 distinction upon Gray's Inn, in a field in which Gray's Inn was 
 ambitious and accustomed to shine. 
 
 The piece performed was published shortly after, with a dedi- 
 cation to Bacon, as " the principal, and in effect the only person 
 that doth encourage and warrant the gentlemen to shew their 
 good affection in a time of such magnificence ; wherein " they 
 add) " we conceive, without giving you false attributes, which 
 little need where so many are true, that you have graced in 
 general the societies of the Inns of Court, in continuing them 
 still as third persons with the nobility and court, in doing the 
 King honour ; and particularly Gray's Inn, which, as you have 
 formerly brought to flourish, both in the ancienter and younger 
 sort, by countenancing virtue in every quality, so now you have 
 made a notable demonstration thereof in the lighter and less 
 serious kind, by this, that one Inn of Court by itself, in time 
 of a vacation, and in the space of three weeks, could perform 
 that which hath been performed ; which could not have been 
 done but that every man's exceeding love and respect to you gave 
 him wings to overtake time, which is the swiftest of things." 
 
 The words which we print in italics seem to show that the 
 true object of this celebrated masque was to do the King honour ; 
 and, probably, we shall one day find that it was at some 
 expressed desire or regret of his that Francis Bacon was moved 
 to undertake this work, which had proved (as he said in his 
 letters to Rochester) an " impossibility " when attempted by the 
 whole of the four Inns of Court in conjunction. 
 
 Observe, too, the unexplained debt which Gray's Inn is said 
 to owe to Bacon for its flourishing condition, and the exceeding 
 love which the members bore to him, and which alone enabled 
 them to carry out his elaborate devices in the short space of 
 three weeks. We would like to ascertain who were J. G., W. D., 
 and T. B., who signed the dedication. Spedding says that, 
 from an allusion to their " graver studies," they appear to have 
 been members of the society. The allusion, coupled with the 
 
138 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 description of the masque as a show or " demonstration, in the 
 lighter and less serious kind," made to please the King, again 
 carries our minds to the opening words of the Essay of Masques : 
 " These things are but toys to come amongst such serious 
 matters ; out since princes will have them," etc., they should be 
 properly done. 
 
 This piece, entitled The Masque of Flowers, may be seen 
 at full length in Nichol's Progresses : "A very splendid trifle, 
 and answering very well to the description in Bacon's Essays of 
 what a masque should be, — with its loud and cheerful music, 
 abundance of light and colour, graceful motions and forms, and 
 such things as do naturally take the sense, but having no 
 personal reference to the occasion beyond being an entertain- 
 ment given in honour of a marriage, and ending with an offering 
 of flowers to the bride and bridegroom." * 
 
 In March, 1617, Bacon was installed as Lord Chancellor upon 
 the death of Egerton. On May 7th he rode from Gray's Inn to 
 Westminster Hall to open the courts in state. " All London 
 turned out to do him honour, and every one who could borrow a 
 horse and a foot-cloth fell into the train ; so that more than two 
 hundred horsemen rode behind him. Through crowds of citizens 
 . . . of players from Bankside, of the Puritan hearers of Burgess, 
 of the Roman Catholic friends of Danvers and Armstrong, he 
 rode, as popular in the streets as he had been in the House of 
 Commons, down Chancery Lane and the Strand, past Charing 
 Cross, through the open courts of Whitehall, and by King Street 
 into Palace yard."| 
 
 The Bankside players, then, came in a bevy, sufficiently 
 numerous to be conspicuous and registered in history, and all 
 the way from Southwark, in order to do honour to the newly 
 made Chancellor. " My friends, chew upon this." 
 
 The Essay of Masques and Triumphs would suffice to show 
 any unbiased reader that the author was intimately acquainted 
 with the practical management of a theatre. There is something 
 peculiarly graphic in this little Essay, which we commend to 
 the consideration of those who interest themselves in private 
 theatricals. It should be remembered that Bacon would not 
 
 * Spedding, Letters and Life, IV. 394-5. 
 | Story of Bacon's Life, 317. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 139 
 
 insert amongst his most polished and well filed Essays two 
 pages of small particulars with which everyone was acquainted. 
 He is clearly instructing those who do not know so much of the 
 matter as he does. 
 
 True, he takes high ground, and prefaces his remarks with 
 the reflection that " these tjxings are but toys to come amongst 
 such serious considerations ; but yet, since princes will have such 
 things, it is better they should be graced with elegancy than 
 daubed with cost," and he tells us how to ensure this, giving 
 many suggestions which have been adopted until this day. 
 " Acting in song hath an extreme good grace ; I say acting, not 
 dancing, for that is a mean and vulgar thing." The things he 
 sets down are such as " take the sense, not petty wonderments," 
 though he considers that change of scene, so it be quietly and 
 without noise, is a thing of beauty. The scenes are to abound 
 with light, but varied and coloured — the masquers when appear- 
 ing on the scene from above are to " make motions " which will 
 draw the eye strangely and excite desire to see that which it 
 cannot perfectly discern. The songs are to be loud and cheer- 
 ful, " not chirpings and pulings," and the music sharp and well- 
 placed. The colours that show best by candle-light are " white, 
 carnation, and a kind of seawater-green." Short and pithy as 
 this Essay is, we wonder that it had never struck Shakspereans 
 how wonderfully well Mrs. Page, in her little device to frighten 
 and confuse Falstaff, carried out the instructions here conveyed. 
 The music placed in the saw T -pit ; the many rounds of waxen 
 tapers on the heads of the fairies ; the rash out of the saw-pit 
 with songs and rattles " to take the sense " ; the fairies in 
 green and white, singing a scornful rhyme as they trip and pinch 
 Falstaff. Although the masque is intended to frighten him, 
 there is in it nothing frightful, for " anything that is hideous, 
 as devils and giants, is unfit." Satires, antics, sprites and pig- 
 mies Bacon allows ; so Mrs. Page introduces " my little son and 
 those of the same growth," dressed " like urchins, ouphes and 
 fairies." 
 
 Even the " diffused " song which they sing seems to be 
 arranged with care and intention, for, says Bacon, " I under- 
 stand it, that the song he in quire, with some broken music." 
 But he concludes, " Enough of these toys," and perhaps when 
 the Bankside players came to see him ride in state as Chancel- 
 
140 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 lor, there may have been some amongst them who knew that 
 indeed he would no more be able to indulge in openly meddling 
 with such frivolities. 
 
 Public and political business now increased with Bacon so 
 that (without taking into consideration other enterprises) no 
 one will find it strange that from this time no more is heard 
 of him as stage-manager or Master of the Revels on any occasion 
 later than that of the marriage of the King's favourite. 
 Probably, however, want of time had very little to do with 
 the matter, for Bacon seems always to have found time for 
 doing all that it was desirable to do. It is more likely that 
 he felt the incongruity which would appear between the 
 trivialities of such "toys" and the dignity of his position 
 as Attorney-General and prospective Chancellor. Nevertheless, 
 even in the published records of his later years hints drop 
 out here and there of his continued devotion to theatrical 
 performances, and his unfading interest in playwights and all 
 concerning them. He knew that the stage was a great engine 
 for good, and for teaching and moving the masses, who would 
 never read books or hear lectures. 
 
 In January, 1617, Bacon " dined at Gray's Inn to give counte- 
 nance to their Lord and Prince of Purpoole, and to see their 
 revels." * At this time, according to a letter from Buckingham 
 to the King, a masque was performed ; but we know not what it 
 was. A masque appears also to have been in preparation for 
 Shrove Tuesday, though it could not be performed till Tuesday, 
 owing to the occupation of the banqueting hall by an improved 
 edition of the "Prince's Masque " — a piece of Ben Jonson's, which 
 had been acted on Twelfth Night with little applause. " The 
 poet," says Nathaniel Brent, " is grown dull, that his device is not 
 thought worth the relating, much less the copying out. Divers 
 think fit he should return to his old trade of bricklaying again."f 
 Nevertheless, " their fashion and device were well approved " on 
 the second occasion, when the "dull " device must have under- 
 gone a good deal of alteration, since Chamberlain adds, " I can- 
 not call it a masque, seeing they were not disguised nor had 
 vizards." 
 
 "Ben Jonson^: had seen something of Bacon off the stage, 
 
 * Chamberlain to Carleton. f To Carleton, February 7, 1617—18. 
 X It is worthy of note that Jonson and his family all spelt their 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 141 
 
 though we do not know how much," says Spedding, writing of 
 the last years of Bacon's life. Tradition is persistent in repeat- 
 ing that Ben Jonson was one of Bacon's " able pens," an assistant 
 in his writings, superior to an ordinary amanuensis. Drummond 
 of Hawthornden records that Ben Jonson mentioned having 
 written an "apology" for the play of Bartholomew Fair, "m 
 my Lord St. Auhanie's house" in 1604. 
 
 Jonson " bursts into song," says one biographer, when politics 
 or events favour Bacon's view, and in 1620 he " celebrates his 
 birthday," says another, " in words breathing nothing but 
 reverence and honour." Since these lines, often alluded to, are 
 little known, it may be worth while to quote them here : 
 
 " Hail, happy genius of this ancient pile ! 
 How comes it all things so about thee smile ? 
 The fire, the wine, the men ! and in the midst 
 Thou stand'st as if a mystery thou didst ! 
 
 Pardon, I read it in thy face, the day 
 
 For whose returns, and many, all these pray ; 
 
 And so do I. This is the sixtieth year 
 
 Since Bacon and thy lord was born, and here ; 
 
 Son to the grave, wise keeper of the seal, 
 
 Fame and foundation of the English weal. 
 
 What then his father was, that since is he, 
 
 Now with a little more to the degree ; 
 
 England's High Chancellor, the destin'd heir 
 
 In his soft cradle to his father's chair : 
 
 Whose even threads the Fates spun round and full 
 
 Out of their choicest and their whitest wool. 
 
 'Tis a brave cause of joy, let it be known, 
 
 For 'twere a narrow gladness, kept thine own. 
 
 Give me a deep-bowl'd crown, that I may sing, 
 
 In raising him, the wisdom of my King." 
 
 However much or little Bacon may have known of Ben Jonson 
 " off the stage," it is certain that Ben Jonson formed a very 
 accurate estimate of Bacon's abilities as a writer and a poet. It 
 is impossible so to wrest the ordinary and accepted meaning of 
 words as to insist that Ben Jonson did not mean what he so 
 plainly says (and in connection with the poetic writings of 
 Greece and Rome, as in the eulogy of Shakespeare), namely, 
 
 name with an h— Johnson— only the works and the brief epitaph, rare 
 Ben Jonson, are thus spelt. Was not this a pseudonym — a hint ? 
 
142 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 that he " filled up all numbers" or wrote poetry in all styles 
 and metres. Enumerating the learned and eloquent men of the 
 early days of Elizabeth, when " Sir Nicholas Bacon was singular 
 and almost alone, he mentions Sir Philip Sydney, Master Richard 
 Hooker, Robert, Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Henry 
 Savile, Sir Edwin Sandys, and Sir Thomas Egerton, " a grave 
 and great orator, and best when he was provoked. But his 
 learned and able, though unfortunate successor, is he who hath 
 filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue which 
 may be compared or preferred to insolent Greece and haughty 
 Homer 
 
 It will be observed that Shakespeare and the whole of the 
 Elizabethan poets and dramatists, excepting Sir Philip Sydney, 
 are here omitted, and that Jonson considers that with Bacon's 
 death the main prop of learning, wit, eloquence, and poetry had 
 been taken away. 
 
 " In short, within his view, and about his time, were all the 
 wits born that could honour a language or help study. Now 
 things daily fall, wits go backward ; so that he may be named 
 and stand as the mark or dxM of our language." 
 
 Jonson is not here speaking of Bacon's scientific works. He 
 comes to them in a subsequent paragraph, wherein he again 
 shows his intimate knowledge of Bacon's powers, aims, and 
 character. " The Novum Organum" he says, is a book "which, 
 though by the most superficial of men, who cannot get beyond 
 the title of nominals, it is not penetrated nor understood, it 
 really openeth all defects of learning whatsoever, and is a book, 
 
 Qui longem noto scriptori proroget cevum." * 
 
 In connection with Bacon's acquaintance with actors and 
 his interest in the theatre, we must add a few words about one 
 distinguished member of the profession. Edward Allen, or 
 Alleyn, was the founder of Dulwich College, a munificent 
 endowment which has been the subject of much wonder and of 
 a considerable amount of unrewarded inquiry. How Alleyn 
 became possessed of the means to enter upon and carry through 
 so large and costly an enterprise has not yet been satisfactorily 
 explained to the public at large, but the facts are clear that in 
 
 * Horat. de Art. Poetica. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 143 
 
 1606 he began to acquire land at Dulwich, and the most 
 important of the valuable estates which now collectively form 
 the endowment of the college ; that in 1613 he contracted with 
 a certain John Benson for the erection of a school-house and 
 twelve alms-houses, and that in the course of the years of 1616 
 and 1617 the first members of his foundation were admitted to 
 the college. Alleyn now endeavoured to obtain from the King a 
 patent for the permanent establishment of his college by its 
 endowment by the King of lands to the value of £800. Bacon 
 opposed this, not because he objected to the charity, in which 
 he was interested, but because he considered that the crown 
 property would suffer if the King once began the system of 
 11 amortizing his tenures " for charitable purposes. Moreover, 
 alms-houses, he thought, were not unmixed blessings, whereas 
 endowments for educational purposes were much needed. The 
 King had lately rejected the applications of Sir Henry Savile 
 and Sir Edward Sandys for grants of money for such purposes ; 
 why, then, should he give such a large sum to Alleyn ? 
 
 Bacon's good judgment in preferring educational institutions 
 to alms-houses has been vindicated by the action of the Charity 
 Commission. By an act of Parliament passed in 1857 the alms- 
 men of the " hospital " were all pensioned off, and the foundation 
 completely reconstructed, simply as a collegiate institution, 
 with upper and lower schools. 
 
 Since, even in this matter, it has been attempted to put Bacon 
 in the wrong, by representing that "the impediments which 
 Alleyn experienced proceeded from the Lord Chancellor," and 
 by the implication that these impediments were needlessly 
 vexatious. Here is the letter which Bacon wrote on this occasion 
 to the Marquis of Buckingham. It has been truly described as 
 characteristic in point and quaintness : 
 
 " My Very Good Lord : 
 
 " I thank your lordship for your last loving letter. I now 
 write to give the King an account of a patent I have stayed at 
 the seal. It is of licence to give in mortmain eight hundred 
 pound land, though it be of tenure in chief, to Allen, that was 
 the player, for an hospital. 
 
 " I like well that Allen playeth the last act of his life so well ; 
 but if his Majesty give way thus to amortize his tenures, his 
 courts of wards shall decay, which I had well hoped should 
 improve. 
 
144 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 " But that which moveth me chiefly is, that his Majesty did 
 now lately absolutely deny Sir Henry Savile for £200, and Sir 
 Edwin Sandys for £100 to the perpetuating of two lectures, the 
 one in Oxford, the other in Cambridge, foundations of singular 
 honour to his Majesty (the best of learned kings), and of which 
 there is a great want ; whereas hospitals abound, and beggars 
 abound never a whit the less. 
 
 " If his Majesty do like to pass the book at all ; yet if he would 
 be pleased to abridge the £800 to £500, and then give way to 
 the other two books for the university, it were a princely work. 
 And I make an humble suit to the king, and desire your lordship 
 to join in it, that it mought be so. God ever preserve and 
 prosper you. 
 
 " Your lordship's most obliged friend 
 
 " and faithful servant, 
 
 " Fr. Verulam, Cane. 
 " York House, this 18th of August, 1616." 
 
 Whether or no the money for the lectures at the university 
 was granted by the King, deponents say not, but on June 21st, 
 1619, Bacon affixed the great seal of England to letters patent 
 from James I. giving license to Edward Allen " to found and 
 establish a college in Dulwich, to endure and remain for ever, 
 and to be called The College of God's Gift in Dulwich, in the 
 County of Surrey." 
 
 On September 13th of the same year the college was com- 
 pleted, " and so, in the quaint words of Fuller " * — words which 
 strangely echo those in Bacon's letter to the Duke of Buckingham 
 — " he who out-acted others in his life, outdid himself before his 
 death.' 1 
 
 Amongst the distinguished guests at the opening of the 
 college Bacon and his friends are conspicuous. Alleyn gives a 
 list of them, beginning with " The Lord Chancellor (Bacon), the 
 Lord of Arondell, Lord Ciecill (Cecil), Sir John Howland, High 
 Shreve, and Inigo Jones, the King's Surveyor." 
 
 Perhaps the latest, as it is the greatest tribute openly paid by 
 Bacon to the value of the theatre as a means of popular educa- 
 tion, is the passage which he omitted from the Advancement of 
 Learning in its early form, but inserted in the Be Augmentis in 
 
 * Old and New London, VI., 298. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 145 
 
 1623, when that work, the crowning work of his scientific and 
 philosophical labours, appeared simultaneously with the first 
 collected edition of the Shakespeare plays. The passage was not 
 intended to be read by the " profane vulgar," who might have 
 scorned the Chancellor for praising the much-despised stage. 
 It was, therefore, reservedjor the Latin, and thus rendered, for 
 the time, accessible only to the learned — for the most part 
 Bacon's friends : 
 
 " Dramatic poesy, which has the theatre for its world, would 
 be of excellent use if well directed. For the stage is capable 
 of no small influence, both of discipline and of corruption. Now, 
 of corruptions in this kind we have enough ; but the discipline 
 has, in our times, been plainly neglected. And though in 
 modern states play-acting is esteemed but as a toy, except when 
 it is too satirical and biting, yet among the ancients it was used 
 as a means of educating men's minds to virtue. Nay, it has 
 been regarded by learned men and great philosophers as a kind 
 of musician's bow, by which men's minds may be played upon. 
 And certainly it is most true, and one of the greatest secrets of 
 nature, that the minds of men are more open to impressions and 
 affections when many are gathered together, than when they are 
 alone." * 
 
 The brief records which are published of Bacon's last days 
 show him, still in sickness and poverty, possessing the same 
 sweet, gentle, patient, and generous spirit which had been with 
 him in the brilliant and exciting days of prosperity ; even in his 
 misfortune and ruin making himself happy with his books and 
 his experiments, trying to leave his work in such a condition 
 that others could readily take up and complete that which life 
 was too short and fortune too adverse for him to accomplish 
 before his death. 
 
 His will is brief, but touching in its thought for everybody 
 connected with him, and for the sanguine spirit which it 
 displays. f " My name and memory I leave to men's charitable 
 speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next ages." He 
 desired to be laid near the mother he so dearly loved and so 
 closely resembled, in St. Michael's Church, near Gorhambury. 
 Sir John Constable, his brother-in-law, was to have the chief 
 
 ♦DeAug. II. 13. 
 f The following is from Hepworth Dixon's Story, p. 479. 
 
146 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 care of his books. * Bequests were made to the poor of all the 
 parishes in which he had chiefly resided. An ample income, 
 beyond the terms of her marriage settlement, was secured to his 
 wife ; though, for reasons only darkly hinted in his will, a 
 subsequent clause or codicil revoked these bequests, and left the 
 Viscountess to her legal rights. Legacies were left to his friends 
 and servants ; to the Marquis d'Effiat " my book of orisons, 
 curiously rhymed ; " to the Earl of Dorset " my ring with the 
 crushed diamond, which the King gave me when Prince ; " to 
 Lord Cavendish " my casting bottle of gold." 
 
 Where, are these relics? Surely the recipients must have 
 valued such gifts, and handed them down to their posterity as 
 curiosities, if not as precious treasures. The booh of orisons, 
 especially, we should expect to find carefully preserved. Can 
 no one produce this most interesting prayer-book ? 
 
 The lease of Bacon's rooms in Gray's Inn, valued at three 
 hundred pounds, was to be sold, and the money given to poor 
 scholars. The residue of his estate, he believed, would be 
 sufficient to found two lectureships on natural history and the 
 physical sciences at the universities. "It was a beautiful, 
 beneficent dream," but not to be realized, for the property and 
 personality left by Bacon hardly sufficed to pay his debts ; yet in 
 the last clause, which has just been quoted, we see a repetition 
 of the earnest expression of his opinion as to the " great want " 
 of foundations for the perpetuating of lectures, which he men- 
 tioned in his letter to Buckingham. As usual, he endeavoured, 
 poor as he was, to supply the necessary funds, which the King 
 had " denied." Probably, had the grant been denied to Alleyn, 
 Bacon intended himself to raise the money for the completion of 
 Dulwich College and its alms-houses. 
 
 The winter of 1625-6 was the most dismal he had known; the 
 cold intense, the city blighted with plague, the war abroad 
 disastrous. Bacon remained at Gorhambury, " hard at work on 
 his Sylva Sylvarum" But that work is merely a newly-arranged 
 collection of old notes, and its construction would not have been 
 nearly sufficient occupation for such a mind. More probably 
 Bacon was now engaged in putting together, arranging, or 
 
 ♦Another copy of his will consigns the charge of his "cabinet and 
 presses full of papers " to three trustees, Constable, Selden, and Herbert, , 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 147 
 
 polishing the works which he was about to leave behind, to be 
 brought out in due season by the faithful friends to whom he 
 entrusted them, and to whom he must, at this time, have given 
 instructions as to their future disposition and publication. 
 
 A Parliament was called at Westminster, for February, to 
 which he received the usual summons, for he had been restored 
 to his legal rights, and reinstated amongst his peers. But he 
 was too ill to obey the writ. He rode once to Gray's Inn, but it 
 was in April, and the severity of the winter had not yet passed. 
 He caught the cold of which he died.* Taking the air one day 
 with his physician, Dr. Witherbourne, towards Highgate, the 
 snow lying deep, it occurred to Bacon to inquire if flesh might 
 not be preserved in snow f as well as in salt. Pulling up at a 
 small cottage near the foot of Highgate Hill, he bought a hen 
 from an old woman, plucked and drew it ; gathered up snow in 
 his hands, and stuffed it into the fowl. Smitten with a sudden 
 chill, but doubting the nature of his attack, Bacon drove to the 
 house of his friend Lord Arundel, close by, where Witherbourne 
 had him put into the bed from whence he rose no more. 
 
 It is hardly possible to keep patient on reading that the sheets 
 between which the invalid was laid " were damp, as no one had 
 slept in them for a year," and, although the servants warmed 
 the bed Avith a pan of coals, the damp inflamed his cold. 
 
 From the first a gentle fever set in ; he lingered just a week ; 
 and then, on the 9th of April, 1626, expired of congestion of the 
 lungs. { 
 
 He was buried, as directed, near his mother, in the parish 
 church of St. Michael, near St. Albans. This picturesque and 
 lonely little church became a place of pilgrimage, and will, we 
 believe, become so once more. The obligations of the world are, 
 as his biographer says, of a kind not to be overlooked. There 
 is no department in literature or science or philanthropy, no 
 
 ♦The following, with three other accounts of Bacon's death, the writer 
 now has reason to believe are mere blinds, " puzzolan powder " or puzzling 
 dust contrived to conceal the fact that Bacon now retired and died to the 
 world, spending (under many names and disguises) a very long life in 
 writing and adding to the standard literature of his country. 
 
 | This idea was the original thought which has since given rise to the 
 various systems of preserving and transporting frozen meat from distant 
 countries. 
 
 X H. Dixon, from Court and Times of Charles, I. 74 ; Lord's Journal, III. 
 492 ; Aubrey, II. 227. See Ante-Preface. 
 
148 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 organization for the promulgation of religious knowledge, which 
 does not owe something to Francis Bacon. 
 
 To him the patriot, the statesman, the law reformer, the 
 scientific jurist, the historian, are also indebted, and, apart from 
 all debatable works, the collector of anecdote, the lover of good 
 wit, of humorous wisdom, and of noble writing, must all find 
 that he has laid them under obligations far greater than they 
 may be aware of. It is hard, indeed, to say who amongst us is 
 not the easier in circumstances, the brighter in intellect, the 
 purer in morals, the worthier in conduct, through the teachings 
 and the labours of Francis Bacon. The principles of his 
 philosophy are of universal application, and they will endure as 
 long as the world itself. 
 
 To this conclusion must those come who contemplate his life 
 and works from the standpoint which we have been occupying. 
 But not all will care to take the same view. Let us, therefore, 
 shift our position and take a more particular observation of 
 some circumstances connected with Bacon which seem to be 
 mysterious, or at least not thoroughly explained. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 149 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DEFICIENCIES OF LEARNING IN THE TIMES OF ELIZABETH 
 AND JAMES I. 
 "Defect is a reptile that basely crawls upon the earth." — Bacon. 
 
 " What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason ! how infinite in 
 faculty ! . . . Yet man delights not me. . . . What should such fellows 
 as I do, crawling between heaven and earth ? " — Hamlet. 
 
 BEFORE trying to follow Bacon in his inquiries as to the 
 deficiencies of learning, let us reflect upon the Herculean 
 nature of the work which he was proposing to himself. 
 He might satirise his own vast speculations ; he may even have 
 been perfectly well aware that his enthusiastic visions could 
 never be realised, but a universal reformation was his aim, and 
 who will say that he failed to achieve it ? 
 
 Those " good old times " in which Bacon lived were any- 
 thing but good ; they were coarse, ignorant, violent, " dark 
 and dangerous." The Church, Bacon said, " which should be 
 the chief band of religion, was turned to superstition, or made 
 the matter of quarrelling and execrable actions ; of murdering 
 princes, butchery of people, and subversion of states and 
 governments. The land full of oppression, taxation, privileges 
 broken, factions desperate, poverty great, knowledge at a stand- 
 still, learning barren, discredited by the errors, contentions, 
 conceit, and fantastical pedantry of so-called learned men. The 
 literary spirit of the ancients dead. At the universities and 
 schools words were taught, but not matter. He even questions 
 whether it would not be well to abolish the scholastic system 
 altogether, and to set up a new form of teaching. The list of 
 sciences taught, and which he finds to be full of follies and 
 errors, or totally deficient, forbids any wonder at his verdict, 
 that, whereas present methods were rotten and useless to 
 advance learning, the old fabric should be rased to the ground, 
 and a new Solomon's House erected. 
 
150 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 But is it not a little surprising that, even if Bacon could thus 
 speak in his early days of the ignorance, the folly, the futility 
 of the learning of his time, the dulness, apathy, or ignorant 
 bigotry of his contemporaries, the degradation of the stage, 
 the decay of the wisdom of the ancients, the barrenness of the 
 modern muse, yet that we should find him reiterating, with 
 even more forcible expressions, these same opinions at the very 
 end of his life ? In his crowning work, the De Augmentis, 
 published in 1623, he is as earnest in his strictures on the 
 prevailing learning (or the want of it) as he was in the days of 
 his youth. Was he a detractor, or a boastful, self-satisfied 
 man, who could see no good in any works but his own ? Or 
 was he a rash and inconsiderate speaker, uttering words which 
 do not bear the test of time, or which were confuted and 
 rejected by his contemporaries ? We turn to the short life of 
 Bacon by his secretary, Dr. Rawley, a man who does not waste 
 words, and whose statements have become classical as they are 
 unassailably accurate : — 
 
 " He was no dashing * man, as some men are, but ever a 
 eountenancer and fosterer of another marts parts. Neither was 
 he one that would appropriate the speech wholly to himself, or 
 delight to outvie others. He contemned no marts observations, 
 but would light his torch at every marts candle. His opinions 
 were for the most part binding, and not contradicted by any, 
 tohich may well be imputed either to the well-weighing of his 
 sentences by the scales of truth and reason, or else to the 
 reverence and estimation in which he was held. I have often 
 observed, and so have other men of great account, that if he had 
 occasion to repeat another marts words after him, he had an use 
 and faculty to dress them in better vestments and apparel than 
 they had before, so that the author should find his own speech 
 much amended, and yet the substance of it still retained, as if it 
 had been natural to him to use good forms, as Ovid spake of his 
 faculty of versifying : 
 
 ' Et quod tentabam scribere, versus erat.' " | 
 
 * Rawley means, not a man who used his wit to put others out of 
 countenance. See Costard in Love's Labour's Lost, V. 2 : " An honest 
 man, look you, and soon dashed." Spedding, Works, II. 12. 
 
 | " He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." (Pope's Epistle to 
 Dr. Arbuthnot.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 151 
 
 Bacon's most malicious enemies have not attempted to 
 contradict or disprove these statements by one of his closest 
 friends and faithful " servants." Why, then, does Bacon 
 entirely ignore the unparalleled outburst of learning, the 
 prodigious strides made in every department of science, the 
 spirit of inquiry and of longing after truth, the galaxy of wits 
 and poets, the " giant mmds " with whom, so we are told, 
 the age was teeming ? We might read Bacon's acknowledged 
 works from cover to cover without suspecting that such persons 
 as Hooker or Ben Jonson, Burton, Spenser, or Shakspere ever 
 existed. Comprehensive as are his works, summing up the 
 deficiencies of knowledge in all its departments, we find no 
 allusion to that marvellous phenomenon — patent apparently to 
 all eyes but those of Bacon himself — of the sudden and 
 simultaneous revival of learning which began to take place 
 immediately after he left Cambridge at the age of fifteen. 
 
 The great impediments of knowledge, and the points which, 
 in Bacon's judgment, rendered his times so unfavourable for its 
 advance, were, in the first place, the scattering or " diversion " 
 of clever men, the want of "a collection of wits of several parts 
 or nations," and of any system by which wits could contribute 
 to help one another, and mutually to correct errors and 
 customary conceits. 
 
 This deficiency was the cause of another impediment to 
 knowledge, the lack, namely, of any means for keeping "a 
 succession of wits of several times, whereby one might refine 
 the other." There was no system by which newly acquired 
 knowledge could be handed down, for the manner of the 
 traditions of learned men " was utterly unfit for the amplifica- 
 tion of knowledge." 
 
 The result of such impediments in and before Bacon's time 
 was, he said, such as to lead men to conclude, either that 
 knowledge is but a task for one man's life (and then vain was 
 the complaint that life is short and art is long) ; or else that the 
 knowledge that now is, is but a shrub and not that tree which 
 is never dangerous, but where it is to the purpose of knowing 
 good and evil in order that man may choose the evil. An 
 aspiration which rises into desire rather to follow one's own 
 will .than to obey, contains, he says, a manifest " defection " 
 or imperfection. 
 
152 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 He is also of opinion that " the pretended succession of wits," 
 such as it is, has been ill-placed, and that too much absolute 
 reliance was put upon the philosophy of one or two men to 
 the exclusion of others. Also that the system of handling- 
 philosophy by parts, and not as a whole, was very injurious, 
 and a great impediment to knowledge. He deprecates "the 
 slipping-off particular sciences from the root and stock of 
 universal knowledge," quoting the opinion of Cicero, that 
 eloquence is not merely " a shop of good words and elegancies,* 
 but a treasury and receipt of all knowledges ; " and the example 
 of Socrates, who, instead of teaching " an universal sapience and 
 knowledge, both of words and matter, divorced them, and 
 withdrew philosophy, leaving rhetoric to itself, which thereby 
 became a barren andunnoble science." 
 
 Bacon argues that a specialist in any branch of science, 
 "whether he be an oculist in physic, or perfect in some one 
 tittle of the law, may prove ready and subtle, but not deep or 
 sufficient, even in the one special subject which is his province ; 
 because it is a matter of common discourse of the chain of 
 sciences, how they are linked together" inasmuch as the 
 Grecians, who had terms at will, have fitted it of a name of 
 circle learning. 
 
 Although Bacon speaks of this Chain of Sciences as a matter 
 of common discourse, it seems to have been so only in the circle 
 of his own friends. To forge such links and to weld such a 
 chain was, it would seem, one part of his method, and the con- 
 ventional design which represents this linking together of 
 universal knowledge, both earthly and heavenly, is to be seen on 
 a vast number of the title-pages and ornamental designs of the 
 books which emanated from Bacon's great society for the 
 advancement of learning. As a rule these chains will be found 
 in combination with a figure of Pan, or Universal Nature, with 
 the head of Truth, or universal philosophy or religion, and with 
 the peculiar wooden scroll or frame-work which we interpret as 
 figuring " the Universal Frame of the World." 
 
 Since then the end and scope of knowledge had been so 
 generally mistaken that men were not even well advised as to 
 what it was that they sought, but wandered up and down in the 
 
 * Compare Bacon's own Promus of Formularies and Elegancies. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 153 
 
 way, making no advance, but setting themselves at last, " in 
 the right way to the wrong place," Bacon takes in hand the 
 business of demonstrating " what is the true end, scope or office 
 of knowledge, and to make, as it were, a calendar or inventory 
 of the wealth, furniture, or means of man, according to his 
 present estate, as far as it is known." By this means, he adds, 
 " I may, at the best, give^some awaking note, both of the wants 
 in man's present condition, and the nature of the supplies to be 
 wished ; though, for mine own part, neither do I much build 
 upon my present anticipations, neither do I think ourselves yet 
 learned or wise enough to wish reasonably ; for, as it asks some 
 knowledge to demand a question not impertinent, so it asketh 
 some sense to make a wish not absurd." 
 
 The Interpretation of Nature, from which these passages are 
 taken, includes only a fragment of the " inventory," which is to 
 be found in the form of a separate " catalogue " of one hundred 
 and thirty histories which are required for the equipment of 
 philosophy. It is also in the Be Augmentis, which is in truth 
 an Exposition of the Deficiencies which Bacon noted in every 
 conceived branch of science and literature, and of the practical 
 means which he proposed to adopt for the supply of these 
 tremendous gaps in the chain of universal knowledge. 
 
 The " Catalogue of Histories " was published at the end of 
 the Novum Organum in 1620, but it appears to have been 
 written much earlier ; for a few lines at the end show that at 
 the time when he penned this list he was looking forward to the 
 accomplishment of all that is included in it. It seems im- 
 probable that he would, so late in life, have published this 
 catalogue, had it been merely the airy fabric of a vision. On 
 the other hand, there are works extant which were first pub- 
 lished anonymously during his life-time, and which answer 
 admirably to the titles of many of these " particular histories," 
 which, we observe, are not necessarily to be original works, but 
 "collections" or contributions to the equipment of philosophy. 
 In other words, they were to be the. furniture and household 
 stuff of the new Solomon's House. 
 
 It will be profitable to spend a few minutes in noting with 
 Bacon some of the departments of knowledge which he found 
 to be either totally uncultivated, or so weakly handled as to be 
 unproductive. In so doing we must not overlook the fact that, 
 
 L 
 
154 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 in every case where he notes such deficiencies, he makes, as he 
 says, some effort toward supplying them. 
 
 Unless we take some pains to follow Bacon's meaning and 
 line of argument, it is impossible to realize what is meant by 
 his statement that truth was barren of fruits fit for the use of 
 man. Modern teaching and traditions as to the marvellous 
 revival of learning in the time of Elizabeth have blinded us to 
 the fact that knowledge was at the very lowest ebb. The first 
 attempt made by William Grocyn, in the end of the fifteenth 
 century, to introduce the study of Greek into the University of 
 Oxford, was regarded as an alarming innovation, and roused 
 strong opposition. His distinguished pupil, John Colet, after- 
 wards Dean of St. Paul's, and founder of St. Paul's School, was 
 exposed to the persecution of the clergy through his promotion 
 of a spirit of inquiry and freedom of thought and speech. We 
 read that in Paris, about the same time,* ::: " " The Juris Consult, 
 Conrad Heresbach, affirms that he heard a monk announce from 
 the pulpit, ' A new language, called Greek, has been found, 
 against which strict precautions are requisite, as it propagates 
 all kinds of heresie. A number of persons have already pro- 
 cured a work in that tongue called the New Testament — a book 
 full of briars and vipers. As to Hebrew, all those who learn it 
 turn Jews at once.' " 
 
 These dense prejudices were about to be dissipated by the 
 creation, by Francis I., of the Royal College. Its professors 
 were to be nominated by the King, regardless of university 
 degrees, and the college was to be the refuge of free-thinkers 
 of all countries. Such an innovation was reprobated by the 
 pedants of the old school, and a tempest of wrath and indigna- 
 tion greeted the enterprise. Beza, syndic of the theological 
 faculty, who later on headed a religious persecution, was a 
 leader in this contest, and in this curious struggle we trace the 
 germ of the conflict between Faith and Science, between Church 
 and State, a conflict which Bacon spent his life in trying to 
 appease and terminate. 
 
 Beza pretended that religion would be lost if Greek and 
 Hebrew were taught by others than theologians. Were not all 
 
 * Francis I. and His Times. 0. Coignet. Translated by F. Twemlow 
 Bentley. London, 1888. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 155 
 
 Bibles brought from that heretical nest, Germany, or from the 
 Jews ? The royal professors replied : We are not theologians, 
 but grammarians and scholars. If you understand Greek and 
 Hebrew, attend our classes and denounce our heresies ; but if 
 you do not understand these languages, why interfere with us ? 
 
 Parliament was puzzled what to do. Theology and Hebrew 
 were dead letters to it. Iving Francis was in fits of laughter at 
 its evident embarrassment. Finally it decided to wash its hands 
 of the affair, and to leave the disputants to settle it amongst 
 themselves. Francis now completed the discomfiture of his 
 adversaries by nominating as royal printer of Hebrew and Latin 
 classics Robert Estienne, the distinguished editor and typo- 
 grapher. Theologians detested Estienne, because his translations 
 of Holy Writ corrected their falsifications and misrepresenta- 
 tions, and exposed their ignorance and insincerity. His first 
 translation of the Hebrew Bible appeared in 1532. It was 
 denounced as sacrilegious, and its author as meriting the stake. 
 During the King's absence from Paris, Estienne's house was 
 ransacked, and he was forced to fly. But on the King's return 
 Estienne was reinstated. Search was made throughout Europe 
 and Asia for the old manuscripts, and these Estienne re- 
 produced, the King superintending, with great interest, the 
 beauty and perfection of type, destined, as these books were, to 
 enrich his magnificent library at Fontainebleau. 
 
 Amongst the distinguished men who, in these early days, were 
 connected with the Royal College of Francis I. are the names 
 of men whose works were afterwards studied and quoted by 
 Bacon and his own school, and whose successors seem to have 
 become some of the most able and earnest workers on behalf of 
 his far more liberal and far-reaching secret society. It is easy 
 to see that Bacon, during his residence in the French court, 
 must almost certainly have been drawn into the society of many 
 members of this Royal College, whose duty it was to bring 
 before the notice of the King " all men of the greatest learning, 
 whether French or foreigners." 
 
 But, in spite of this Royal College, learning had not made 
 much advance, even in France. Although Bacon must have 
 witnessed the working of the college when he was in Paris, yet 
 he says nothing in its praise. The method was as faulty as ever, 
 although speech, and consequently thought, had become freer. 
 
156 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Bacon's chief complaint against the " schoolmen," and against 
 the ancient philosophies, was not so much regarding their 
 matter as their method. The matter had become mere words, 
 and the continual repetition of the same words made even 
 " truth itself tired of iteration." He rightly complained that the 
 writers of his time only looked out for facts in support of pre- 
 conceived theories, or else, where authority and prejudice did 
 not lead the way, constructed their theories on a hasty and 
 unmethodical examination of a few facts collected at random.* 
 In either case they neglected to test or verify their generalizations, 
 whilst they wasted time and study in drawing out, by logical 
 arguments, long trains of elaborate conclusions, which, for aught 
 they knew, might start from erroneous theories. 
 
 The whole of Bacon's teaching, then, goes to enforce upon 
 his disciples the necessity of examining and proving every 
 statement, trusting to no " authority," however great, whose 
 assertions or axioms cannot stand the test of microscopic inspec- 
 tion, or which are not seen to be " drawn from the very centre 
 of the sciences." 
 
 " How long," he asks, " shall we let a few received authors 
 stand up like Hercules' Columns, beyond which there shall be no 
 sailing or discovery in science ? " He proceeds to indicate the 
 various parts of his method by which learning was to be 
 collected, rectified, and finally stored up in the " receptacles V 
 which he would have provided in " places of learning, in books, 
 and in the persons of the learned." In other words, he would 
 provide schools, colleges, and libraries ; he would facilitate 
 printing, the publication of good books, and the institution of 
 lectures, with paid professors of all arts and sciences. We look 
 around, and are overwhelmed with admiration of all that has 
 been accomplished upon Bacon's method. But he did not live 
 to see it. Doubtless his life was one long series of disappoint- 
 ments, lightened only by his joyous, hopeful spirit, and by the 
 absolute conviction which possessed him that he had truth on 
 his side, and that " Time, that great arbitrator, would decide " 
 in his favour. 
 
 " For myself," he says, " I may truly say that, both in this 
 
 * See an excellent and very clear exposition of this in " Francis Bacon" 
 by Prof. Fowler. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 157 
 
 present work, and in those I intend to publish hereafter, I often 
 advisedly and deliberately throw aside the dignity of my name 
 and wit (if such thing be) in my endeavour to advance human 
 interests; and being one that should properly, perhaps, be an 
 architect in philosophy and the sciences, I turn common labourer, 
 hodman, anything that is wanted ; taking upon myself the burden 
 and execution of many things which must needs be done, 
 and which others, through an inborn pride, shrink from and 
 decline." * 
 
 Dr. Rawley records Bacon's gentle regret that he that should 
 be an architect in this erecting and building of the new 
 philosophy " should be forced to be a workman and a labourer, 
 to dig the clay and make the brick, and, like the Israelites, to 
 gather the stubble and straw over all the fields, to burn the 
 bricks withal. But he knoweth that, except he do it, nothing 
 will be done : men are so set to despise the means of their own 
 good. And as for the baseness of many of the experiments, as 
 long as they be God's works, they are honourable enough ; true 
 axioms must be drawn from plain experience, and not from 
 doubtful, and his course is, to make wonders plain, and not 
 plain things wonders." 
 
 So, in the thousand paragraphs of the Natural History, or 
 Sylva Sylvarum, we find each paragraph recording, not mere 
 speculations, or repetitions of theories or conclusions supposed 
 to have been established by former philosophers, but reports of 
 experiments (sometimes very strange and original) made always 
 with a definite object, and generally accompanied by some 
 remarks explaining the causes of the phenomena observed. 
 Bacon is never ashamed to admit his own ignorance of causes, 
 and nothing which tends to their recovery is, in his eyes, 
 insignificant or unimportant. 
 
 " It is," he says, " esteemed a kind of dishonour to learning, 
 to descend into inquiries about common and familiar things, 
 except they be such as are considered secrets, or very rare." 
 Plato, he says, ridiculed this "supercilious arrogancy " ; and 
 " the truth is that the best information is not always derived 
 from the greatest examples, but it often comes to pass that mean 
 and small things discover great, better than great can discover 
 
 * De Aug. VII. 1. 
 
158 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 the small, as that secret of nature, the turning of iron touched 
 with the loadstone to the earth, was found out in needles, and 
 not in bars of iron." 
 
 The collector of facts he compares to the ant heaping up its 
 store for future use. He does not despise the ant, but com- 
 mends its intelligence, as superior to that of the grasshopper, 
 which, like the mere talker, keeps up a chirping noise, but does 
 no work. The notes which he collects in such a store as the 
 Sylva Sylvarum (although, as we firmly believe, ambiguous in 
 meaning, and in their more important bearings symbolical or 
 parabolic) give a good idea of the want of observation and 
 general ignorance in Bacon's times on matters with which 
 children in the poorest schools are now made familiar. What- 
 ever double purpose this work on Natural History may have 
 had, these simple notes were offered to the public as interesting 
 and instructive information, and as such were received by the 
 learned in the seventeenth century. 
 
 For instance, we read that alkali or potash is used in making 
 glass ; that airs may be wholesome or unwholesome ; that some 
 flowers are sweeter than others ; that some, but not all, can be 
 distilled into perfumes ; that some have the scent in the leaf, as 
 sweetbriar,* others in the flower, as violets and roses ; that 
 most odours smell best crushed or broken ; that excess in 
 nourishment is hurtful — if a child be extremely fat it seldom 
 grows very tall ; all mouldiness is a beginning of decay or 
 putrefaction ; heat dries and shrivels things, damp rots ; some 
 parts of vegetables and plants are more nourishing than others ; 
 yolks of eggs are more nourishing than the whites ; soup made 
 of bones and sinews would probably be very nourishing ; 
 bubbles are in the form of a sphere,! air within and a little 
 skin of water without. No beast has azure, carnation or green 
 hair ; if mustard provoketh sneezing, and a sharp thing to the 
 eyes, tears. Sleep nourishes — after-dinner sleep is good for old 
 people. Boiling gives a bubbling sound ; mincing meat makes 
 
 * " The leaf of eglantine out-sweetened not thy breath." Cymb. IV. 2- 
 
 | See Emblems of a Bubble, in reference to the world. 
 
 J This is alluded to in Troilus and Cressida, I. 2, where Pandarus 
 
 says that they are laughing at the white hair on Troilus' chin, and 
 
 Cressida answers : " Ant had been a green hair, I should have laughed 
 
 too." 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 159 
 
 it easier for old teeth ; Indian maize when boiled is good to eat ; 
 flax and white of eggs are good for wounds. 
 
 Now, although it is true that here is hardly one particular 
 which is not turned to excellent account in the Shakespeare 
 plays, and in many minor works of Bacon's time, it is impossible 
 to ignore the fact that Bacon makes notes of these as things not 
 generally known; that the book in which he registered them was 
 not published until after his death, and then, as we are especially 
 told, with the notes revised, or not arranged in the order in 
 which they were written. 
 
 Amongst the commonplaces which we have enumerated, there 
 are other statements incorrect as they are picturesque and 
 poetical. Probably Bacon did not believe them himself ; they 
 are often introduced with some such modification as "It may 
 be that," or "It is said that." Thus we are told that gums 
 and rock crystals are the exudations of stones ; that air can be 
 turned into water, water into oil ; that the celestial bodies are 
 most of them true fire or flames ; that flame and air do not 
 mingle except for an instant, or in the vital spirits of vegetables 
 and living creatures. Everywhere the Paracelsian and very 
 poetical idea of the Vital Spirits of Nature is perceptible, and the 
 whole of these notions are resolved into poetry in Shakespeare 
 and elsewhere. It is not too much to say that there is in the 
 plays hardly an allusion to any subject connected with science 
 or natural history which is not traceable to some note in these 
 commonplace books, the apparently dry records of disjointed 
 facts or experiments. 
 
 Not only arts and arguments, but demonstrations and proofs 
 according to analogies, he also " notes as deficient." And here 
 is a point in which his observations are distinctly in touch with 
 the Rosicrucian doctrines, or, to put it more accurately, a point 
 in which the Rosicrucians are seen to have followed Baconian 
 doctrines. For they made it a rule to accept nothing as scientific 
 truth which did not admit of such proof and demonstration by 
 experiment or analogy. 
 
 As an example of the deficiency in this quarter, Bacon gives 
 the form and nature of light.* That no due investigation should 
 have been made of light, he considers " an astonishing piece of 
 
 * Here, we think, is the customary double allusion, light being, in his 
 symbolic language, synonymous with pure truth. 
 
160 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 negligence." Let inquiry be made of it, and, meanwhile, let it 
 be set down as deficient. So of heat and cold, of flame, of dense 
 things and rare, of the nature of sulphur, mercury, salt, and 
 metals, the nature of air, of its conversion into water, and of 
 water into oil ; almost everything, in fact, which we now call 
 Natural Science, he either marks among the deficients, or as 
 being handled in a manner of which he " prefers to make no 
 judgment.' 1 
 
 Since doubts are better than false conclusions, Bacon sets 
 down a calendar of doubts or problems in nature as wanting, 
 and probably few students of works of the class here indicated 
 will find much difficulty in identifying the works written to 
 supply these needs. 
 
 In short, Bacon shows that the Sciences, whether of natural 
 philosophy, physics, or chemistry, were in a parlous state, full 
 of barren doctrines, empty theories, and bootless inquisitions ; 
 that if ever they were to be revived and made to bring forth 
 fruits for the food of man, they must be "proyned" about the 
 roots, nourished and watered, lopped of an infinite number of 
 excrescences and useless branches, and grafted anew. 
 
 So with all the allied sciences of husbandry, horticulture, 
 distillation, fermentation, germination, putrefaction, etc., we 
 have but to consider the " experiments,' ' proposed or explained, 
 in the Sylva Sylvarum (for the special use, as we believe, of 
 Bacon's learned brotherhood or "Illuminati"), to realise the 
 fact that the world (even the learned world) was indeed very 
 ignorant, and that these scientific studies were part of the great 
 " birth of time," the Renaissance, the seeds and weak begin- 
 nings which time should bring to ripeness. Many of these 
 observations are repeated in the Anatomy of Melancholy, which 
 seems to be another " collection," this time the sweepings of 
 Bacon's commonplace books on subjects medical and meta- 
 physical ; a detailed examination of the mutual relations between 
 mind and body, which are briefly treated of in the Advancement 
 of Learning, and other places. 
 
 The History of Winds supplies particulars for all the poetic 
 allusions to meteorological or nautical matters which are met 
 with in the plays, poems, and emblem books of the time. Here 
 it will be seen how weirdly and exquisitely these studies of 
 meteorological facts are interwoven with metaphysical subtleties, 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 161 
 
 such as are met with in Macbeth and The Tempest. Meteorology 
 and the " sane astrology " which Bacon finds to be a desidera- 
 tum, mix themselves up with the science of medicine — in his 
 time " forsaken by philosophy," "a weak thing, not much better 
 than an empirical art," " a science more practised than laboured, 
 more laboured than advanced ; the labours spent on it being 
 rather in a circle than in progression." 
 
 As for the art of prolonging life, he " sets it down as deficient," 
 and writes a book (apparently with a double meaning) on the 
 subject. The History of Life and Death is bound up with the 
 Rosicrucian New Atlantis and the Natural History, which we 
 believe correspond with the Librum Naturae of the fraternity, 
 and the simple remedies and recipes which Bacon prescribes 
 and publishes stand as records of the elementary state of know- 
 ledge in his time. Metaphysics lead to the consideration of 
 the doctrine of dreams — " a thing which has been laboriously 
 handled and full of follies." It is connected with the " doctrine 
 of the sensible soul, which is a fit subject of inquiries, even as 
 regards its substance, but such inquiries appear to me de- 
 ficient." * 
 
 The knowledge of human nature, of men's wants, thoughts, 
 characters, is also entirely neglected. "The nature and state 
 of man is a subject which deserves to be emancipated and made 
 a knowledge of itself." In the Sylva Sylvarum he devotes many 
 paragraphs to preparations for advancing this much-neglected 
 art, noting even the small gestures and tokens by which the 
 body of man reflects and betrays the mind. These notes 
 furnish a compendium of hints not only for the metaphysician, 
 but also for the artist, the orator, and the actor ; there is hardly 
 one which is not found used with effect in the Shakespeare 
 plays. 
 
 Let us sum up briefly the deficiences in knowledge which, so 
 far, we have learnt from Bacon to observe in the works of his 
 predecessors, but which were being rapidly supplied during his 
 life and in the succeeding generation : — 
 
 Natural Science,^ or Physics and Chemistry, with experi- 
 ments and demonstrations — deficient. 
 
 * De Aug. IV. Spedding, IV. 372—379. 
 
 t See Advancement of Learning and De Augmentis ; Nov. Organum ; 
 New Atlantis ; Sylva Sylvarum. 
 
162 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Natural History* excepting a few books of subleties, varieties, 
 catalogues, etc. — deficient. 
 
 Horticulture and Husbandry, "\ totally or partially deficient. 
 
 Meteorology £ in all its branches — deficient. 
 
 Astronomy, § weak, with good foundations, but by no means 
 sound. 
 
 Astrology, || not to be despised, but not practised so as to be 
 useful or sane. 
 
 Medicine, $ Pathology and the Art of Prolonging life — 
 deficient. 
 
 Metaphysics** or the Doctrine of the Human Soul, and of the 
 influence of mind on body — deficient. 
 
 Physiognomy and Gestures, |f study of them — deficient. 
 
 In order to minister to the extreme poverty of science in all 
 these departments, Bacon, as has been said, drew up a catalogue 
 of 130 " Histories " which he found wanting, and which he 
 strove, by his own exertions, and with help from friends, to 
 furnish, or at least to sketch out. 
 
 Those who nourish the belief that, in the sixteenth century, 
 the ordinary scribe or author could pick from casual reading, by 
 intercourse in general society, or by his pennyworth of observa- 
 tion, such a knowledge of scientific facts as is exhibited (though 
 in a simple form) in the best plays of the time, will do well to 
 consider this catalogue, and to reflect that the particulars in it 
 are, for the most part, discussed as new and fruitful branches of 
 information, or food for speculation, in the works of Bacon. To 
 this consideration it would be well to add a study of the works 
 of a similar description current before Bacon began to publish, 
 and to see how much of the " popular science " which we 
 connect with Bacon was known, say, in the year 1575, beyond 
 the walls of the monastery or the cell of the philosopher. 
 Then see how far such knowledge reappears in any pre- 
 Baconian poetry. 
 
 * Sylva Sylvarum ; New Atlantis ; Parasceve. 
 
 | Sylva Sylvarum ; Ess. Of Gardens ; Plantations. 
 
 t Nov. Org. ; Hist, of Winds ; Ebb and Flow of the Sea, etc. 
 
 § Thema Coeli. || De Aug. ; Sylva Sylvarum. 
 
 % Hist. Life and Death, etc. ; Ess. Regimen of Health, Recipes, etc. 
 
 ** Doctrine of the Human Soul ; De Aug., etc., etc. 
 
 tt De Aug. ; Sylv. Sylv. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 163 
 
 Bacon's method, says Spedding, in his dialogue with Ellis, 
 " presupposed a History (or dictionary as you call it) of universal 
 nature, as a storehouse of facts to work on." * In these words 
 the speaker uses the term expressing the idea of Promus et 
 Condus — the idea of a store from which things new and old 
 should be drawn, of a store of rough material from which perfect 
 pieces should be produced. Such a store he was himself en- 
 gaged in making. 
 
 To Spedding's inquiry his interlocutor replies : " Bacon wanted 
 a collection large enough to give him the command of all the 
 Avenues to the secrets of nature." It almost seems as if Mr. 
 Ellis were quoting from the Promus itself, where many hints 
 seem to be given of Bacon's proposals for working his secret 
 society, and where we find these entries : " Avenues — Secrett 
 de Dieu ; Secrett de Dieu." Are not these secrets of God corre- 
 spondent to the secrets of nature to which Bacon would open 
 avenues ? Are they not the " things " known to the soothsayer 
 who confesses, when taxed with his unusual knowledge : 
 
 " In nature's infinite book of secresy 
 A little I can read."! 
 
 And we cannot fail to observe that the study of such things 
 was attended with some perils to the student whose object was 
 to keep them as much as possible out of sight and screened 
 from hostile observation. The catalogue, instead of being in- 
 corporated, as one would naturally expect, with the treatise 
 itself, is detached from it, and sometimes omitted from the pub- 
 lication. Some of the entries, moreover, are incomprehensible, 
 excepting on the assumption that they, again, moralise two 
 meanings in one word — of which more anon. 
 
 But we hear it said, " Grant that science, in modern accepta- 
 tion of the term, was a new thing in Bacon's time, and that he 
 held nearly every department in it to be deficient ; what of that? 
 Grant that there was then no such thing as popular teaching on 
 these subjects, and that all branches of science have made 
 tremendous strides during the past century. The same argu- 
 ments cannot apply to the literature of the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries. Have we not all been taught that those were 
 
 * Spedding, Works, Preface to Parasceve. 
 t Ant. and Cleo. I. 2. 
 
164 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 the times when Spenser and Shakespeare grew to their full 
 powers, Spenser representing England with its religious sense 
 of duty combative ; Shakespeare, enabled by that English earnest- 
 ness to speak through the highest poetry the highest truth ? 
 That the depths were stirred, and the spirit of the time drew 
 from the souls of men the sweetest music, ennobling and elevat- 
 ing rough soldiers, mechanics, and country louts into poets of 
 the highest degree ? " 
 
 But in truth Bacon condemned the literary part of the 
 knowledge of his own time before he touched upon the scientific 
 part, although, for convenience, the order is here reversed. The 
 second book of the Advancement treats of " the Divisions of the 
 Sciences." There " all human learning " is divided into History, 
 Poesy, and Philosophy, with reference to the three intellectual 
 faculties, Memory, Imagination, Reason, and we are shown that 
 the same holds good in theology or divinity. 
 
 History he again divides into Natural and Civil (which last in- 
 cludes Ecclesiastical and Literary History), and Natural History 
 is subdivided into histories of generations and arts, and into 
 Natural History, narrative and inductive. So we see that the 
 science comes last in Bacon's contemplations and method, 
 although, in the chair of sciences, it connects itself with the first 
 part of human learning — history. But here at once he discovers 
 a deficiency. "The history of learning — without which the 
 history of the world seems to me as the statue of Polyphemus 
 without the eye, that very feature being left out which marks 
 the spirit and life of the person — I set down as wanting." As 
 usual he gives a summary of the requisites for this work, and 
 the best method of compiling such a history from the principal 
 works written in each century from the earliest ages, "that by 
 tasting them here and there, and observing their argument, 
 style, and method, the literary spirit of each age may be 
 charmed, as it were, from the dead." 
 
 Such a history would, he considers, greatly assist the skill of 
 learned men. " It would exhibit the movements and perturba- 
 tions which take place no less in intellectual than in civil 
 matters. In short, it would be a step toward the true study of 
 human nature," which was his aim. 
 
 Civil history, though pre-eminent amongst modern writings, 
 he finds to be " beset on all sides by faults," and that there is 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 165 
 
 nothing rarer than a true Civil History, which he subdivides into 
 Memorials, Commentaries, Perfect History, and Antiquities. 
 " For memorials are the rough drafts of history, and antiquities 
 are history defaced, or remnants of history, which, like the spars 
 of a shipwreck, have recovered somewhat from the deluge of 
 time." 
 
 No defects need be noticed in the annals, chronologies, regis- 
 ters, and collections of antiquities, which he classes with " im- 
 perfect histories." They are of their very nature imperfect, but 
 they are not to be condemned like Epitomes, "things which have 
 fretted and corroded the bodies of most excellent histories, and 
 wrought them into unprofitable dregs." There are many collec- 
 tions, annals, chronologies, chronicles, commentaries, registers, 
 etc., which began to appear in Bacon's time, in accordance with 
 his instructions and suggestions, if not with direct help from 
 him. 
 
 " Just and perfect history is of three kinds, according to the 
 object which it propoundeth or pretendeth to present ; for itpre- 
 senteth either a time or a person or an action. The first of these 
 we call Chronicles, the second Lives, and the third Narratives. 
 Though the first be the most complete, and hath most glory, yet 
 the second excelleth it in use, and the third in truth. For history 
 of times representeth the greatness of actions, and the public faces 
 and behaviour of persons ; it passeth over in silence the smaller 
 events and actions of men and matters. But such being the 
 workmanship of God, that He doth hang the greatest weight 
 upon the smallest wires,* it comes to pass that such histories do 
 rather set forth the pomp of business than the true and inward 
 resorts (or springs) thereof. Insomuch that you may find a truer 
 picture of human life in some satires than in such histories." 
 But well-written "lives and histories are likely to be more 
 purely true, because their argument is within the knowledge 
 and observation of the writer.")* All three kinds of history are, 
 nevertheless, " so full of many and great deficiencies," that he 
 says : " Even to mention them would take too much time." He 
 would himself have undertaken the business in good earnest if 
 James had given him any encouragement. But in this, as in 
 
 * " Thus hast Thou hang'd our life on brittle pins. 1 ' Translation of 
 Psa. xc, " The whole frame stands upon pins." 2nd Henry IV., III. 2. 
 t Advt. II. 1. 
 
166 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 many other things, he failed to rouse the dull King, whom he 
 vainly tried to make as wise as he thought himself. The frag- 
 ment of the " History of Great Britain " hints at Bacon's efforts 
 in this direction, and there are several large books which will 
 probably some day be acknowledged as part of the " collections " 
 made by Bacon, or under his direction, to this end.* 
 
 For Lives, he thinks it most strange that they have been so 
 neglected, and counts them among the deficients. 
 
 Narrations and relations are also to be wished, since a good 
 collection of small particulars would be as a nursery-ground, 
 raising seedlings to plant when time will serve a fair and stately 
 garden, f 
 
 Other parts of learning, as appendices to history — orations, 
 letters, brief speeches or sayings and letters, he considers an 
 important branch of history. "Letters are according to the 
 variety of occasions, advertisements, advices, directions, proposi- 
 tions, petitions, commendatory, expostulatory, satisfactory, of 
 compliment, of pleasure, of discourse, and all other passages of 
 action. And such as are written from wise men are, of all the 
 words of man, in my judgment, the best, for they are more 
 natural than orations and public speeches, and more advised 
 than conferences or present speeches. So, again, letters of 
 affairs, from such as manage them or are privy to them, are, of 
 all others, the best instructions for history and, to a diligent 
 reader, the best histories in themselves." J 
 
 Bacon's own letters are themselves a good illustration of 
 his doctrine ; but there are other collections of letters, such as 
 Sir Tobie Matthew's correspondence, with names and dates can- 
 celled, and the collection by Howell, entitled Horce Eliance, which 
 seem as if they had been written with a further purpose than 
 that of mere correspondence between friend and friend. The 
 vast chasm, in point of diction, between these and the letters 
 written by ordinary persons of good breeding and education in 
 Bacon's time, may be well gauged by a comparison with them of 
 
 * See " The Chronicles of the Kings of England from the Time of the 
 Romans Government to the Death of King James." By Sir Samuel Baker. 
 On the frontispiece of the third edition is a vignette of Verulam. 
 
 | Be Aug. II, 7. See, also, " The Collection of the History of England." 
 Samuel Daniel, 3rd edn. 1636. 
 
 % Advt. II. 1. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 167 
 
 the sixteen folio volumes of Anthony Bacon's correspondence 
 at the library belonging to Lambeth Palace, or the letters in 
 the Cottonian and Hatton Finch collections at the British 
 Museum. 
 
 Next, Bacon commends the collecting of apophthegms or 
 witty sayings. " The loss of that book of Caesar's " is, he 
 thinks, a misfortune, since no subsequent collection has been 
 happy in the choice. His own collection, with the supplementary 
 anecdotes, sometimes ranked as " spurious," still remain to us ; 
 the former, we think, possessing a double value, inasmuch as it 
 seems probable that, in one edition at least, it forms a kind of 
 cipher or key to the meaning of other works. 
 
 As to the heathen antiquities of the world, "it is in vain to 
 note them as deficient," for, although they undoubtedly are 
 so, consisting mostly of fables and fragments, " the deficiency 
 cannot be holpen ; for antiquity is like fame — caput inter nubile 
 condit — her head is muffled from our sight."* He does not 
 allude to his own Wisdom of the Ancients, or to other kindred 
 works, which, although they seem to have been published later, 
 yet bear traces of the more diffuse and cruder effusions of his 
 pen — the early products of Bacon's youthful studies.! 
 
 He draws attention to the history which Cornelius Tacitus 
 made, coupling this with annals and journals, which again he 
 finds to be in his own day deficient. 
 
 We observe that no hint is dropped about Camden's Annals. 
 The omission is the more significant, seeing that in that work 
 we have before us Bacon's own notes and additions. 
 
 Now he passes on to "Memorials, commentaries, and regis- 
 ters, which set down a bare continuance and tissue of actions 
 and events, without the causes and pretexts, and other passages 
 of action ; for this is the true nature of a commentary, though 
 Caesar, in modest}^ mixed with greatness, chose to apply the 
 name of commentary to the best history extant." J There are 
 some " Observations on Caesar's Commentaries " § which are 
 
 * Advt. III. 1. 
 
 J See particularly Mystagogus Poeticus, or the Muses 1 Interpreter, 
 2nd edn., much enlarged by Alexander Ross, 1648. 
 t De Aug. II. 6. 
 § Publised, Lowndes, 1609. 
 
168 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 deserving of notice in connection with this subject, although they 
 bear on the title-page the name of Clement Edmundes, yet that 
 very title-page is adorned with a portrait which strikingly 
 resembles portraits of Francis Bacon. Here he is as a lad of 
 about sixteen years old, and the internal evidence of the work 
 renders it highly probable that this was merely one of his many 
 juvenile productions. Several other works of a similar nature, 
 with some geographical manuals, such as " Microcosmus, or a 
 Little Picture of a Great World," and large works, such as the 
 " Discovery of Guiana " and "A History of the World " (in 
 which history, politics, and personal adventure are largely 
 intermixed with geography), began to make their appearance 
 about this time, and assisted in completing Bacon's great plan 
 for the dissemination of universal knowledge. He affirms, " to 
 the honour of his times and in a virtuous emulation with 
 antiquity, that this great Building of the World never had 
 through lights made in it till the age of us and our fathers. 
 For, although they had knowledge of the Antipodes, yet that 
 might be by demonstration and not by fact, and if by travel, it 
 requireth the voyage but of half the globe. But to circle the 
 earth, as the heavenly bodies do, was not done nor attempted till 
 these later times, and therefore these times may justly bear in 
 their word not only plus ultra in precedence of the ancient non 
 ultra, and imitabile fulmen in precedence of the ancient non 
 imitabile fulmen, etc., but, likewise, imitabile caelum, in respect 
 of the many memorable voyages, after the manner of heaven, 
 about the globe of the earth." 
 
 He never loses sight of the great object he has at heart, 
 of bringing lights into the darkness in which the world 
 is lying ; he ever clings to his darling hope that the ad- 
 vancement of universal knowledge may be made the means of 
 " mingling heaven and earth." When considering the deficiencies 
 not only of knowledge, but of language in which to express 
 knowledge, it will not be amiss to draw attention to the words of 
 Hallam concerning the works of Sir Walter Raleigh,* especially 
 " The History of the World." The reader should reflect whether 
 it is more probable that the adventurous soldier and busy man 
 
 * It is not unworthy of inquiry, Was Raleigh (whose name is variously 
 spelt) any relation of the Dr. Rawley who was Bacon's chaplain and 
 confidential secretary? 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 169 
 
 of the world should have been capable of writing such a book as 
 the one in question (filled as it is with Baconian beauties of 
 diction and sentiment), or that Bacon, visiting his interesting 
 friend in the Tower, should have induced him to beguile the 
 tedious day and drive away the heavy thoughts of care by 
 writing or compiling, with his help, the work to which Sir 
 Walter contributed the experience of his own travels, but for 
 which Bacon himself furnished the plan, the erudition, and the 
 diction. 
 
 " We should," says Hallam, " expect from the prison-hours 
 of a soldier, a courtier, a busy intriguer in State affairs, a poet 
 and a man of genius, something well worth our notice ; but 
 hardly a prolix history of the ancient world, hardly disquisitions 
 on the site of Paradise and the travels of Cain. The Greek 
 and Roman story is told more fully and exactly than by any 
 earlier English author, and with a plain eloquence which has 
 given this book a classical reputation in our language. Raleigh 
 has intermingled political reflections and illustrated his history 
 by episodes from modern times, which perhaps are now the most 
 interesting passages. It descends only to the second Macedonian 
 war. There is little now obsolete in the words of Raleigh, nor 
 to any great degree in his turn of phrase ; . . . he is less 
 pedantic than most of his contemporaries, seldom low, never 
 affected." 
 
 Not science only, or natural history, or the history of the 
 world and of individuals, but arts and inventions of all kinds 
 were, in Bacon's opinion, equally " at a standstill." "As to 
 philosophy, men worship idols, false appearances, shadows, not 
 substance ; • they satisfy their minds with the deepest fallacies. 
 The methods and frameworks which I have hitherto seen, there 
 is none of any worth, all of them carry in their titles the face of 
 a school and not of a world, having vulgar and pedantical 
 divisions, not such as pierce the heart of things." 
 
 Then, for the art of memory, " the inquiry seems hitherto to 
 have been pursued weakly and languidly enough ; ... it is a 
 
 * Compare : " He takes false shadows for true substances." (Tit. And. 
 iii. 2.) " Your falsehood shall become you well to worship shadows and 
 adore false shapes," (Two Gent. Ver. iv. 1, 123—131.) Mer.Wiv. ii. 2, 215. 
 Men Ven. iii. 2, 126—130 ; and comp. 1. 73—80. Richard II. ii. 2, 14. 
 1 Henry VI. ii. 3, 62, 63. 
 
 M 
 
170 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 barren thing, as now applied for human uses. The feats of 
 memory now taught, I do esteem no more than I do the tricks and 
 antics of clowns and rope-dancers' matters* perhaps of strange- 
 ness, but not of worth." 
 
 Passing from natural and physical science to philology, or, 
 as Bacon calls it, " philosophic grammar," we again find it " set 
 down as wanting." " Grammar," he says, " is the harbinger 
 of other sciences — an office not indeed very noble, but very 
 necessary, especially as sciences, in our age, are principally 
 drawn from the learned languages, and are not learned in our 
 mother's tongue. . . . Grammar, likewise, is of two sorts — the 
 one being literary, the other philosophical." The first of these 
 is used chiefly in the study of foreign tongues, especially in the 
 dead languages, but " the other ministers to philosophy." This 
 reminds him that Caesar wrote some books on " analogy," and 
 a doubt occurs whether they treated of this kind of philosophical 
 grammar. Suspecting, however, that they did not contain any- 
 thing subtle or lofty, he takes the hint as to another deficiency, 
 and thinks " of a kind of grammar which should diligently 
 inquire, not the analogy of words with one another, but the 
 analogy between words and things, or reason, not going so far 
 as that interpretation which belongs to logic. Certainly words 
 are the footsteps of reason, and the footsteps tell something 
 about the body. . . . The noblest kind of grammar, as I think, 
 would be this : If some one well seen in a number of tongues, 
 learned as well as common, would handle the various properties 
 of languages, showing in what points each excelled, in what it 
 failed. For so, not only may languages be enriched by mutual 
 exchanges, but the several beauties of each may be combined, 
 as in the Venus of Apelles, into a most beautiful image and 
 excellent model of speech itself, for the right expression of the 
 meanings of the mind." 
 
 As in everything else which Bacon noted as unattempted or 
 unachieved, we find him endeavouring to supply the deficiencies 
 in language which were universal in his day. He does not hint 
 that Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, and others had been for years 
 pouring Latin words into our language, trying experiments in 
 
 * This line seems to throw light upon Petrucio's powers of vituperative 
 rhetoric—" Hell rail in his rope tricks.' 1 '' (Tarn. Sh. i. 2.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 171 
 
 words which had never been tried before, coining, testing, and 
 rejecting, in the same manner, precisely, in which Bacon himself 
 was coining, testing, rejecting, or making current, the new 
 words which he entered in his Promus. That he was coining, 
 intentionally, we know from his habit of supplementing his new 
 word with its nearest synonym, and also from the frequent 
 recurrence of such expressions as " So I call it," " As it were," 
 "As I term it," etc. 
 
 Bacon suggests * the making of " a store " of forms of speech, 
 prefaces, conclusions, digressions, transitions, excusations, and 
 a number of the kind, as likewise deficient. He subjoins 
 specimens of these. " Such parts of speech answer to the 
 vestibules, back-doors, ante-chambers, withdrawing-chambers, 
 passages, etc., of a house, and may serve, indiscriminately, for 
 all subjects. For as, in buildings, it is a great matter, both for 
 pleasure and use, that the fronts, doors, windows, approaches, 
 passages, and the like, be conveniently arranged, so, also, in 
 a speech, such accessories and passages, if handsomely and 
 skilfully placed, add a great deal, being both of ornament and 
 effect to the entire structure." Surely he is here thinking of 
 the construction of his Solomon's House. He then gives a few 
 instances from Demosthenes and Cicero, having "nothing of his 
 own to add to this part." Nothing, he means, which he chose 
 to publish at that time, as a store of the kind. That he had it, 
 and had used it in all his works for thirty or forty years, and 
 with marvellous effect, we now know well from the internal 
 evidence of those works. In the Promus is a consecutive list 
 of one hundred and twenty-six short expressions of single 
 words, and farther on eighty more, which are all to be found in 
 the early Shakespeare plays, and more rarely elsewhere. Some 
 of these, such as " O my L. S." (the " Lord, Sir," of Love's 
 Labour's Lost and AIVs Well), are dropped in later plays. But 
 by far the larger number, as "Believe me," "What else?" 
 41 Is it possible ? " " For the rest," " You put me in mind," 
 " Nothing less," " Say that," etc., are met with throughout all 
 the works which will hereafter be claimed as Bacon's. Most 
 of these expressions are now such familiar and household terms 
 that it seems strange to imagine that three hundred years ago 
 
 * De Aug. VI. 3, 492. 
 
172 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 they were not in everybody's mouth. What would be thought 
 if it were found that any great orator of our own time had 
 written down, intermixed with literary notes, which were care- 
 fully preserved, such notes as these : " Will you see ? *• " You 
 take it right, 1 ' "All this while," "As is," "I object," "I 
 demand," "Well," "More or less," "Prima facie," "If that 
 be so," "Is it because?" "What else?" "And how now?" 
 " Best of all," " I was thinking," " Say, then," " You put me in 
 mind," " Good morning," " Good night " ? 
 . Yet these are amongst the private notes " for store of forms 
 and elegancies of speech." They are of the kind which Bacon, 
 in his learned works, describes as deficient ; which, even in his 
 last great work, the Be Augmentis, he still pronounces to be 
 deficient and much needed for the building-up of a noble model 
 of language. Can we doubt that in such collections as this 
 we see Bacon in labourer's clothes, digging the clay and 
 gathering the stubble from all over the desolate fields of learn- 
 ing, to burn the bricks wherewith he would rebuild the temple 
 of wisdom ? 
 
 Careful study and examination of these questions will surely 
 prove that to Francis Bacon we owe, not only the grand specu- 
 lative philosophy and the experimental science which are 
 associated with his name, and a vast number of works un- 
 acknowledged by him, though published during the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, but also the very language in which 
 those books are written, the " noble model of language " which 
 has never been surpassed, and which constitutes the finest part 
 of the finest writing of the present day. 
 
 To return to our hasty sketch of deficiencies in grammar and 
 philology, we find, as might be expected, that, inasmuch as 
 words and graceful forms of speech were lacking, and the very 
 machinery or organs of discourse imperfect, so " the proper 
 rational method of discourse,* or rhetoric, for the transmission 
 of knowledge, has been so handled as to defeat its object." 
 Logicians, by their artificial methods, have " so forced the 
 kernels and grains of the sciences to leap out, that they 
 are left with nothing in their grasp but the dry and barren 
 husks." 
 
 * " An honest method, as wholesome as sweet." (Ham. II. 2.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 173 
 
 Changing the metaphor, Bacon declares that he finds the 
 road to knowledge abandoned and stopped up, and, setting 
 himself to the task of clearing the way, he quotes Solomon as 
 to the use of eloquence, and again enforces the necessity of 
 making collections. This time they are to be collections of 
 " illustrations " which shall consider the opposite sides of every 
 question, and show that there is a good as well as a bad side to 
 every proposition. "It is the business of rhetoric to make 
 pictures of virtue and goodness that they may be seen. And 
 a store of sophisms, or the colours of good and evil, should be 
 made, so that when men's natural inclinations mutiny, reason 
 may, upon such a revolt of imagination, hold her own, and 
 in the end prevail." These " points and stings of things " 
 are by no means to be neglected ; yet they, like the rest, are 
 deficient. 
 
 The object of all this " provision of discourse " is to enable 
 men readily to make use of their acquired knowledge. The 
 system of noting, tabulation, and indexing which he enjoined, 
 practised, and developed into a perfect system in his secret 
 society is, he says, rather an exercise of patience, a matter of 
 diligence, than of erudition. "Aristotle derided the sophists 
 who practised it, saying that they did as if a shoemaker should 
 not teach how to make a shoe, but should only exhibit a number 
 of shoes of all fashions and sizes." Far otherwise said our 
 Saviour, speaking of divine knowledge : " Every scribe that is 
 instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a householder that 
 bringeth forth old and new store." His own notes were to him 
 the store or Promus from which he drew. They correspond to 
 the last collection, which he specially recommends, namely, " a 
 store of commonplaces, in which all kinds of questions and 
 studies, prepared beforehand, are argued on either side, and not 
 only so, but the case exaggerated both ways with the utmost 
 force of wit, and urged unfairly, and, as it were, beyond the 
 truth." For the sake of brevity and convenience, these common- 
 places should be contracted into concise sentences, " to be like 
 reels of thread, easily unwound when they are wanted." These 
 he calls the " antitheses of things," and, having a great many by 
 him, he gives, "by way of example," forty-seven antitheta, 
 which, " although perhaps of no great value, yet as I long ago 
 prepared them, I was loth to let the fruit of my youthful 
 
174 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 industry perish — the rather (if they be carefully examined) they 
 are seeds only, and not flowers." 
 
 Such antitheta, pervading the whole of Bacon's works, indeed 
 tending to the formation of the most remarkable points in his 
 style, may equally well be seen in the plays and poetry of 
 Shakespeare, whose " highly antithetical style " is the subject of 
 comment by nearly every critic of the varied resources of his 
 expressive diction. 
 
 From the discussion of words, phrases, life, and rhetoric (all 
 of which he finds to be fundamentally defective), Bacon passes 
 on to sound, measure, and accent ; explaining, as to novices in 
 the art, the most elementary principles of elocution, rhythm, and 
 prosody. " The sound belonging to sweetnesses and harshnesses, 
 the hiatus caused by vowels coming together," the difference in 
 the use of dipthongs in Greek and Latin, and some peculiarities 
 in various languages — of these things he has soon " had more 
 than enough, 11 and he gladly turns to his congenial subject, 
 Poesy. 
 
 Now on this score, at least, one might expect that he could 
 congratulate his countrymen. But all that he is able to say is 
 that " Poesy has produced a vast body of art, considered, not to 
 the matter of it, but to the form of words." All words, no matter, 
 nothing from the heart ! • Is this all that can be said for the 
 poetry of an age which produced the Faerie Queene, The 
 Shepherd's Calender, the Shakespeare plays, poems, and sonnets, 
 the works of Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Middleton, Chapman, 
 Webster, the hymns and spiritual songs of Herbert, Quarles, 
 Withers, Cowley, Crashaw, and a host of " minor poets " ? Are 
 we to believe that Bacon included these in his vast body of art 
 considered, not in regard to the matter, but to the words of it ? 
 
 Poetry to be lovely must have matter as well as art. It should 
 be the spontaneous overflow of a full mind, stored to the brim 
 with " true history," with a knowledge of nature, and especially 
 
 * Compare : " Who will for a tricksy word defy the matter.'" (Merchant 
 of Venice, III. 5.) "More rich in matter than in words." (Romeo and 
 Juliet, II. 6.) " Words, words, mere words, nothing from the heart." 
 (Troilus and Cressida, V. 3.) " More matter with less art." (Hamlet, II. 2.) 
 " This nothing's more than matter." (Ibid. IV. 5.) " When priests are 
 more in words than matter." (Lear III. 2 and IV. 6.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 175 
 
 of human nature ; for " by Poesy," says Bacon, " I mean here 
 nothing else than feigned history."* Shakespeare formed the 
 same estimate of true poetry : 
 
 Audrey. I do not know what poetical is ; . . . is it a true thing ? 
 
 Touchstone. No, truly, for the truest poetry is the most feigning, and 
 what they swear in poetry may be said, as lovers, they do feign. . . . 
 If thou wert a poet, I might have some hope thou didst feign ? | 
 
 Bacon reminds us more than once of all that poets feign J in 
 their histories, but he fails not to show that " all invention " or 
 imaginative power " is but memory" and that " a man is only 
 what he knows." In vain would weaker wits endeavour to 
 persuade us that " reading and writing come by nature," or that 
 a man can write well about matters concerning which he can 
 never have had the opportunity of duly informing himself. 
 Poesy, indeed, being " free and licensed, may at pleasure make 
 unlawful matches and divorces of things," but the poet must be 
 acquainted with those things before he can either match or 
 divorce them. 
 
 The first study of the poet should be history, "which is 
 properly concerned with individuals, § and whose impressions 
 are the first and most ancient guests of the human mind, and 
 are as the primary material of knowledge." This is no passing 
 thought of Bacon's, but a firm conviction, of which he set forth 
 a visible illustration on the title-page of the Advancement of 
 Learning. Here we see two pyramids, that on the right based 
 upon Divinity, and rising into the study of human nature ; that 
 on the left based on Philosophy, and issuing in History and 
 Poetry. Bacon describes the process of poetic evolution : 
 
 " The images of individuals are received into the sense, and 
 fixed in the memory. They pass into the memory whole, just as 
 they present themselves. Then the mind recalls and reviews 
 them, and, which is its proper office, compounds or divides the 
 parts of which they consist. For individuals have something 
 in common with each other, and again something different, and 
 the composition of one characteristic with another is either 
 according to the pleasure of the mind or according to the nature 
 
 * De Augmentis. "f As You Like It, III. 5. 
 
 X 3 Henry VI. I. 2. Merchant of Venice, V. 1, etc. 
 
 § " The proper study of mankind is man." 
 
176 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 of things as it exists in fact. If it be according to the pleasure 
 of the mind of the composer, and that the various characteristics 
 of one person are mixed or compounded with those of another, 
 then the work is a work of imagination ; which, not being bound 
 by any law or necessity of nature, may join things which are 
 never found together in nature, and separate things which in 
 nature are never found apart." 
 
 Now, truly, Bacon realised the " tricks of strong imagination," 
 
 " Shaping fantasies that apprehend 
 More than cool reason ever comprehends," 
 
 bodying forth the forms of things unknown, whilst the poet's 
 
 pen 
 
 " Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name." * 
 
 The anthithetical view of the question is best seen in Antony 
 and Cleopatra, where Cleopatra, recalling the memory of Antony, 
 " whole as it presents itself," is yet struck by the inadequacy of 
 her efforts to combine so many noble features in one image : 
 
 " Nature wants stuff 
 To vie strange forms with fancy, yet to imagine 
 An Antony were nature's piece 'gainst fancy, 
 Condemning shadows quite." f 
 
 "If, on the other hand, these same parts or characteristics of 
 individuals are compounded or divided, as they really show 
 themselves in nature, this is the business and duty of Reason. 
 From these three fountains of Memory, Imagination, and Reason 
 flow three emanations of History, Poesy, and Philosophy, and 
 there cannot be more or other than these ; they even include 
 Theology. For whether information enters or is conveyed into 
 the mind by revelation or by sense, the human spirit is one and 
 the same, and it is but as if different liquors were poured 
 through different funnels into one and the same vessel." 
 
 He goes on to show that Poesy is to be taken in two senses, in 
 regard to words or matter. " In the first sense it is but a kind 
 of speech, verse being only a kind of style and having nothing 
 to do with the matter or subject ; for true history niay be written 
 in verse, and feigned history or fiction may be written in 
 prose." J Bacon adds, in the De Augmentis, that in the " style 
 
 * See M. N. D., V. 1, 1—28. f Ant. and CI. V. 2. 
 X Intellectual Globe. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 177 
 
 and form of words, that is to say, metre and verse, the art we 
 have is a very small thing, though the examples are large and 
 innumerable." 
 
 " The art which grammarians call Prosody should not be con- 
 fined to teaching the kinds and measures of verse, but precepts 
 should be added as to the kinds of verse which best suit each 
 matter or subject." He shows how the ancients used hexameters, 
 elegiacs, iambic and lyric verse, with this view. Modern imita- 
 tion fell short, because, with too great zeal for antiquity, the 
 writers tried to train the modern languages into ancient 
 measures, incompatible with the structure of the languages, and 
 no less offensive to the ear. " But for poesy, whether in stories 
 or metre, it is like a luxuriant plant that cometh of the lust of 
 the earth and without any formal seed. Wherefore it spreads 
 everywhere, and is scattered far and wide, so that it would be 
 vain to take thought about the defects of it." Yet he levels a 
 parting shaft at these defects, observing that, although accents 
 in words have been carefully attended to, the accentuation of 
 sentences has not been observed at all. 
 
 Narrative Posey is a mere imitation of History, such as might 
 pass for real, only that it commonly exaggerates things beyond 
 probability. 
 
 Dramatic Poesy is History made visible, for it represents 
 actions as if they were present, whereas History represents them 
 as past. 
 
 Parabolic Poesy is typical History, by which ideas that are 
 objects of the intellect are represented in forms that are objects 
 of the sense. 
 
 As for Narrative or Heroical Poesy, " the foundation of it is 
 truly noble, and has a special relation to the dignity of human 
 nature. For as the sensible world is inferior in dignity to the 
 rational soul, poesy seems to bestow upon human nature those 
 things which history denies to it, and to satisfy the mind with 
 the shadows of things when the substance cannot be obtained." 
 
 So, in his Device of Philautia, the soldier is made to say, 
 " The shadows of games are but counterfeits and shadows, when 
 in a lively tragedy a man's enemies are sacrificed before his 
 eyes," etc. 
 
 Theseus has the same thought that poetry is the shadow of 
 
178 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 tilings. He does not despise the shadow when the substance 
 cannot be obtained, although Hippolyta pronounces the rural 
 play to be the silliest stuff that e'er she heard. He replies : " The 
 best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if 
 imagination mend them."* 
 
 Puck, too, in his apology for himself and his fellow-players, 
 calls them shadows. 
 
 " And the reason why poesy is so agreeable to the spirit of 
 man is that he has a craving for a more perfect order and more 
 beautiful variety than can be found in nature since the fall. 
 Therefore, since the acts and events of real history are not grand 
 enough to satisfy the human mind, poesy is at hand to feign 
 acts more heroical ; since the issues of actions in real life are 
 far from agreeing with the merits of virtue and vice, poesy 
 corrects history, exhibiting events and fortunes as according to 
 merit and the law of Providence. Since true history wearies the 
 mind with common events, poetry refreshes it by reciting things 
 unexpected and various. So that this poesy conduces not only 
 to delight, but to magnanimity and morality. Whence it may 
 fairly be thought to partake somewhat of a divine nature, 
 because it raises the mind aloft, accommodating the shows of 
 things to the desires of the mind, not (like reason and history) 
 buckling and bowing down the mind to the nature of things."'! 
 
 " By these charms and that agreeable congruity which it has 
 with man's nature, accompanied also with music, to gain more 
 sweet access, poesy has so won its way as to have been held in 
 honour even in the rudest ages and among barbarous people, 
 when other kinds of learning were utterly excluded."! 
 
 Can it be doubted that he intended so to use it in his own age, 
 still so rude, though so self-satisfied ? In a previous chapter he 
 has described Minerva as " forsaken," and he proposes " to make 
 a Hymn to the Muses, because it is long since their rites were 
 duly celebrated."§ Years before this he said the same in the 
 Device of Philautia, which was performed before the Queen. A 
 Hermit is introduced, who, in his speech, exhorts the Squire to 
 persuade his master to offer his services to the Muses. "It is 
 long since they received any into their court. They give alms 
 continually at their gate, that many come to live upon, but few 
 
 * M. N. D. V. 2. f De Aug. II. 13. 
 
 X De Aug. II. 13, "Aye, much is the force of heaven-bred poesy." — Two 
 G. Ver. III. 2. § Advt. L. I. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 179 
 
 have they ever admitted into their palace." Elsewhere he 
 speaks of " the poverty of experiences and knowledge,"* " the 
 poverty and scantiness'" of the subjects which till now have 
 occupied the minds of men."| 
 
 And so in the Midsummer Night's Dream (V. 1) we find : 
 
 " The thrice-three Muses mourning for the death 
 Of Learning, late deceas'd in beggary." 
 
 And the Princess in Love 1 Labour s Lost (V. 2), exclaims, when 
 the King and his masque and musicians depart : 
 
 " Are these the breed of wit so wondered at ? 
 Well-liking wits they have ; gross, gross ; fat, fat. 
 poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout ! " 
 
 And Biron says the study of 
 
 " Slow arts entirely keep the brain ; 
 And, therefore, finding barren practisers, 
 Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil." 
 
 In the Anatomy of Melancholy, the author (Bacon, as we 
 believe) says that " poetry and beggary are Gemini, twin-born 
 brats, inseparable companions. 
 
 " And to this day is every scholar poor ; 
 Gross gold from them runs headlong to the boor." 
 
 And now we come to dramatic poesy, a section which Bacon 
 seems carefully to have omitted in the English edition of the 
 Advancement of Learning. That edition would, during his own 
 lifetime, be chiefly read by his own countrymen, and might draw 
 attention to his connection with the drama and stage plays, 
 arts which, as we have seen, he held to be of the highest value 
 and importance, although in his time corrupt, degraded, plainly 
 neglected, and esteemed but as toys. 
 
 " Dramatic poesy, which has the theatre for its world, would 
 be of excellent use if well directed. For the stage is capable of 
 no small influence, both of discipline and of corruption. Now, 
 of corruptions in this kind we have had enough ; but the 
 discipline has, in our times, been plainly neglected. And though 
 in modern states play-acting is esteemed but as a toy, except when 
 it is too satirical and biting, yet among the ancients it was used 
 
 * Int. Nat. 10. f Nov. Org. I. 85. 
 
180 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 as a means of educating men's minds to virtue. Nay, it has 
 been regarded by learned men and great philosophers as a kind 
 of musician's bow, by which men's minds may be played upon. 
 And certainly it is most true, and one of the great secrets of 
 nature, that the minds of men are more open to impressions and 
 affections, when many are gathered together, than when they 
 alone." * 
 
 Later on, in connection with Rhetoric and other arts of trans- 
 mitting knowledge, he writes : 
 
 "It will not be amiss to observe that even mean faculties, 
 when they fall into great men or great matters, work great and 
 important effects. Of this I will bring forward an example 
 worthy to be remembered, the more so because the Jesuits 
 appear not to despise this kind of discipline, therein judging, 
 as I think, well. It is a thing, indeed, if practised profession- 
 ally, of low repute ; but if it be made a part of discipline it is of 
 excellent use. I mean stage playing — an art which strengthens 
 the memory, regulates the tone and effect of the voice and 
 pronunciation, teaches a decent carriage of the countenance and 
 gesture, gives not a little assurance, and accustoms young men 
 to bear being looked at." 
 
 He then gives an example from Tacitus (not from Hamlet) 
 of a player who 
 
 " in a fiction, in a dream of passion, 
 Could force his soul so to his whole conceit 
 That, from her working, all his visage wann'd. 
 Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect, 
 A broken voice, and his whole function suiting 
 To his conceit," 
 
 and who so moved and excited his fellow-soldiers with a 
 fictitious account of the murder of his brother that, had it 
 not shortly afterward appeared that nothing of the sort had 
 happened, or, as Hamlet says, that it was "all for nothing" 
 — " nay, that he never had a brother, would hardly have kept 
 their hands off the prefect ; but the fact was, that he played 
 the whole thing as if it had been a piece on the stage." f 
 
 Highly as Poetry in all its branches (but especially in the 
 narrative and dramatic forms) is extolled, to Parabolic Poetry a 
 
 * De Aug. II. 13. t De Aug. VI. 9. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 181 
 
 still more distinguished place is given, and this would certainly 
 strike us as strange if it were not that this parabolic method is 
 found to be so intimately connected with the whole question 
 of secret societies, their symbols, ciphers, and hieroglyphics. 
 
 In the De Augmentis we cannot fail to see that he is every- 
 where leading up to a secret description of his own system of 
 conveying covert or hidden information and of moralising two 
 meanings in one word. 
 
 "Parabolic Poesy is of a higher character than the others, 
 and appears to be something sacred and venerable, especially 
 as religion itself commonly uses its aid as a means of communi- 
 cation between divinity and humanity. But this, too, is corrupted 
 by the levity and idleness of wits in dealing with allegory. It 
 is of double use, and serves for contrary purposes, for it serves 
 for an infoldment, and it likewise serves for illustration. In 
 the latter case the object is a method of teaching, in the former 
 an artifice for concealment." He goes on to show how, in days 
 when men's minds were not prepared for the reception of new 
 ideas, they were made more capable of receiving them by means 
 of examples ; and hence the ancient times are full of parables, 
 riddles, and similitudes. 
 
 That this was Bacon's strong and well considered opinion 
 appears from its frequent repetition in his works. The admirable 
 preface to The Wisdom of the Ancients enters into this subject 
 with considerable detail, and is peculiarly interesting on account 
 of the indisputable evidence which it affords that these things 
 were new in Bacon's day ; that it was he who revived the use 
 of trope and metaphor ; who taught men, in days when this 
 knowledge of the ancients had been all but extinguished, to 
 light up or illustrate, "not only antiquity, but the things 
 themselves." 
 
 Again, repeating that there are two contrary ends to be 
 answered by the use of parable, which may serve as well to 
 wrap up and envelop secret teaching, as openly to instruct, he 
 points out that, even if we drop the concealed use, and consider 
 the ancient fables only as stories intended for amusement, 
 
 " Still the other use must remain, and can never be given up~ 
 And every man of any learning must allow that this method of 
 instructing is grave, sober, or exceedingly useful, and sometimes 
 necessary in the sciences, as it opens an easy and familiar 
 
182 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 passage to the human understanding in all new discoveries 
 that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinions. 
 Hence, in the first ages, when such inventions and conclusions 
 of the human reason as are now trite and common were new 
 and little known, all things * abounded with fables, parables, 
 similes, comparisons, and allusions, which were not intended 
 to conceal, but to inform and teach, whilst the minds of men 
 continued rude and unpractised in matters of subtlety and 
 speculation, or even impatient, and in a manner uncapable of 
 receiving such things as did not directly fall under and strike 
 the senses. For, as hieroglyphics were in use before writing, 
 so were parables in use before arguments. And even to this 
 day, if any man would let new light in upon the human 
 understanding, and conquer prejudice, without raising con- 
 tests, animosities, opposition, or disturbance, he must still go 
 on in the same path, and have recourse to the like method of 
 allegory, metaphor, and allusion. 
 
 "Now, whether any mystic meaning be concealed beneath 
 the fables of the ancient poets is a matter of some doubt. For 
 my own part I must confess that I am inclined to think that 
 a mystery is involved in no small number of them. ... I take 
 them to be a kind of breath from the traditions of more ancient 
 nations, which fell into the pipes of the Greeks. But since that 
 which has hitherto been done in the interpretation of these 
 parables, being the work of skilful men, not learned beyond 
 commonplaces, does not by any means satisfy me, I think fit 
 to set down philosophy according to the ancient parables among 
 the desiderata. " 
 
 He selects, as examples of his own interpretation of the 
 ancient myths, Pan interpreted of the Universe and Natural 
 Philosophy ; Perseus, of War and Political Philosophy ; Dionysus, 
 of Desire and Moral Philosophy. 
 
 Who can read the scientific works of Bacon, or try really to 
 understand his philosophy, without perceiving that, whatever he 
 may have discovered, revived, instilled, or openly taught, his 
 main, object was to teach men to teach themselves ? His 
 " method " everywhere tends to this point. To get at general 
 principles, to find out first causes, and to invent the art of 
 inventing arts, and of handing down as well as of advancing 
 
 *"If you look in the maps of the 'orld, you shall find in the com- 
 parisons between Macedon and Monmouth, that the situations, look you, 
 is both alike. . . . For there's figures in all things. ... I speak but 
 in the figures and comparisons of it. 1 ' — Henry V. IV. 8. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 183 
 
 the knowledge acquired — these were his aims. He is fully 
 conscious that life is short and art is long, and therefore does 
 not attempt to perfect any one department of science. He gives 
 the keys, and expects others to decipher the problems by means 
 of those keys. He had very small respect for mere accumula- 
 tions of detached facts, but he knew that generalisations could 
 only be properly based upon such accumulations, classified and 
 reduced to order, and that axioms to be true must be " drawn 
 from the very centre of the sciences." That he organised and 
 supervised the making of such stores of facts and scraps of 
 knowledge as fill the ponderous volumes of the encyclopaedists 
 of the sixteenth century, we do not for an instant doubt. 
 Modern science, in its pride or conceit, has too often been in- 
 clined to disown its vast debts to Bacon, because, forsooth, 
 having worked with the whole mass of his accumulated know- 
 ledge to begin upon, whereas he began upon nothing, they now 
 find short cuts to the invention of sciences for which he laboured 
 when science was an empty name, and the art of invention 
 unknown excepting by Bacon himself. That his works are 
 ostensibly and intentionally left unfinished, and that the book- 
 lore of his time was to his mind thoroughly unsatisfactory, 
 and the store of knowledge acquired inadequate for the in- 
 vention and advancement of arts and sciences, is made very 
 plain in the "Filum Labyrinthi sive Formula Inquisitionis" 
 in which he relates to his sons * (the Rosicrucian Fraternity, of 
 which he was the father) the thoughts which passed through his 
 mind on this subject : 
 
 " Francis Bacon thought in this manner. The knowledge 
 whereof the world is now possessed, especially that of nature, 
 extendeth not to magnitude and certainty of works. . . . When 
 men did set before themselves the variety and perfection of works 
 produced by mechanical arts, they are apt rather to admire 
 the provisions of man than to apprehend his wants, not consider- 
 ing that the original intentions and conclusions of nature, which 
 are the life of all that variety, are not many nor deeply fetched, 
 and that the rest is but the subtle and ruled motion of the 
 instrument and hand, and that the shop therein is not unlike 
 the library, which in such number of books containeth, for the 
 
 * In the left-hand corner of the MS. in the British Museum (Harl. MSS. 
 6797, fo. 139), there is written in Bacon's hand : Ad Filios. 
 
184 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 far greater part, nothing but iterations, varied sometimes in 
 form, but not new in substance. So he saw plainly that opinion 
 of store was a cause of want, and that both books and doctrines 
 appear many and are few. He thought, also, that knowledge is 
 uttered to men in a form as if everything were finished, for it is 
 reduced into arts and methods, which in their divisions do seem 
 to include all that may be. And how weakly soever the parts 
 are filled, yet they carry the shew and reason total, and thereby 
 the writings of some received authors go for the very art ; 
 whereas antiquity used to deliver the knowledge which the mind 
 of man had gathered in observations, aphorisms, or short and 
 dispersed sentences, or small tractates of some parts that they 
 had diligently meditated and laboured, which did invite men to 
 ponder that which was invented, and to add and supply further. 1 ' 
 
 A vast number of such " small tractates " as Bacon here men- 
 tions will be found amongst the works which sprang up in his 
 time and immediately after his death. They seem to be the 
 result, for the most part, of diligent pondering upon the works 
 which Bacon himself had " invented " ; they reproduce his say- 
 ings, paraphrasing, diluting, abridging, or delivering them in 
 short and dispersed aphorisms, according to the method which 
 he advocates as one means for the advancement of learning. 
 The method is still extant, and Bacon continues, like evergreen 
 history, to repeat himself. Often when unexpectedly we come 
 upon his own words and apparently original thoughts, familiarly 
 used as household words, or calmly appropriated by subsequent 
 writers, we think how true it is that one man labours and others 
 enter into his labours. 
 
 Once more, a brief summary of the deficiencies which Bacon 
 found in the literature and arts of discourse of his own times : 
 
 1. A history of learning (anything in fact corresponding to 
 Prof. H. Morley's Tables of English Literature). 
 
 2. Civil history, biographies, commentaries, antiquities, 
 chronicles, perfect histories. 
 
 3. Appendices to history, orations, letters, apophthegms or 
 brief sayings, etc. 
 
 4. Registers, journals, memorials, etc. 
 
 5. Helps to the art of memory. 
 
 6. Philosophic grammar — (a.) Words new-coined. (6.) Words 
 from foreign sources, (c.) A true grammar of language. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 185 
 
 7. A store or provision for discourse, forms of speech, elegan- 
 cies, prefaces, conclusions, digressions, etc. 
 
 8. A method of discourse and for the transmission of 
 knowledge. 
 
 9. " Collections," dictionaries, encyclopaedia, books of refer- 
 ence. 
 
 10. Store of sophisms. * 
 
 11. Store of antitheta, or arguments on all sides ; common- 
 places. 
 
 12. Treatises on elocution and prosody, on sound, measure, 
 and accent in poetry. 
 
 13. Dramatic poesy and the art of stage-playing. 
 
 14. Parabolic poetry ; the use of symbols, emblems, hiero- 
 glyphics, metaphors ; the power of using analogies, etc. ; fables, 
 parables, allegories. 
 
 Not one word does Bacon say about the prodigious increase in 
 richness of language which had taken place during his own 
 life. As he wrote in the prime of his manhood, so he writes in 
 the complete edition of the Advancement of Learning, published 
 simultaneously with the Shakespeare plays in 1623. Ending 
 where he began, and disregarding the mass of splendid literature 
 which filled up all numbers and surpassed the finest efforts of 
 Greece and Rome, he calmly sets down philosophic grammar 
 and the art of using beautiful language as " wanting." 
 
186 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE ROSICRUCIANS : THEIR RULES, AIMS, AND METHOD OF 
 
 WORKING. 
 
 " Woorke when God woorkes/' — Promus. 
 
 " To see how God in all His creatures works ! " — 2nd Henry VI. 
 
 " Eipening would seem to be the proper work of the sun, . . . which 
 operates by gentle action through long spaces of time, whereas the opera- 
 tions of fire, urged on by the impatience of man, are made to hasten their 
 work." — Novum Organum. 
 
 BRIEF and incomplete as are the previous chapters, it is hoped 
 that they may serve their purpose of unsettling the minds 
 of those who suppose that the history, character, aims, and 
 work of Bacon are thoroughly understood, and that all is known 
 that is ever likely to be known concerning him. 
 
 The discrepancies of opinion, the tremendous gaps in parts of 
 the story, the unexpected facts which persistent research and 
 collation of passages have continued to unearth, the vast amount 
 of matter of every description which (unless philology be an 
 empty word and the study of it froth and vanity) must, in future 
 years, be ascribed to Bacon, are such as to force the explorer to 
 pause, and seriously to ask himself, Are these things possible ? 
 Could any one man, however gigantic his powers, however long 
 his literary life, have produced all the works which we are 
 forced by evidence, internal and, sometimes, also, external, to 
 believe Bacon's — his in conception, in substance, in diction, even 
 though often apparently paraphrased, interpolated, or altered by 
 other hands ? 
 
 The mind of the inquirer turns readily toward the history of 
 the great Secret Societies which were formed during the Middle 
 Ages, and which became, in troublous times of church or state, 
 such tremendous engines for good and evil. A consequent study 
 of these secret societies, their true origin, their aims, and, so far 
 as they can be traced, their leaders, agents, and organs, renders 
 it evident that, although, single-handed, such self-imposed 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 187 
 
 labours as Bacon proposed and undertook would be manifestly- 
 impracticable, yet, with the aid of such an organisation as that 
 of the Rosicrucian Fraternity, the thing could be done, for this 
 society, whether in its principles, its objects, its proceedings, or 
 in the very obscurity and mystery which surrounds it, is, of all 
 others, the one best calculated to promote Bacon's aims, its very 
 constitution seeming to be the result of his own scheme and 
 method. 
 
 So much interest has lately been roused on the subject of the 
 Rosicrucians, that we shall curtail our own observations as much 
 as possible, trusting that readers will procure the books which, 
 in these later days, have made the study of this formerly 
 obscure and difficult subject so pleasant and easy.* 
 
 Is it still needful to say that the Rosicrucians were certainly 
 not, as has been thought, atheists or infidels, alchemists or 
 sorcerers ? So far as we could find, when investigating this 
 subject some years ago (and as seems to be fully confirmed by 
 the recent researches of others), there is no real ground for be- 
 lieving that the society was an ancient one, or that it existed 
 before 1575, or that it issued any publication in its own name 
 before 1580. All the legends concerning the supposititious monk 
 Christian Rosenkreuz, and the still more shadowy stories which 
 pretend that the Rosy Cross Brethren traced their origin to 
 remote antiquity, and to the Indians or Egyptians, melt into thin 
 air, and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, dissolve away, when 
 we approach them with spectacles on nose and pen in hand. 
 
 " A halo of poetic splendour surrounds the order of the Rosi- 
 crucians ; the magic lights of fancy play round their graceful 
 day-dreams, while the mystery in which they shrouded them- 
 selves lends additional attraction to their history. But their 
 brilliancy was that of a meteor. It just flashed across the 
 realms of imagination and intellect, and vanished forever ; not, 
 however, without leaving behind some permanent and lovely 
 traces of its hasty passage. . . . Poetry and romance are 
 deeply indebted to the Rosicrucians for many a fascinating 
 creation. The literature of every European country contains 
 hundreds of pleasing fictions whose machinery has been borrowed 
 
 * See especially The Real History of the Rosicrucians, A. E. Waite, 1887. 
 Redway (Kegan, Paul & Co.). Bacon and the Rosicrucians, 1889, and 
 Francis Bacon, etc., 1890; both by W. F. C. Wigston {Kegan, Paul, 
 Trubner & Co.). 
 
188 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 from their system of philosophy, though that itself has passed 
 awayT * 
 
 As will be seen, there is strong reason to doubt whether the 
 words which we have rendered in italics are correct. The 
 philosophy, the work of the Eosy Cross Brethren, has never 
 passed away ; it is, we feel sure, still green and growing, and 
 possessing all the earth. 
 
 It is only just to readers to whom this subject is new, to say 
 that there is still a wide divergence of opinion concerning the 
 origin and true aims of the secret society of the Eosicrucians. 
 Bailey gives the following account : 
 
 "Their chief was a German gentleman, educated in a 
 monastery, where, having learned the languages, he travelled 
 to the Holy Land, anno 1378 ; and, being at Damascus, arid falling 
 sick, he had heard the conversation of some Arabs and other 
 Oriental philosophers, by whom he is supposed to have been 
 initiated into this mysterious art. At his return into Germany 
 he formed a society, and communicated to them the secrets he 
 had brought with him out of the East, and died in 1484. 
 
 " They were a sect or cabal of hermetical philosophers, who 
 bound themselves by a solemn secret, which they swore inviolably 
 to observe, and obliged themselves, at their admission into the 
 order, to a strict observance of certain established rules. 
 
 " They pretended to know all sciences, and especially medicine, 
 of which they published themselves the restorers ; they also 
 pretended to be masters of abundance of important secrets, and, 
 among others, that of the philosopher's stone ; all which, they 
 affirmed, they had received by tradition from the ancient 
 ^Egyptians, Chaldeans, the Magi, and Gymnosophists. 
 
 " They pretended to protract the period of human life by 
 means of certain nostrums, and even to restore youth. They 
 pretended to know all things. They are also called the Invisible 
 Brothers, because they have made no appearance, but have kept 
 themselves incog, for several years." f 
 
 As will be seen, we cannot agree with the opinions of Bailey 
 and others, who have claimed for the society a very great 
 antiquity, finding no evidence whatever that the hermetical 
 philosophers last described, the supposed alchemists and 
 
 * Heckethorn, " Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries." 
 "I" Bailey's Dictionary — Rosier ucians. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 189 
 
 sorcerers, were ever heard of until the end of the sixteenth 
 century. That a secret religious society did exist for mutual 
 protection amongst the Christians of the early church and all 
 through the darkest ages until the stormy times of persecution 
 at the Reformation and Counter-reformation, there can be no 
 doubt. Probably the rude and imperfect organisation of the 
 early religious society waslaken as a basis on which to rear the 
 complete and highly-finished edifice as we find it in the time of 
 James I. But, in honest truth, all statements regarding Rosi- 
 er ucians as a society of men of letters existing before the year 
 1575 must be regarded as highly doubtful, and the stories of 
 the Rosier ucians themselves, as fictions, or parabolical, " feigned 
 histories," devised in order to puzzle and astonish the un- 
 initiated hearer. 
 
 In the Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia there is an article on the 
 Rosicrucians which seems in no way to run counter to these 
 opinions. The article begins with the statement that in times 
 long ago there existed men of various races, religions, and climes, 
 who bound themselves by solemn obligations of mutual succour, 
 of impenetrable secrecy, and of humility, to labour for the 
 preservation of human life by the exercise of the healing art. 
 But no date is assigned for the first appearance of this society 
 in any form, or under any name. And the title Rosicrucian was, 
 we know, never given or adopted until after the publication of 
 the Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz, in 1616. The 
 writer in the cyclopaedia seems to acknowledge that the truth 
 about the origin of the Rosicrucian Fraternity is known, though 
 known only to a few, and we have strong reasons for believing 
 that, in Germany at least, a certain select number of the learned 
 members of the " Catholic " (not the Papal) Church are fully 
 aware of how, when, and where this society was formed, which, 
 after awhile, assumed the name of Rosicrucian, but which the 
 initiates in Germany call by its true name — " Baconian." It is 
 very difficult, in all Masonic writings, for the uninitiated to sift 
 the true from the false ; or, rather, fact from disguised history, 
 prosaic statements from figurative language, genuine information 
 from garbled statements framed expressly to mislead. Yet, in 
 spite of these things, which must never be lost sight of, the 
 article in question gives such a good summary of some of the 
 chief facts and theories about the Rosy Cross Brethren, that, for 
 
190 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 the benefit of those who cannot easily procure the cyclopaedia, 
 we transcribe some portions : 
 
 " Men of the most opposite worldly creeds, of diverse habits, 
 and even of apparently remote ideas, have ever joined together, 
 consciously or unconsciously, to glorify the good, and depise, 
 although with pity, the evil that might he reconciled to the good. 
 But in the centuries of unrest which accompanied the evolution 
 of any kind of civilisation, either ancient or modern, how was 
 this laudable principle to be maintained ? * This was done by 
 a body of the learned, existing in all ages under peculiar restric- 
 tions, and at one time known as the Rosicrucian Fraternity. 
 The Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, unlike the lower orders of 
 Freemasons, seldom had gatherings together. The brethren 
 were isolated from each other, although aware of their mutual 
 existence, and corresponding by secret and mysterious writings, 
 and books, after the introduction of printing. They courted 
 solitude and obscurity, and sought, in the contemplation of the 
 divine qualities of the Creator, that beatitude which the rude 
 outside world despised or feared. In this manner, however, 
 they also became the discoverers and conservators of important 
 physical secrets, which, by slow degrees, they gradually com- 
 municated to the world, with which, in another sense, they had 
 so little to do. It is not, at the same time, to be supposed that 
 these occult philosophers either despised the pleasures or dis- 
 couraged the pursuits of their active contemporaries ; but, as we 
 ever find some innermost sanctuary in each noble and sacred 
 fane, so they retired to constitute a body apart, and more 
 peculiarly devoted to those mystical studies for which the great 
 mass of mankind were unfitted by taste or character. Mildness 
 and beneficence marked such courteous intercourse as their 
 studious habits permitted them to have with their fellow-men ; 
 and in times of danger, in centuries of great physical suffering, 
 they emerged from their retreats with the benevolent object of 
 vanquishing and alleviating the calamities of mankind. In a 
 rude period of turmoil, of battle, and of political change, they 
 placidly pursued their way, the custodians of human learning, 
 and thus acquired the respect, and even the reverence, of their 
 less cultivated contemporaries. . . . The very fact of their 
 limited number led to their further elevation in the public 
 esteem, and there grew up around them somewhat of 'the 
 divinity that doth hedge a king.' . . . 
 
 * This, it is seen, was the very question which Francis Bacon, at the age 
 of fifteen, proposed to himself. See Spedding's " Life," I. 3 ; and ante, 
 Chap. IV. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 191 
 
 "It is easy at the present day to see that which is held up 
 before every one in the broad light of a tolerant century ; but it 
 was not so in the days of the Rosicrucians and other fraternities. 
 There was a dread, amongst the masses of society in bygone 
 days, of the unseen — a dread, as recent events and phenomena 
 show very clearly, not yet overcome in its entirety. Hence, 
 students of nature and mind were forced into an obscurity not 
 altogether unwelcome or irksome, but in this obscurity they 
 paved the way for a vast revolution in mental science. . . . 
 The patient labours of Trittenheim produced the modern system 
 of diplomatic cipher-writing. Even the apparently aimless 
 wanderings of the monks and friars were associated with 
 practical life, and the numerous missals and books of prayer, 
 carried from camp to camp, conveyed, to the initiated, secret 
 messages and intelligence dangerous to be communicated in 
 other ways. The sphere of human intelligence was thus enlarged, 
 and the freedom of mankind from a pitiless priesthood, or 
 perhaps, rather, a system of tyranny under which that priest- 
 hood equally suffered, was ensured. 
 
 " It was a fact not even disputed by Roman Catholic writers 
 of the most Papal ideas, that the evils of society, ecclesiastical 
 and lay, were materially increased by the growing worldliness 
 of each successive pontiff. Hence we may see why the origin 
 of Rosicrucianism was veiled by symbols, and even its founder, 
 Andrea, was not the only philosophical romancer — Plato, 
 Apuleius, Heliodorus, Lucian, and others had preceded him in 
 this path. 
 
 "It is worthy of remark that one particular century, and that 
 in which the Rosicrucians first showed themselves, is distin- 
 guished in history as the era in which most of these efforts at 
 throwing off the trammels of the past occurred. Hence the 
 opposition of the losing party, and their virulence against any- 
 thing mysterious or unknown. They freely organised pseudo- 
 Rosicrucian and Masonic societies in return, and these societies 
 were instructed to irregularly entrap the weaker brethren of 
 the True and Invisible Order, and then triumphantly betray 
 anything they might be so inconsiderate as to communicate to 
 the superiors of these transitory and unmeaning associations. 
 
 " Modern times have eagerly accepted, in the full light of 
 science, the precious inheritance of knowledge bequeathed by 
 the Rosicrucians, and that body has disappeared from the visible 
 knowledge of mankind, and re-entered that invisible fraternity of 
 which mention was made in the opening of this article. . . . It 
 is not desirable, in a work of this kind, to make disclosures of an 
 indiscreet nature. The Brethren of the Rosy Cross will never, 
 and should not, at peril and under alarm, give up their secrets. 
 
192 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 This ancient body has apparently disappeared from the field of 
 human activity, but its labours are being carried on with alacrity, 
 and with a sure delight in an ultimate success."* 
 
 Although, during our search for information, experience has 
 made us increasingly cautious about believing anything which 
 we read in printed books concerning the Rosicrucians or the 
 Freemasons, still it seems almost impossible to discredit the 
 statements which have just been quoted ; at least it will be 
 granted that the writer is intending to tell the truth. He seems 
 also to speak with knowledge, if not with authority, and such a 
 passage as has been last quoted must, we think, shake the 
 opinion of those who would maintain that the Rosicrucians, if 
 ever they really existed and worked for any good purpose, have 
 certainly disappeared, and that there is no such secret organisa- 
 tion at the present time. The facts of the case, so far as we 
 have been able to trace them, are entirely in accordance with the 
 assertion that the non-existence of the Rosicrucian Society is 
 only apparent ; true, they work quietly and unrecognised, but 
 their labours are unremitting, and the beneficial results patent 
 in our very midst. 
 
 A great light has been shed upon our subject by the publica- 
 tion in 1887 of Mr. Waite's remarkable little book, which has, 
 for the first time, laid before the public several tracts and manu- 
 scripts whose existence, if known to previous investigators, had 
 certainly been ignored, including different copies and accounts 
 of the " Universal Reformation of the Whole Wide World " (the 
 title of one of the chief Rosicrucian documents), as well as 
 original editions of the " Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosy 
 Cross," which are not in the Library Catalogue.^ It is true, as 
 Mr. Waite says, that he is thus enabled to offer for the first time 
 in the literature of the subject the Rosicrucians represented by 
 themselves. J 
 
 This invaluable book should be read in connection with another 
 
 * From the Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, edited by Kenneth R. H. 
 Mackenzie, IX°, pub. Bro. John Hogg, 1877. 
 
 | Note how often this is found to be the case where particulars throwing 
 fresh light on Bacon or on matters connected with him are found in old 
 books or libraries. 
 
 X See The Real History of the Rosicrucians, by A. S. Waite, London, 
 Redway, 1887. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 193 
 
 important volume which has since been published, and which 
 follows the subject into recesses whither it is impossible now to 
 attempt to penetrate.* Mr. Wigston enters boldly and learnedly 
 upon the connection perceivable between Bacon's philosophy 
 and Rosicrucianism, and the whole book goes to prove, on very 
 substantial grounds, that I^acon was probably the founder and 
 certainly the mainstay of the society. 
 
 For those who have not time or opportunity for much reading, 
 it may be well again, briefly, to summarise the aims of the 
 Rosicrucians, as shown by their professed publications, and the 
 rules and system of work by which they hoped to secure those 
 aims.f We gather from the evidence collected that the objects 
 of the fraternity were threefold : 
 
 1. To purify religion and to stimulate unity and reform in the 
 Church. 
 
 2. To promote and advance learning and science. 
 
 3. To mitigate the miseries of humanity, and to restore man 
 to the original state of purity and happiness from which, by sin, 
 he has fallen. 
 
 On comparing utterances of the supposed authors of the 
 Rosicrucian manifestoes with Bacon's reiterated statements as 
 to his own views and aspirations, we find them identical in 
 thought and sentiment, sometimes identical in expression. It is 
 only necessary to refer to the eloquent and beautiful chapter 
 with which Spedding opens his Letters and Life of Bacon, and 
 from which some portions have been already quoted, in order to 
 perceive how striking is the general resemblance in aim, how 
 early the aspirations of Bacon formed themselves into a project, 
 and with what rapidity the project became a great fact. 
 
 "Assuming, then," concludes the biographer, " that a deep 
 interest in these three causes — the cause of reformed religion, of 
 his native country, and of the human race through all their 
 generations— was thus early implanted in that vigorous and 
 vigin soil, we must leave it to struggle up as it may, according 
 to the accidents of time and weather. ... Of Bacon's life I 
 
 * Bacon, Shakespeare, and the Rosicrucians, by W. F. C. Wigston, 
 London, Redway, 1889. 
 
 t The following is chiefly extracted from an article in the Bacon Journal, 
 January, 1889 (Redway). 
 
194 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 am persuaded that no man will ever form a correct idea, unless 
 he bear in mind that from very early youth his heart was 
 divided by these three objects, distinct, but not discordant." 
 
 Francis, as we have seen, was not fifteen years old when he 
 conceived the thought of founding a new system for the advance- 
 ment of knowledge, and for the benefit of humanity. The Rosi- 
 crucian manifestoes inform us that the founder of the society, and 
 the writer of one of the most important documents, The Chymica.1 
 Marriage, was a boy of fifteen. 
 
 Mr. Waite observes, naturally enough, that the knowledge 
 evinced by the writer of the paper in question, of the practices 
 and purposes of alchemy, must be impossible to the most pre- 
 cocious boy. But in mind Francis Bacon never was a boy. 
 Some men, he said, were always boys, their minds never grew 
 with their bodies, but he reflected (evidently thinking of him- 
 self in relation to others) that " All is not in yeares, somewhat 
 also is in houres well spent* Never had he been " idle truant, 
 omitting the sweet benefit of time, 1 ' but rather had, like Proteus, 
 " for that's his name" 
 
 " Made use and fair advantage of his days, 
 His years but young, but his experience old ; 
 His head unmellowed, but his judgment ripe ! "f 
 
 Wonderful as it is, improbable as it would appear, did we 
 not know it to be the case, the fact remains, that at the age of 
 fifteen Francis Bacon had run through the whole round of the 
 arts and sciences at Cambridge, had outstripped his tutors, and 
 had left Cambridge in disappointment and disgust, finding 
 nothing more to learn there. He did not wait to pass a degree, 
 but, practically, it was acknowledged that he had more than 
 deserved it, for the degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon 
 him some time afterwards. 
 
 How he spent the next year is not recorded by his biographer, 
 but another R. C. document, the Fama Fratemitatis, throws a 
 side-light upon the matter. In this paper, full (as all these 
 Rosicrucian manifestoes are) of Bacon's ideas and peculiarities 
 of expression, we read that " the high and noble spirit of one 
 of the fraternity was stirred up to enter into the scheme for a 
 
 * Promus. | Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. 4. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 195 
 
 general reformation, and to travel away to the wise men of 
 Arabia." This we interpret to mean that, at this time, the 
 young philosopher was entering his studies of Rhazis, Aven- 
 zoar, Averroes, Avicenna, and other Arabic physicians and 
 " Hermetic " writers, from whom we find him quoting in his 
 acknowledged, as well as in his unacknowledged, writings. 
 
 At this time, the Fama informs us, this young member was 
 sixteen years old, and for one year he had pursued his course 
 alone. 
 
 What is this likely to mean but that, having left college, he 
 was pursuing his advanced studies by himself ? It seems almost 
 a certainty that at this period he was endeavouring, as so many 
 other ardent minds have done, to get at a knowledge of the first 
 causes of things. How could he better attempt to achieve this 
 than by going back to the most ancient philosophies in order to 
 trace the history of learning and thought from the earliest 
 recorded period to his own times ? 
 
 We shall presently have occasion to show the immense 
 influence which the study of the occult philosophies of 
 India, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt had upon the mind and 
 writings of Francis Bacon, and how he drew from them 
 the universal symbols and emblems which are the founda- 
 tions of Freemason language and hieroglyphics. Another 
 particular especially links Bacon with the whole system 
 of Eosicrucianism, and this is that very matter of making 
 collections or dictionaries spoken of in the last chapter. 
 Now, this was not only one of the ostensible objects of the 
 fraternity, but also the ostensible object of Francis Bacon. He 
 claims the idea as his own, and declares that neither Aristotle 
 nor Theophrastus, Dioscorides or Pliny, and much less any of 
 the modern writers, have hitherto proposed such a thing to 
 themselves. Spedding says Bacon would have found that such 
 a dictionary or index of nature as he contemplated in the 
 Novum Organum must be nearly as voluminous as nature herself, 
 and he gives the impression that such a dictionary was not 
 attempted by Bacon. Here, as will be seen, we differ from this 
 admirable biographer, and believe that Bacon did organise, and 
 himself commence, such a system of note-taking, alphabetising, 
 collating, " transporting," etc., as by the help of " his twenty 
 
196 FEANCIS BACCW 
 
 young gentlemen," his able pens, devoted friends in every 
 corner of the civilised world, and especially from the Illuminati, 
 Rosy Cross brethren, and skilled Freemasons, to produce, within 
 a few years, that truly cyclopedian mass of books of reference, 
 which later writers have merely digested or added to. 
 
 Bacon claims as his own the method by which this great 
 deficiency is to be supplied. 
 
 Behold, then, the author of the Fama Fraternitatis making a 
 precisely similar claim : 
 
 "After this manner began the Fraternity of the Rosie Cross — 
 first by four persons only, and by them was made the Magical 
 Lannage and Writing with a large Dictionary." 
 
 May not the sentence just quoted help somewhat to account 
 for the extraordinary likeness, not only in ideas, but in words, 
 of books, scientific and historical, which appeared before the 
 publication of the great collections ? Is it possible that copies 
 or transcripts may have been made from Bacon's great manu- 
 script distionaries by those who would, with his ever-ready help, 
 proceed to " make " or " produce " a book ? Were such budding 
 authors (Rosicrucians) allowed to come under his roof to write 
 their books, and use his library and his brains ? — questions at 
 present unanswerable, but to be answered. Visions of Ben 
 Jonson writing his "Apology for Bartholomew Fair at the house 
 of my Lord St. Albans ; " of Bacon visiting Raleigh in prison ; 
 of the young Hobbes pacing the alleys at Gorhambury with the 
 Sage of Verulam — these and many other suggestive images 
 rise and dissolve before the eyes of one who has tried to live in 
 imagination the life of Francis Bacon, and to realise the way in 
 which his faithful followers endeavoured to fulfil his wishes. 
 
 Dictionary is a dry, prosaic word to modern ears ; the very 
 idea of having to use one damps enthusiasm, and drops us 
 " when several yards above the earth " into the study or the 
 
 class-room. But 
 
 " It so falls out 
 That what we have, we prize not to the worth 
 Whiles we enjoy it ; but being lacked and lost, 
 Why, then, we rack the value." * 
 
 Now think, if we had no dictionaries, how we should lack 
 * M. Ado, IV. 1. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 197 
 
 them, and having made even one poor little note-book on any- 
 subject which closely concerns us, how we prize it, and rack its 
 value ! So did Bacon. The making of dictionaries was to him 
 a sacred duty, one of the first and most needful steps toward 
 the accomplishment of his great ends. 
 
 " I want this primary Jwstory to be compiled with a religious 
 care, as if every particular were stated on oath ; seeing that it 
 is the hook of God's works, and (so far as the majesty of the 
 heavenly may be compared with the humbleness of earthly 
 things) a kind of second Scripture." 
 
 He sees that such a vast and difficult work is only to be 
 accomplished by means of co-operation, and by co-operation 
 on a methodical plan. These convictions are expressed in 
 Bacon's most Rosicrucian works, the New Atlantis, Parasceve, 
 Natural and Experimental History, and other " fragmentary " 
 pieces. " If," he says, " all the wits of all ages, which hitherto 
 have been, or hereafter shall be, were clubbed together ; if all 
 mankind had given, or should hereafter give, their minds wholly 
 to philosophy, and if the whole world were, or should be, com- 
 posed of nothing but academies, colleges, and schools of learned 
 men ; yet, without such a natural and experimental history as 
 we shall now prescribe, we deny that there could be, or can be, 
 any progress in philosophy and other sciences worthy of man- 
 kind." 
 
 The author of Fama reflects in precisely the same fashion, 
 writing the thought of the sacred nature of such a work, and 
 the thought that it is a kind of second Scripture, with that 
 other most important reflection as to the necessity for unity, 
 and a combination of wits, if real progress is to be made and a 
 book of nature or a perfect method of all arts achieved. 
 
 " Seeing the only wise and merciful God in these latter days 
 hath poured so richly His mercy and goodness to mankind, 
 whereby we do attain more and more to the knowledge of His 
 Son Jesus Christ, and of nature, ... He hath also made mani- 
 fest unto us many wonderful and never-heretofore-seen works 
 and creatures of nature ; ... so that finally man might thereby 
 understand his own nobleness and worth, and why he is called 
 Microcosmus, and how far his knowledge extendeth in nature. 
 
 "Although the rude world herewith will be but little pleased, 
 but rather smile and scoff thereat ; also the pride and covetous- 
 
198 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 ness of the learned is so great, it will not suffer them to agree 
 together ; but were they united, they might, out of all those things 
 which in this our age God doth so richly bestow upon us, collect 
 Librum Naturae, or a perfect method of all arts* 
 
 " The College of the Six Days," which Bacon described, is, 
 we know, the College of the Rosicrucians, who accept the New 
 Atlantis, in its old form, as a Rosicrucian document, and allow 
 it to be circulated under a changed title. 
 
 The hopelessness of attempting to perform single-handed all 
 that his enthusiasm for humanity prompted, all that his 
 prophetic soul foresaw for distant ages, often oppressed his 
 mind ; as often he summoned his energies, his philosophy, 
 and his faith in God, to comfort and encourage him to the work. 
 This is all very distinctly traceable in the Promus notes, so 
 frequently quoted in the Shakespeare plays. Amongst the 
 early entries, in the sprawling Anglo-Saxon handwriting of his 
 youth, he records his intention to use " Ingenuous honesty, and 
 yet with opposition and strength. Good means against badd, 
 homes to crosses." f " The ungodly," he reflects, " walk 
 around on every side." " I was silent from good words, and my 
 grief was renewed," but " I believed and therefore have I 
 spoken." He is resolute in trying to do what he feels to be 
 his duty, for " The memory of the just lives with praise, but the 
 name of the wicked shall rot." Here we find him registering 
 his resolves to do good to others, regardless of private advantage 
 or profit. This, it will be seen, is one of the cardinal rules of 
 the Rosy Cross Brethren. They were " to cure the sick gratis" 
 to seek for no pecuniary profit or reward for the works which 
 they produced for the benefit of others. " Buy the truth," say 
 Bacon's notes, " and sell it not." " He who hasteth to be rich 
 shall not be innocent," but " Give not that which is holy unto 
 dogs." He foresaw, or had already experienced in his own short 
 life, the manner in which the " dogs " or cynics of public opinion 
 and of common ignorance would quarrel over and tear to pieces 
 every scrap of new knowledge which he presented to them. 
 " The devil," he says further on, " hath cast a bone to set strife." 
 
 * Fama Fraternitatis — Real History of the Rosicrucians ; A. S. Waite. 
 
 | See in the chapter on Paper Marks the Symbols of Horns and Crosses, 
 to which, perhaps, the entry alludes. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 199 
 
 But this should not hinder him. " We ought to obey God 
 rather than man," "and the fire shall try every man's work, of 
 what sort it is ; " " for we can do nothing against the truth, but 
 much for the truth." And then he seems to prepare his mind 
 to suffer on account of the efforts which he was making on 
 mankind's behalf. He remembers that our Blessed Lord Him- 
 self suffered in the same way, and writes a memorandum from 
 this verse : " Many good work have I showed you of My 
 Father ; for which of those works do ye stone Me ? " Whatever 
 might be the judgment upon him and his works, he would rest 
 in the assurance of St. Paul : " I have fought a good fight, I 
 have finished my course, I have kept the faith." We hardly 
 think that he stopped here in the quotation. Although he does 
 not write down the other half of the passage, his ardent soul 
 treasured, and his works reflect in a thousand different ways the 
 inspiring and triumphant hope of recognition in that future life 
 to which he was always looking : " Henceforward there is laid 
 up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
 Judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but to all 
 that love His appearing."* 
 
 But meanwhile, how to do all that he felt and knew to be 
 necessary, and yet which could only be done by himself, we see 
 him again in the notes reflecting that victory can be gained by 
 means of numbers ; that " things united are more powerful or 
 better than things not united ; " that " two eyes are better than 
 one;" "So many heades so many wits;" "Friends have all 
 things in common ; " " Many things taken together are helpful, 
 which taken singly are of no use ; " " One must take men as 
 they are, and times as they are ; " but, on the whole, he seems 
 to think that most men are serviceable for something, that 
 every properly instructed tongue may be made to bear witness, 
 and that it must be one part of his work to draw together so 
 great a cloud of witnesses as may perform the part of a chorus, 
 endorsing, echoing, or capping the doctrines of the new philo- 
 sophy as they were uttered, and giving a support, as of public 
 opinion, both at home and abroad. 
 
 We now know that many of Bacon's works were transmitted 
 "beyond the seas," to France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and 
 
 * 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8. 
 
200 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Holland, where they were translated and surreptitiously pub- 
 lished, usually under [other names than his own. There are, 
 when we come to collect them, many indications in the Promns 
 of a secret to be kept, and of a system planned for the keeping 
 of it. 
 
 " The glory of God" we read, is " to conceal a thing " — and 
 there are many " secrets of God." " Woorke as God Woorkes " — 
 quietly, persistently, secretly — unheeded, except by those who 
 read in His infinite book of secrecy. " Plutoe's helmet " is said 
 to have produced " invisibility." " The gods have woollen feet *' 
 — i.e., steal on us unawares. " Triceps Mercurius, great runy- 
 ing," alludes, perhaps, to the little anonymous book of cipher 
 called " Mercury, the Secret and Swift Messenger," which repro- 
 duces so accurately (and without acknowledging him) Bacon's 
 biliteral cipher, and other particulars told so precisely after his 
 manner, that we believe it to be the brief summary of some 
 much larger works. But he also notes that " a Mercury cannot 
 be made of every wood," that is, a dull fellow will never be 
 made a clever one ; nevertheless " a true servant may be made 
 of an unlikely piece of wood,"* and he had a faculty for attach- 
 ing people to him and 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 lines earlier is this entry : 
 
 " Iisdem e' Uteris efficitur tragcedia et comedia " 
 (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. f 
 
 * See letter to Lord Pickering, 1594. 
 
 t "I have sent you some copies of the Advancement, which you desired ; 
 and a little work of my recreation, which you desired not. Mylnstauration 
 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 know not what." — (Letter from Bacon to 
 Sir Tobie Matthew, 1609). 
 
 " What these works of the alphabet may have been, I cannot guess ; 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 201 
 
 Such entries as these, suggestive of some mystery, are in- 
 teresting 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 Com- 
 mentaries or Transport'ata, 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 Ansce, so as to graft the new upon 
 the old, ut religiones solent" of the " ordinary cours of incom- 
 petency of reason for natural philosophy and invention of 
 woorks." " Also of means to procure ' histories ' of all things 
 natural and mechanical, lists of errors, observations, axioms, &c." 
 Then follow entries from which we abridge : 
 
 " Layeing for a place to command wytts and pennes, West- 
 minster, Eton, Wynchester ; spec(ially) Trinity Coll., Cam. ; St. 
 John's, Cam. ; Maudlin Coll., Oxford. 
 
 " Qu. Of young schollars in ye universities. It must be the 
 post nati. Giving pensions to four, to compile the two histories, 
 ut supra. Foundac : Of a college for inventors, Library, 
 Inginary. 
 
 M Qu. Of the order and discipline, the rules and prescripts 
 of their studyes and inquyries, allowances for travailing, intelli- 
 gence, and correspondence with ye universities abroad. 
 
 " Qu. Of the maner and prescripts touching secresy, tradi- 
 tions, and publication." 
 
 Here we have a complete sketch of the elaborate design which 
 was to be worked out ; and we wonder — yes, we wonder, with 
 an astonishment which increases as we approach the matter — 
 how these remarkable jottings, so pregnant with suggestion, 
 speaking to us in every line of a vast and deeply-laid scheme, 
 should have been so lightly (or can it be so purposely) passed 
 over in every life or biography of Bacon. Here he was laying 
 his plans to " command wits and pens " in all the great public 
 schools, and especially in the principal colleges of the univer- 
 
 unless they related to Bacon's cipher," etc. — (Spedding's comment on the 
 above words, I. 659). 
 
 See also the Advancement of Learning, II. ; Spedding, III. 399, where 
 Bacon quotes Aristotle to show that words are the images of cogitations, 
 and letters are the images of words. 
 
 
 
202 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 sities. He was endeavouring to secure the services of the 
 cleverest scholars to assist him in working out a scheme of his 
 own. They were specially to be young scholars, who should 
 have imbibed, or who were capable of imbibing, the advanced 
 ideas produced by the " new birth of time," which he had him- 
 self inaugurated. To work out new ideas, one must have fresh 
 and supple material ; and minds belonging to bodies which 
 have existed for nearly half a century are rarely either supple 
 or easily receptive of new ideas. Bacon, therefore, did not 
 choose, for the main stuff and fibre of his great reforming society, 
 men of his own age (he was now forty-seven) ; he wisely sought 
 out the brightest and freshest of the Sons of the Morning, the 
 cream of youthful talent, wherever it was to be discovered. 
 
 Would it not be a pursuit as exciting as profitable to hunt 
 out and track the footsteps of those choice young wits and pens 
 of the new school, of the Temporis Partus Masculus, and Partis 
 Secundo Delineatio, of which Bacon thought and wrote so much, 
 and to see what various aids these " young schollars " were able 
 to afford for his great work ? One line of work is clearly indi- 
 cated ; they were, under his own instructions, to collect materials 
 for compiling " histories " on natural philosophy and on inven- 
 tions in the mechanical arts — as we should now say, the applied 
 sciences. One work is specified, as to its contents and nature. 
 It is to be a " history of marvailes M with " all the popular errors 
 detected." Such a book was published shortly after Bacon's 
 death by a young Oxford man, of whom we shall by-and-by 
 have occasion to speak. Another history is of " Mechanique " ; 
 it is to be compiled with care and diligence, and a school of 
 science is to be established for the special study of the art of 
 invention. " A college, furnished with all necessary scientific 
 apparatus, workshops and materials for experiments." Not 
 only so, but Bacon proposes to give pensions to four of his young 
 men, in order that they might freely devote themselves to 
 scientific or philosophic research. Some were also to have 
 " allowances for travelling, 1 ' which proves that their field of 
 research and for the gleaning of materials was not to be confined 
 only to their own country, but " inquiries and correspondence 
 with ye universities abroad M were to form an important element 
 in the scheme. 
 
 The works which were the product of this wise and liberal 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 203 
 
 scheme of Bacon's will not be difficult of identification. They 
 belong to the class of which the author said that they did not 
 pretend to originality, but that they were flowers culled from 
 every man's garden and tied together by a thread of his own. 
 
 It is clear that the wits and pens of the "young schollars" 
 (who, we learn from the Rosicrucian documents, were to be 
 sixty-three in number) were chartered and secured under the 
 seal of secrecy. The last of the manifestoes in Mr. Waite's 
 book contain this passage, in which few who have read much of 
 Bacon will fail to recognise his sentiments, his intentions — nay, 
 his very words : 
 
 " I was twenty when this book was 'finished ; but methinks I 
 have outlived myself ; I begin to be weary of the sun.* ... I 
 have shaken hands with delight, and know all is vanity, and I 
 think no man can live well once but he that could live twice. 
 For my part I would not live over my hours past, or begin again 
 the minutes of my days ;f not because I have lived well, but for 
 fear that I should live them worse. At my death I mean to 
 make a total adieu of the world, not caring for the burthen of 
 a tombstone and epitaph, but in the universal Register of God 
 I fix my contemplations on Heaven. I writ the Rosicrucian 
 Infallible Axiomato in four books, and study, not for my own 
 sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. In the 
 law I began to be a perfect clerk ; I writ the Idea of the Law, 
 -etc., for the benefit of my friends, and practice in King's Bench.J 
 I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that 
 know less. . . . Now, in the midst of all my endeavours 
 there is but one thought that dejects me, that my acquired parts 
 must perish with myself, nor can be legacied amongst my dearly 
 beloved and honoured friends.'' 
 
 This is the very sentiment which caused Bacon to contrive 
 some method of handing down, by means of those very friends, 
 the Lamp of Tradition, which he could not legacy, but which, 
 wherever forthcoming and by whomsoever rubbed, brings up on 
 the spot the spirit of the Lamp, Francis Bacon himself. 
 
 Let us glance for a few minutes at " the order and discipline, 
 the rules and prescripts," which were instituted for the use of 
 
 * I 'gin to be aweary of the sun. 1 " — Macb. V. 5. " Cassius is aweary of 
 ■the world."— Jul. Cazs. IV. 3. 
 
 t Compare Bacon's posthumous or second Essay Of Death. 
 X See Bacon's Tracts of the Law, Spedding, Works, VII. 
 
204 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 the Rosicrucian Fraternity, or may we not safely say, for the use 
 of Bacon's " young schollars " and friends ? The original rules 
 were fifty-two in number, but only the leading features of them 
 can be noted, numbers being placed against them for the sake 
 of brevity in reference : 
 
 1. The society was to consist of sixty-three members, of 
 various grades of initiation, apprentices, brethren, and an 
 " imperator." 
 
 2. These were all sworn to secrecy for a period of one hundred 
 years. 
 
 3. They were to have secret names, but to pass in public by 
 their own names. 
 
 4. To wear the dress of the country in which they resided. 
 
 5. To profess ignorance, if interrogated, on all subjects con- 
 nected with the society, except the Art of Healing. 
 
 6. To cure the sick gratis (sickness and healing seem to have 
 been terms used, metaphorically, for ignorance, and instruction 
 or knowledge). 
 
 7. In all ways and places to oppose the aggressions and un- 
 mask the impositions of the Roman Papacy. 
 
 8. To aid in the dissemination of truth and knowledge 
 throughout all countries. 
 
 9. Writings, if carried about, were to be written in ambiguous 
 language, or in " secret writing." (Query, in cipher?) 
 
 10. Rosicrucian works were, as a rule, not to be published 
 under the real name of their author. Pseudonyms, mottoes, or 
 initials (not the author's own) were to be adopted. 
 
 11. These feigned names and signatures were to be frequently 
 changed. The "Imperator" to change his name not less 
 frequently than once in ten years. 
 
 12. The places of publication for the " secret writings " to be 
 also periodically changed. 
 
 13. Each member was to have at least one " apprentice " to 
 succeed him and to take over his work. (By which means the 
 secret writings could be passed down from one hand to another 
 until the time was ripe for their disclosure.) 
 
 14. The Brethren must suffer any punishment, even to death 
 itself, sooner than disclose the secrets specially confided to 
 them. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 205 
 
 15. They must apply themselves to making friends with the 
 powerful and the learned of all countries. 
 
 16. They must strive to become rich, not for the sake of 
 money itself, for they must spend it broadcast for the good 
 of others, but for the sake of the advantages afforded by wealth 
 and position for pushing forward the beneficent objects of the 
 society.* 
 
 17. They were to promote the building of " fair houses" for 
 the advancement of learning, and for the relief of sickness, dis- 
 tress, age, or poverty. 
 
 18. When a Eosicrucian died he was to be quietly and un- 
 ostentatiously buried. His grave was either to be left without a 
 tombstone, or, if his friends chose to erect a monument in his 
 honour, the inscription upon it was to be ambiguous. 
 
 It is needless to show what an engine such a society would 
 be, driven by such a motive power as Bacon, one original mind, 
 endowed in almost equally balanced proportions with every 
 intellectual faculty ; equally capable of the quick perception of 
 ideas, as of their prompt acquisition and application to useful 
 purposes. With all this, Bacon possessed the still rarer faculty 
 of being able to communicate his ideas, to impress them upon 
 the dull, dead minds of the many, as well as upon the more 
 receptive apprehensions of the few. Where opposition to direct 
 teaching or advance in any kind of knowledge existed, there his 
 versatile genius, the " nimbleness of mind," of which he was 
 conscious, enabled him to devise methods " to let new light in 
 upon the understanding, and conquer prejudice without raising 
 
 * The working of this rule is observable throughout the whole of 
 Bacon's life and writings. It accounts for the diametrically opposite 
 accusations which have been levelled against him and which his enemies 
 have delighted to magnify, of meanness and lavishness. " Riches," he 
 says, " are for spending, and spending for honour and good actions. . . . 
 I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue ; the Roman word is 
 better, ' impedimenta,' for as the baggage is to an army, so is riches to 
 virtue ; it cannot be spared nor left behind, but it hindereth the march. 
 . . . Of great riches there is no real use except it be in the distribu- 
 tion; the rest is but conceit." "Money is like muck, not good except it 
 be spread.'" In the same spirit, and with the same metaphor, Coriolanus 
 is said to have regarded riches. " Our spoils he kicked at, and looked 
 upon things fprecious as they were the common muck o' the world." — 
 Cor. ii. 3. Compare Essays Of Expense and Of Riches with the speeches 
 of the fallen Wolsey, Henry VIII. iii. 2, 106, etc., and with Timon of 
 Athens, i. 2, 90, etc., ii. 1, etc. 
 
206 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 contests, animosities, opposition or disturbance," * to speak 
 truth with a laughing face.t 
 
 We are disposed to shrink from the facts which stare us in the 
 face, and to say : Is it possible that one man can have dared 
 and accomplished so much ? Is it possible that any one brain 
 could have been capable enough, any life long enough, to enable 
 one man to have not only planned, but carried through, the 
 amount of works of infinitely varied kinds in which we find 
 Bacon engaged ? Is it possible that he could have found time 
 to read, cogitate, write, and publish this enormous quantity of 
 valuable works, each pre-eminent in its own way ; to have filled 
 some of them with elaborate ciphers, and to have made many of 
 them means of conveying information secret as well as osten- 
 sible ? With all this can we conceive him also experimenting to 
 the extent which we know he did in every branch of natural 
 philosophy, breaking a gap into every fresh matter, noting 
 deficiencies in old studies, and setting to work to supply them ; 
 in each case originating and inaugurating new ideas — a very 
 different affair from merely imitating, or following where 
 another has gone before? 
 
 In truth, a hasty judgment would pronounce these things to 
 be impossible and contrary to common sense. But this merely 
 means unparalleled in the speaker's experience. No other man 
 has ever been known to perform such work as we claim for 
 Francis Bacon. 
 
 But Bacon was no ordinary man. He was an intellectual 
 giant, born into a world which seemed to him to be chiefly 
 peopled with pigmies ; the spiritual and intellectual life of the 
 world stunted, deformed, diseased, and sick unto death through 
 ignorance and the sins which ignorance nourishes and streng- 
 thens. With his herculean powers and eagle-sighted faculties 
 of imagination, keen to perceive, subtle to devise, prompt to act, 
 skilful in practical details, what might he not do with four 
 "pensioned" able pens continually at his "command," and 
 sixty-three of the choicest scholars of the universities to assist 
 in the more mechanical parts of the work ; to transcribe, collate, 
 and reduce into orderly form the " collections," historical, scien- 
 tific, ethical, or phraseological, which, during his life, were to 
 
 * Pre! to Wisdom of the Ancients. | Promus, 1041. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 207 
 
 stand for him and for them in the place of modern books of 
 reference, and which, after his death, were to be published as 
 " histories," " dictionaries/' " collections," etc., under the 
 names of those who were the ostensible editors or " pro- 
 ducers " of works which they would have been incapable of 
 originating ? 
 
 Whilst these men were thus writing under his eye, or accord- 
 ing to his " prescripts," Bacon himself, in the quiet of his library 
 or tower, sometimes in his " full poor cell " in Gray's Inn, was 
 cogitating, note-taking, dreaming, experimenting, composing, 
 or "inventing." 
 
 " Out of 's self-drawing web he gives us note ; 
 The force of his own merit makes his way ; 
 A gift that Heaven gives for him."* 
 
 The credibility of such assumptions is increased when we 
 endeavour to realise how things would stand with ourselves if, 
 from our earliest childhood, everything that we had lisped had 
 been noticeable ; if our earliest writings had been worthy of 
 preservation ; if every letter, every word we wrote had been 
 religiously stored, revised, and by and by published. " I add, 
 but I never alter ; " that seems to have been part of Bacon's 
 method, and thus edition after edition, each time improved 
 and augmented, was produced, the same material being utilised 
 in various ways over and over again. 
 
 Bacon was never idle. Recreation with him was not idleness, 
 but merely a change of occupation. He never plodded upon 
 books, but read, taking notes, or perhaps marking extracts for 
 others to write out. Thus he wasted no moment of time, nor 
 allowed one drop of his freshly distilled knowledge to evaporate 
 or be lost, but carefully treasured and stored it up in " vases " 
 or note-books, where he could at any moment draw it out 
 afresh. 
 
 There is good reason for thinking that he largely encouraged 
 the use of stenography or shorthand writing ; that his friends 
 sat round him as the disciples of the ancient philosophers sat 
 round their masters, listening to his words, and often writing 
 down his utterances, or his entire discourses. The facility with 
 
 * Henry VIII. i. 1. 
 
208 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 which he expressed himself, the grace and sweetness of his 
 language, and the marvellous fulness of his conversation were 
 perpetual themes of admiration and wonder. " His meals," 
 says Dr. Rawley, " were refections of the ear as well as of the 
 stomach, like the Noctes A tticce, or Convicia Deipus-Sophistarum, 
 wherein a man might be refreshed in his mind and understand- 
 ing, no less than in his body. And I have known some, of no 
 mean parts, that have professed to make use of their note-boohs 
 when they have risen from table." * 
 
 Both the matter and the manner of John Selden's " Table 
 Talk " assure us that this and several other similar books are 
 merely transcripts of such hasty notes of words which dropped 
 from Bacon's lips, reproduced as accurately as possible, and 
 treasured up for the benefit of posterity by his loving friends. 
 
 To look a little into the rules of the Rosicross brethren, 
 Bacon's " Sons of Science," and of whom we believe him to have 
 been the " Imperator " or supreme head : 
 
 Rules 1, 13 and 15 help us to grasp the possibility of Bacon's 
 having produced the enormous quantity of books which will 
 surely, in the future ages, be claimed for him, and which can be 
 proved, by all that has hitherto passed as conclusive evidence 
 with regard to other works, to be the work of one author. 
 
 Rules 2, 10, 11, 12 and 14 suffice to answer the oft-repeated 
 query : Why did not Bacon acknowledge his own works ? or 
 why did not his friends vindicate his claim to them? He, as 
 well as his friends, had sworn solemnly to keep the secrets of 
 the society for a period of one hundred years. 
 
 Rules 3, 10 and 11 enable us to reconcile many difficulties 
 as to the authorship of certain works. For instance, in the 
 anthology entitled " England's Helicon," there are poems which 
 have, at different times, borne two, three or even four different 
 signatures. If the Rosicrucian publications were not, as a rule, 
 to bear the name of the author, and if the feigned names of the 
 brethren were to be frequently changed, confusion and mystifica- 
 tion as to the true author would inevitably be produced. It 
 
 * It seems possible that traditions of such delightful meals as Dr. Rawley 
 here records, and in which Bacon delighted " to draw a man on, and 
 allure him to speak upon such a subject as wherein he was peculiarly 
 skilful," may have taken place at the " Mermaid," where the chief wits of 
 the day are said to have enjoyed their " wit combats." 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 209 
 
 would be impossible to draw any irrefutable conclusions as to 
 the date and sometimes as to the aim of the works in question, 
 and this, doubtless, was precisely what the secret society 
 desired. 
 
 Rules 8 and 13, especially when taken together with the 
 preceding, throw great light on the publication of such works 
 as " Montaigne's Essays " in France ; of its supposed translation, 
 in 1603, from French into pure Baconian English, by the Italian 
 Florio, tutor to the English royal family, and of the large 
 additions and alterations, such as none but the author could 
 have presumed to make, in the later edition published by Cotton 
 in 1685-6. 
 
 Rule 8 seems also to explain the fact of many of Bacon's most 
 intimate friends having passed so much of their time abroad, in 
 days when to travel was a distinction, but not an every-day 
 occurrence, and when, indeed, it required royal sanction to 
 leave the country. So Anthony Bacon lived for many years in 
 Italy and the south of France, very little being absolutely known 
 about his proceedings. Mr. Doyly, Bacon's first recorded corre- 
 spondent, was at Paris when he received a mysterious letter 
 explaining something in an ambiguous manner. Bacon's answer 
 is equally misty : " he studiously avoids particulars, and means 
 to be intelligible only to the person he is addressing." * 
 
 This Mr. Doyly had travelled with Anthony Bacon, and after 
 residing in Paris, went to Flanders, where " he was of long time 
 dependent on Mr. Norris." What his business was is unknown ; 
 he returned to England in 1583. The letter from Mr. Doyly to 
 Francis Bacon shows great intimacy : it begins, " To my verye 
 deare friende, Mr. Doylie." 
 
 Then there was Anthony Bacon's very intimate friend Nicholas 
 Faunt, at one time Walsingham's secretary, a gentleman attached 
 to the Puritan party. From 1580 to 1582 we find him travelling, 
 with no ostensible object, through France and Germany, spending 
 seven months between Geneva and the north of Italy, back to 
 Paris, and home to London in 1582. He is described as an 
 " able intelligencer," and is just such a man as we should expect 
 to find Bacon making good use of. 
 
 The young Earl of Rutland receives in 1595 a licence to pass 
 
 * Spedding, " Letters and Life," II. 9. 
 
210 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 over the seas, and (although they pass for awhile as the writing 
 of Essex) it is Bacon who writes for him those " Letters of 
 Advice " which were published anonymously nearly fifty years 
 later. 
 
 Then we find another of his most intimate friends, Tobie 
 Matthew, abroad, wandering, and sometimes, perhaps, rather 
 mysteriously occupied. Although, to Bacon's deep regret, he 
 joined the Roman branch of the Church, the correspondence and 
 intimacy between the two never ceases, and we think that it will 
 transpire that Sir Tobie, having become a priest in the Jesuit 
 college at Douai, continued to serve Bacon in many ways by 
 aiding in the translation and dissemination of his works, and 
 especially in the production of the Douai Bible. The proceedings 
 and writings of other travellers and writers, or supposed authors, 
 of Bacon's time, should be examined and reviewed in this 
 connection. They are too numerous to speak of here, but we 
 would remind the reader of his life-long friends, the Sidneys, 
 Herberts, Nevilles, Howards, Careys, Sandys, Cottons, of Lord 
 Arundel, Sir Thos. Bodley, Camden, and the Shirleys ; of John 
 Selden, his trusted friend and one of his executors ; Sir Henry 
 Wotton, his cousin ; of Sir Walter Raleigh, whom, during his 
 imprisonment, he is known to have visited in the Tower, whilst 
 he was engaged in writing The History of the World; of Ben 
 Johnson, who, according to Drummond of Hawthornden, wrote 
 from under Bacon's roof; of Sir Kenelm Digby, Montaigne, 
 Florio, Davies, and other foreigners, as well as Englishmen, 
 whose names and works are found to be so curiously interwoven 
 with the lives and writings of Anthony and Francis Bacon. 
 
 By and by we shall have to return to the subject of Bacon's 
 friends and collaborators, and to the light which is let in upon 
 their agency through the large collection of Anthony Bacon's 
 correspondence, preserved in the library at Lambeth Palace. 
 To return to the Rosicrucian ordinances : 
 
 Rule 5 shows that the incognito maintained by the brethren 
 was to extend, not merely to their names and authorships, but 
 also to their knowledge and mental acquirements. The very fact 
 of their belonging to a secret society was to be concealed ; they 
 were to pass through the world as ordinary members of society, 
 wearing the dress of the country in which they lived, and doing- 
 nothing to draw upon them the special notice of others. They 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 211 
 
 were even to conceal any special or superior knowledge vihich 
 they might have acquired,* actually professing ignorance when 
 interrogated, the only science of which they were allowed to 
 show any knowledge being " the science of healing." Perhaps 
 this is to be taken partly in its literal sense, and the rule may 
 have been made with the benevolent intention of encouraging 
 the study of medicine and surgery, which Bacon found to be 
 terribly deficient ; also, this permission would enable the 
 experts in these subjects to come to the rescue on emergency, 
 and to help to alleviate the bodily sufferings of their fellow- 
 creatures. Still, a comparison of the Rosicrucian works obliges 
 us to see that it was to remedy the deformities of the age, to 
 heal the sores and cankers of miserable souls, to minister to 
 the mind diseased, that the Rosy Cross brethren were really 
 labouring ; and this fifth rule gives a good hint as to the reason 
 why Bacon did not " profess to he a poet" why " Burton " should 
 not profess to be a theologian, or Montaigne " profess to be a 
 philosopher." 
 
 The thought arises : What could be the object of this rule ? 
 Even if it were desirable, for the safety of the author of 
 dangerous or advanced publications, that his name should be 
 concealed, what reason could there be for obliging the man 
 himself to feign ignorance of subjects which he had specially 
 studied, and this, too, in days when the revival of learning was 
 a subject of discussion and pride, and when to be supposed 
 learned was a feather in a man's cap ? 
 
 There seems to be only one really satisfactory explanation of 
 this and other rules, namely, that the so-called authors were not 
 the true authors of the books which passed under their names ; 
 that at the best they were translators, revisers, or editors, often 
 mere transcribers and media for publication. Under these 
 circumstances it would not only have been false, had they 
 claimed the authorship of works which they did not write, but 
 it would have been fatal and foolish in the extreme had they 
 gone about professing to talk of matters which they did not 
 understand. 
 
 Rosicrucians were to heal the sick, gratis. This seems to mean 
 
 * We wonder if this rule is still in force. Experience persuades us that 
 it is. 
 
212 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 that their work was, throughout, to be a labour of love. Not for 
 the sake of profit or of fame did they labour, but simply for 
 the love of God, and of man created in God's image. Truly we 
 believe that for this end the brothers Anthony and Francis 
 lived poor for many years, flinging into the common fund, for 
 publishing, etc., every penny which they could spare, after 
 defraying the most necessary expenses for themselves, and to 
 keep up appearances. We equally believe that their work has 
 never died out, but has been taken up in the same spirit by 
 numberless individuals and societies — now in full activity, and 
 recently mightily on the increase. 
 
 Rule 17 would account for the extraordinary impetus given in 
 Bacon's time to the building and endowing of libraries, schools, 
 colleges, hospitals, almshouses, theatres, etc. The names of many 
 such " fair houses," munificently endowed, will rise to the minds 
 of all who are well acquainted with London and the two great 
 universities. Let the reader inquire into the history of Gresham 
 College, Sion College, and the splendid library attached to it ; 
 Dulwich College, with its school, almshouses, and library, 
 originally intended to benefit poor actors ; the Bancroft Hospital 
 and many other similar establishments ; the library and other 
 buildings at Trinity College, Cambridge ; the additions to the 
 Bodleian Library, Oxford, the library at Lambeth Palace, and 
 the great printing-houses established at both universities — he 
 will find that he can never get away from Bacon and his friends. 
 Either we find Bacon suggesting the need or encouraging the 
 performers, or inspecting and approving the work, but himself, 
 as a rule, unrecognised in public documents ; so with the 
 Societies. His portrait alone hangs in the great library of the 
 Royal Society. His friends are all closely associated with the 
 founding of the Arundel Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the 
 Camden Society, the Ray Society, and, we think, with the Colleges 
 of Surgeons and Physicians ; but, as usual, although the names 
 appear, in connection with these and other institutions, of his 
 intimate friends, Bacon, the great instigator and promoter of 
 them all, remains in the background. It is sufficient to read of 
 such institutions that their origin is " veiled " or " obscure " for 
 us to feel tolerably well assured that behind the veil is Francis 
 Bacon. 
 
 In Rosicrucian books not included amongst the short pieces 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 213 
 
 in MS. published by Mr. Waite, it is shown that one great work 
 of the society was the publication and dissemination of Bibles. 
 There are, says Bacon, two books of God, the Book of the Bible, 
 expressing His will, and the Booh of Nature, setting forth His 
 works. Neither can be fully understood or interpreted without 
 the other, and men should be made equally acquainted with 
 either. The revised Biblerof 1594, 1611, and 1613 bear witness 
 to his personal efforts in this direction. The commentary 
 published at Geneva, by " John Diodati," the Messenger Given 
 by God (or the Messenger of God's Gift, which Bacon says 
 was the gift of reason with speech), should be examined in 
 connection with this part of the subject. It will surely tran- 
 spire that Francis Bacon played no minor part in promoting the 
 knowledge of God's first book, and that his faithful followers 
 have nobly fulfilled their vows and duty of carrying on his great 
 work. 
 
 For the Second Book of God, it is easier at once to make plain 
 the enormous services which he rendered. He founded the 
 Royal Society. In these words we sum up the fact that he 
 planned and set going the vast machinery which has produced 
 such wonderful results upon science, and upon almost every 
 department of human knowledge. 
 
 The history of the origin of the Royal Society, which, accord- 
 ing to its chief chroniclers, is, like so many other matters con- 
 nected with Bacon, " veiled in obscurity," appears to be this : 
 A few choice spirits met first in Bacon's private room, then at 
 various places in Oxford and Cambridge, until the friends 
 formed themselves into a small philosophical society, under Dr. 
 Wilkins, in Wadham College. Meetings were sometimes held 
 in taverns. When too large for these, they adjourned to the 
 parlour of Gresham College. Lord Arundel " offered the Royal 
 Society an asylum in his own palace when the most fierce and 
 merciless of the elements subverted her first abodes," all of 
 which is printed with many italics and very large type in the 
 dedication " to the illustrious Henry Howard, Earl of Norfolk," 
 at the beginning of a curious little book, " written in French 
 by Roland Freart, Sieur de Cambraye," and " rendered English " 
 by John Evelyn, Fellow of the Royal Society.* 
 
 * This little work is entitled An Idea of Painting. We commend the 
 consideration of it to Baconian readers, believing that Evelyn merely 
 
214 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Evelyn obtained a charter for the society from Charles II., 
 and named it The Royal Society. The rare literary accumula- 
 tions of the noble family of the Howards were contributed to the 
 library.* 
 
 The rules which forbid the publication of names would, of 
 course, prohibit the Rosicrucians from writing their names in 
 books which were likely to reveal the course of their studies, or 
 their connection with a certain clique of persons ; and so, in 
 effect, we find. They must adopt feigned initials, or mottoes, in 
 order to identify themselves amongst their initiated friends 
 alone. This again explains the disfigurement which so often dis- 
 tresses the purchaser of good old books of a certain class, and 
 which is caused by the cutting out of large pieces of the title- 
 pages, or frontispieces, or fly-leaves, or the cancelling, by 
 scribbling with pen and ink, sometimes six or eight names on 
 the page. It is the exception and not the rule, in books pro- 
 fessedly Rosicrucian, and previous to the eighteenth century, to 
 find in them the name of any owner, although they may, 
 apparently, have passed through many hands. 
 
 The same circumstance explains the mystery as to the dis- 
 appearance of Bacon's library — which is a mystery, although the 
 world has been content to take it very apathetically. Bacon's 
 library must have been something quite remarkable for his day. 
 Like Prospero, we know that his books were dearer to him far 
 than state or public life, which was always a toil and burden to 
 
 his nature. 
 
 " Being so reputed 
 In dignity, and for the liberal arts 
 Without a parallel ; those being all my study, . . . 
 I to my state grew stranger, being transported 
 And rapt in secret studies." 
 
 Prospero, in his fall and banishment, is represented as most 
 highly commending the kindness of the noble Gonzalo, who 
 
 " Of his gentleness, 
 Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me 
 From my own library with volumes that 
 I prize above my dukedom." 
 
 " rendered English " that which had first appeared in France, by publish- 
 ing the original English of Bacon, written when he was a young man 
 living and travelling in the south of France, and perhaps in Italy. 
 * See Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 215 
 
 Without trespassing on the domain of the novelist, we may 
 fairly believe that Bacon's feelings were the same, even if he did 
 not actually experience a similar episode in the days of his cruel 
 ruination and banishment from the home of his youth. 
 
 Where is Bacon's library ? Undoubtedly the books exist and 
 are traceable. We should expect them to be recognisable by 
 marginal notes ; yet these notes, whether in pencil or in ink, 
 may have beeen effaced. If annotated, Bacon and his friends 
 would not wish his books to attract public attention. Yet not 
 only their intrinsic worth, but their priceless value as belonging 
 to their beloved master, would have made the friends and fol- 
 lowers of Bacon more than commonly anxious to ensure the 
 safety of these books. Bacon himself, we feel sure, would have 
 taken steps to this end. Yet it is observable that in neither of 
 his wills (elaborate and detailed in particulars though they be) 
 does he mention his library. Copies of all his writings, " fair 
 bound," were to be placed in the King's library, and in the 
 university libraries at Cambridge and Oxford, in Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, and " Bennet College, where my father was bred," 
 and in the libraries of Lambeth and Eton. 
 
 The MSS. in his " cabinets, boxes, and presses " — (think of 
 the quantity of papers suggested by these words) — were to be 
 taken possession of by three trustees, Constable, Selden, and 
 Herbert, and to be by them perused and by degrees published. 
 But of books there is not a word, and observation has led the 
 present writer to the conclusion that during his life Bacon 
 assigned his books to certain of his friends for life, or for use, 
 and that eventually these books were to find their way into the 
 great libraries where they now repose, and where future research 
 will oblige them to yield up their secret, and to say what 
 hand first turned their pages, whose eyes first mined into them 
 to extract the precious ore so long buried beneath the dust of 
 oblivion. Where, in what books, do we find this gold of know- 
 ledge, seven times tried in the crucible of poetic philosophy, 
 cast into living lines, and hammered upon the muses' anvil into 
 the " well-tuned and true-filed lines " which are not of an age 
 but for all time ? 
 
 We earnestly exhort young and able scholars, whose lives lie 
 before them, to follow up this subject. Think of the new worlds 
 of knowledge that remain to be explored and conquered. Who 
 
216 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 can tell the contents of the library at Eton, in which Bacon 
 took such a lively interest ? Who has ever thoroughly examined 
 the hoards of manuscripts of Bacon's time at Lambeth Palace, 
 at the Eecord Office, at Dulwich, or at the British Museum ? 
 Baconians, reading with modern search-lights rather than by the 
 dim rays shed from even the best lamp of the last century, can- 
 not fail in future to perceive many things which escaped the 
 notice of previous observers, however diligent. 
 
 The Selden and Pembroke collections of books at the Bodleian 
 Library, the Cotton Library at the British Museum, the libraries 
 of the Royal Society, the Antiquaries, and others directly con- 
 nected with Bacon, the theological library at Sion College, 
 Gresham College, the collection of Bacon's works in the Uni- 
 versity Library, Cambridge, and at Trinity College, should be 
 examined, and every collection, public or private, which was 
 commenced or much enlarged between 1580 and 1680, should 
 be most thoroughly ransacked with a special eye to records, 
 direct and indirect, of the working of Bacon and his friends, 
 and with a view to tracing his books. It is probable that the 
 latter will seldom or never be found to bear his name or signa- 
 ture. Rather we should expect, in accordance with Rosicrucian 
 rules, that no name, but only a motto, an enigmatic inscription, 
 or the initials of the title by which he passed amongst the 
 brethren, would be found in these books. Yet it may reason- 
 ably be anticipated that some at least are " noted in the margin, 1 ' 
 or that some will be found with traces of marks which were 
 guides to the transcriber or amanuensis, as to the portions which 
 were to be copied for future use in Bacon's collections or book 
 of " commonplaces." 
 
 One word more, before quitting these rules of the Rosicru- 
 cians. The eighteenth rule shows that on the death of a brother 
 nothing should be done which should reveal his connection with 
 the fraternity. His tomb was to be either without epitaph or 
 the inscription must be ambiguous. It is remarkable how many 
 of the tombs of Bacon's friends and of the distinguished names 
 of his time come under one or the other of these descriptions. 
 Some of these will be noticed in their proper place. Meanwhile, 
 let us remark that there seems to be only one satisfactory way 
 of accounting for this apparently unnecessary rule. The explana- 
 tion is of the same kind as that given with regard to rule 5, 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 217 
 
 which prohibits the members of the society from professing a 
 knowledge which they did not possess. 
 
 For suppose that the friends of deceased Rosicrucians had in- 
 scribed upon their tombs epitaphs claiming for them the author- 
 ship of works which had passed current as their writings, but 
 which they did not really originate. The monuments would, in 
 many cases, have been foufid guilty of doing positive dishonour, 
 not only to the sacred place in which they were erected, but 
 even to the dead, whose memory they were to preserve, for they 
 would actually declare and perpetuate untruths, or at the best 
 half-truths, certain in the end to be discovered. 
 
 It is rare to find any epitaph by way of eulogium over the 
 grave of any person who seems to have collaborated with Bacon, 
 or to have been accredited with the authorship of any work which 
 is suspiciously Baconian. Rarer still do we find on such tombs 
 any hint that the so-called poet or philosopher ever wrote any- 
 thing. In the few cases where this is asserted or suggested, 
 there are reasons for believing, or actual proof, that the inscrip- 
 tion, perhaps the monument itself, was put up by descendants or 
 admirers some years after the death of the individual to whom 
 the memorial was erected. 
 
218 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE VITAL SPIRITS OF NATURE. 
 
 " In Nature's infinite book of secresy, a little I can read." 
 
 — Antony and Cleopatra. 
 
 BACON seems to have been strongly influenced and stimu- 
 lated by the study of the works of the celebrated theo- 
 sophist, physician, and chemist, Paracelsus, whom he often 
 cites (not always with approval), and from whose doctrine of the 
 " Vital Spirits of Nature " it is clear that he must have derived 
 the original germ of those lovely ideas of all-pervading life 
 which re-appear throughout his writings, and pre-eminently in 
 the Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, and The Tempest. 
 
 When the comet or new star suddenly shone forth in 1572, 
 in the constellation of Cassiopeia, it was marked as a portent or 
 harbinger of success for the boy Francis, who in that year went 
 up for the first time to Cambridge, and who even at that early 
 age was manifesting signs of future greatness. 
 
 Now it is worthy of note that this same portent was observed 
 by Paracelsus as heralding the advent of " the artist Elias," by 
 whose means a revelation was to be made which would be of the 
 highest importance to the human race ; and, again, this prophecy 
 of Paracelsus was accepted by the Rosicrucians as true, and 
 as finding its fulfilment in the fact that in the year 1572 the 
 wonderful boy did make his appearance, and became the founder 
 of their society. 
 
 " Paracelsus, in the eighth chapter of his Treatise on Metals, 
 gives utterance to the following prognostication : ' God will 
 permit a discovery of the highest importance to be made ; it must 
 be hidden till the advent of the artist Elias. 1 
 
 " In the first chapter of the same work he says : ' And it is 
 true, there is nothing concealed which shall not be discovered : for 
 which cause a marvellous being shall come after me, who as yet 
 lives not, and who shall reveal many things.' 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 219 
 
 " These passages* have been claimed as referring to the 
 founder of the Rosicrucian order ; and as prophecies of this 
 character are usually the outcome of a general desire rather than 
 of an individual inspiration, they are interesting evidence that 
 then, as now, many thoughtful people were looking for another 
 Saviour of Society. At the beginning of the seventeenth century 
 1 a great and general reformation,' says Buhle — ' a reformation 
 more radical and more directed to the moral improvement of 
 mankind than that accomplished by Luther — was believed to be 
 impending over the human race, as a necessary forerunner to 
 the day of judgment.' The comet of 1572 was declared by 
 Paracelsus to be ' the sign and harbinger of the coming revolution,' 
 and it will readily be believed that his innumerable disciples 
 would welcome a secret society whose vast claims were founded 
 on the philosophy of the Master whom they also venerated as a 
 supreme factor in the approaching Reformation. Paracelsus, 
 however, had recorded a still more precise prediction, namely, 
 that ' soon after the decease of the Emperor Rudolph, there would 
 be found three treasures that had never been revealed before that 
 time: " 
 
 The Author then claims that these are the three great Rosi- 
 crucian documents issued at the time appointed, and which he 
 has recently published for the first time in English. They 
 were entitled " The Universal Reformation of the Whole Wide 
 World," "Fama Fraternitatis ; or, a Discovery of the Fraternity 
 of the Most Laudable Order of the Rosy Cross," and " The Con- 
 fession of the Rosicrucian Fraternity, addressed to the Learned 
 of Europe." 
 
 It is easy to picture to ourselves the effect of these prognostica- 
 tions of Paracelsus, joined to the fact that the wonderful star 
 did appear at the very time when the youthful philosopher was 
 himself sent forth to shine as a prodigy and portent — it is easy 
 to imagine the impression produced upon a highly-strung, 
 sensitive boy by such a combination of circumstances, to which, 
 doubtless, his admiring friends and tutors were not slow in 
 drawing his attention. Years afterwards we find him making 
 " experiments," " touching emission of immateriate virtues 
 from the minds and spirits of men, either by affections, 
 imaginations, or by other impressions." He speaks of the force 
 
 * The Real History of the Rosicrucians, A. B. Waite, pp. 34-5. Published 
 by Redway. 
 
220 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 of imagination, and of the means to exalt it, and endeavours to 
 solve this problem : Whether a man constantly and strongly 
 believing that such a thing shall be, it doth help anything to 
 the effecting of the thing itself. He decides that it is certain 
 that such effects result ; but that the help is, for one man to work 
 by means of another, in whom he may create belief, and not by 
 himself, and we think it by no means improbable that in childhood 
 his own imagination was thus wrought upon and kindled into 
 enthusiasm concerning the work to which he was called, and 
 which he regarded as sacred. 
 
 Bacon does not, in his scientific works, often quote Paracelsus ' y 
 in some points he entirely differs from him, disapproving of his 
 doctrines, and of their effects upon popular belief. He protests 
 against the excessive freedom in Scriptural interpretation r 
 which either explains "the divinely-inspired Scriptures as 
 human writings," or else " which pre-supposes such perfection 
 in Scripture that all philosophy likewise should be derived from 
 its sources, as if all other philosophy were something profane 
 and heathen. This distemper has principally grown up in the 
 school of Paracelsus and some others, but the beginnings thereof 
 came from the Rabbis and Cabalists." * He shows the error of 
 Paracelsus and his school, who, " seeking a place for its three 
 principles even in the temple of Juno, that is, the air, established 
 three winds, and for the east found no place. 1 '! He reproves 
 the intemperate extremes of these " disciples of pretended 
 natural magic," who exalted " Fascination," or " the power and 
 apprehension of the imagination, to be much one with the power 
 of miracle-working Faith.' 1 % He laughs at the " prodigious 
 follies" of those who aim at making Paracelsus' pigmies. § 
 " Vast and bottomless follies which ascribe to imagination 
 exalted, the power of wonder-working Faith, || fancies as wild as 
 that by which Paracelsus was to have it that nutrition is caused 
 only by separation, and that in bread and meat lie eye, nose, 
 brain, liver, and in the moisture of the ground root, leaf, and 
 
 * De Aug. IX. 
 t Hist of Winds. 
 
 X De Aug. IV. (It is curious to see how fashions and delusions return. 
 Note the present " faith-healing " fancies.) 
 § Nat. Hist. I. 99, and Hist. Dense and Eare. 
 II Nat. Hist. I. 1. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 121 
 
 flower."* Neither does he share the " idle notion of Paracelsus 
 that there are parts and correspondences between man's body 
 and all the species of stars, plants, and minerals ; misapplying 
 the emblem of man as a Microcosm or epitome of the world in 
 support of this fancy of theirs."! 
 
 Differing on many points.irom Paracelsus, Bacon, as we see, did 
 not wish to be supposed a disciple of his ; yet he studied very 
 closely all that he had to say, and quoted him by name as if to 
 lead others to the consideration of his works, from which he 
 drew so much, although, perhaps, not of the kind, or after 
 the fashion, which the alchemist philosopher might have desired 
 and expected. The notion prominent in the writings of 
 Paracelsus concerning the " Vital Spirits of Nature " fell in 
 perfectly with Bacon's own ideas, and this poetical and beautiful 
 fancy pervades his writings to such a degree as to be inseparable 
 from them. The method in which he handles the subject is 
 also so peculiar as to form another touchstone by which the 
 authorship of certain works may be tested, since the thought of 
 any two men, forming the same fanciful theories, and deriving 
 from them the same subtle thoughts and conclusions, is too 
 improbable to be seriously entertained. 
 
 In the preface to the History of Life and Death, the Editor 
 says: 
 
 " The idea on which Bacon's idea of longevity is founded, 
 namely, that the principle of life resides in a subtle fluid or 
 spirit, which permeates the tangible parts of the organisation of 
 plants and animals, seems to be coeval with the first origin of 
 speculative physiology. Bacon was one of those by whom this 
 idea was extended from organised to inorganised bodies. In all 
 substances, according to him, resides a portion of spirit which 
 manifests itself only in its operations, being altogether in- 
 tangible and without weight. This doctrine appeared to be to 
 him of most certain truth, but he has nowhere stated the grounds 
 of his conviction, nor even indicated the kind of evidence by 
 which the existence of the spiritus is to be established. In living 
 bodies he conceived that two kinds of spirits exist : a crude or 
 mortuary spirit, such as is present in other substances, and the 
 animal or vital spirit, to which the phenomena of life are to be 
 referred. To keep this vital spirit, the wine of life, from oozing 
 
 * Nov. Org. I. 48. f De Aug. IV. 2. 
 
222 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 away ought to be the aim of the physician who attempts to 
 increase the number of our few and evil days." * 
 
 The writer is here treating chiefly of the body, but wherever 
 Bacon speaks of inorganic matter, or of organised forms of 
 plants, etc., he uses language which expresses that they are 
 more or less living and sentient, having vital spirits which act 
 somewhat as in the bodies of living creatures. Doubtless his 
 poetical nature led him always into metaphoric language ; his 
 ." nimbleness to perceive analogies," his sense of beauty and of 
 the wonderful harmony in which the world was created tended 
 to make him speak and write thus ; but a deeper feeling still 
 moved him continually to connect the " crude," " gross," and 
 " earthy " with the " rare," " airy and flamy " of the sensitive 
 soul. He was forever mentally endeavouring to bring about a 
 Union or Marriage between things natural and things spiritual, 
 to " mingle earth with heaven." " I am labouring with all my 
 might to make the mind of man a match for the nature of 
 things." | 
 
 It may, therefore, be expected, as a single outcome of his 
 cogitations and philosophy, that we shall read of "Motion 
 which invites an excited body ; " " Materials which refuse to be 
 heated ; Master spirits which, in any body, curb, tame, subdue, 
 and regulate other parts," etc. "Bodies which delight in motion 
 and enjoy their own nature," and which, in spontaneous 
 rotation, " follow themselves, and court, so to speak their own 
 embraces."" Some " bodies abhor motion, and remain at rest." 
 Others " move by the shortest path, to consort with bodies of 
 their own nature." " By this appetite for motion all bodies of 
 considerable density abhor motion ; indeed, the desire of not 
 moving is the only appetite they have ; and though, in countless 
 ways, the}' be enticed and challenged to motion, they yet, as far 
 as they can, maintain their proper nature ; and if compelled to 
 move, they, nevertheless, seem ahcays intent on recovering 
 their state of rest, and moving no more. While thus engaged, 
 indeed, they show themselves active, and struggle for it with 
 agility and swiftness enough, as weary and impatient of all 
 
 * Pref. Hist. Vitoz et Mortis, by Robert Leslie Ellis. Spedding, Bacon's 
 Works, II. 91. 
 t De Aug. V. 2. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 223 
 
 delay. ... Of the motions I have set forth, some are invincible, 
 some are stronger than others, fettering, curbing, arranging 
 them ; some carry further than others ; some outstrip others in 
 speed; some cherish, strengthen, enlarge, and accelerate others."* 
 
 How lifelike all this is ! Surely, it might be supposed that 
 we were reading of two-legged or four-legged creatures instead 
 of particles of matter, fn the same vein the philosopher-poet 
 tells of opiates and kindred medicaments, which put the spirits 
 utterly to flight by their malignant and hostile nature.^ If 
 taken internally, their fumes, ascending to the head, disperse in 
 all directions the spirits contained in the ventricles of the brain, 
 and these spirits, thus withdrawing themselves, and unable to 
 escape into any other part, are .... sometimes utterly choked 
 and extinguished. Rosewater, on the other hand, " cherishes " 
 the spirits. 
 
 We read, too, of Continuance as the steward or almoner of 
 Nature ; % of Heat and Cold as the hands by which she 
 works. Cold as an enemy to growth, and bad air an enemy to 
 health ; of the west wind friendly to plants, and of strife and 
 friendship in nature. Bodies, at the touch of a body that is 
 friendly, . . . open themselves ; but, at the. touch of an 
 unfriendly body, they shrink up." § 
 
 In the Anatomy of Melancholy (which, as has been said, seems 
 to be the sweepings of Bacon's note-books on all subjects 
 
 * Nov. Org. I. 47. Compare with the preceding sentences " Passion 
 invites me." Twelth Night, II, 2. "A spirit too delicate . . . refusing 
 [the foul witch's] grand hests." Temp. I. 2. " All hail, great master." lb. 
 " Her more potent ministers. lb. " My potent master." lb. IV. 1. " Curb 
 this cruel devil of his will." Mer. Ven. IV. 1, and Ham. III. 4. Tame 
 the savage spirit of wild war." John V. 2. " The delighted spirit to bathe 
 in fiery floods." Meas. for Meas. III. 1. " More spirit chased than 
 enjoyed." Mer. Ven. II. 6. " The air smells wooingly here." Macb. I. 6. 
 " Nature doth abhor to make his bed," etc. Cymb. IV. 4. " Night's swift 
 dragons cut clouds full fast . . . damned spirits, all . . . all gone, and 
 must for aye consort with black-browed night." Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, III. 2., etc. 
 
 t See Nov. Org. II. 48, 50. Hist. Winds, Qualities, 27. Hist. Heavy and 
 Light, Cog. Naturae, VI., etc. 
 
 t " The gifts of Nature." Twelfth Night, I. 3 ; Ham. I. 5, etc. " Frugal 
 nature." IV. I. "Our foster nurse of nature is repose." "Poison and 
 treason are the hands of sin." Pericles, I. 1. " Care's an enemy to life." 
 Twelfth Night, I. 2. " Nature is thy friend." Merry Wives, III. 3. 
 
 § " A south wind friendly." Winter's Tale, V. I. " Friendly drop " (of 
 poison). Romeo and Juliet, V. 3. "A huge infectious troop of pale 
 distemperatures and foes to life." — M . M. V. 1. 
 
224, FRANCIS BACON 
 
 connected with the Doctrine of the Union of Mind and Body) 
 all these ideas are reproduced and expanded. 
 
 The chapter containing the passages of the Digression of 
 Spirits is particularly interesting and instructive, forming, as it 
 does, a connecting link between the science and the poetry of 
 the plays. Who that reads such sentences as the following, 
 which catch the eye as it travels hastily down those pages, but 
 must be reminded of the scenes and lines in the Tempest, Mac- 
 beth, Lear, the Midsummmer Night's Dream, and other plays, 
 familiar in our mouths as household words ? 
 
 " Fiery spirits * are such as commonly work by blazing-stars, 
 fire-drakes, | or ignis fatui ; $ which lead men oft in flumina aut 
 poozcipitia, saith Bodine (lib. 2, Theat. Naturce, fol. 221 ; . . .), 
 likewise they counterfeit suns and moons, § stars oftentimes, and 
 sit on ship-masts, ... or which never appear, saith Cardan, but 
 they signify some mischief or other to come unto men, though 
 some again will have them to pretend good and victory ; . . . 
 and they do likely come after a sea-storm. . . . 
 
 "Aerial spirits, or devils, are such as keep quarter most 
 part in the air, cause many tempests, thvnder and lightnings, 
 tear oaks, fire steeples, houses, strike men \\ and beasts, make it 
 rain stones,^ . . . counterfeit armies in the air, strange noises, 
 swords,** etc. . . . They cause whirlwinds on a sudden, and 
 tempestuous storms, which, though our meteorologists generally 
 refer to natural causes, yet I am of Bodine's mind (Theat. Nat. 
 
 I. 2), they are more often caused by those aeriel devils ft f or 
 
 * Comp. 3 Hen. VI. II. 1, 21—38, and with " That fire-drake did I hit. . . . 
 The devil was amongst them." — Henry VIII. V. 3. 
 
 f Fierce, fiery warriors fight upon the clouds. The heavens blaze forth 
 the death of princes. — Jul. Cces. II. 2. 
 
 $ The will o' the wisp. Lob. " Thou Lob of Spirits " of Puck. — M. N. D. 
 
 II. 1. See Puck's behaviour, lb. III. 1. " Sometimes a horse I'll be ; . . . 
 sometime a fire." See also the Fool of the Walking Fire and Flibberti- 
 gibbet, Lear, III. 2, and Ariel's tricks upon Stephano and his fellows in 
 The Tempest, IV. I. 
 
 § Comp. 3 Hen. VI. II. 1, 25—31. 
 
 || Compare Prospero's account of his own performances in his speech to 
 the elves (Temp. V. 1), and Macb. IV. 1, 44—61. 
 
 ^[ " The God's throw stones of sulphur." — Cymb. V. 5. " Are there no 
 stones in heaven ? " — Oth. V. 2. " Let the sky rain potatoes."— Mer. 
 Wiv. V. 5. 
 
 ** See of the portents before the murder of Caesar. " The noise of battle 
 hurtled in the air." — Jul. Cces. II. 2. 
 
 tt " Away ! the foul fiend follows me ! . . . Who gives anything to 
 poor Tom ? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 225 
 
 Tempestatibus se ingerunt, saith Rich. Argentine, as when a 
 desperate man makes away ivith himself, which by hanging or 
 drowning they frequently do. • . . . These can corrupt the 
 air and cause plagues, sickness, storms, shipwrecks, fires, 
 inundations." Such devils or aerial spirits can " sell winds to 
 mariners f and cause tempests ; they consort with witches and 
 serve magicians, 1 . . «*, Cardan's father had one of them (as 
 he is not ashamed to relate), an aerial devil, bound to him for 
 twenty-eight years." 
 
 Many other instances are given of men who employed such 
 familiar spirits; Paracelsus being supposed to have one confined 
 to his sword pommel, others who wore them in rings. 
 
 " Water-devils are those naiads or water-nymphs conversant 
 with waters and rivers.§ The water (as Paracelsus thinks) is 
 their chaos, wherein they live ; some call them fairies, and say 
 that Habundia is their queen ; these cause inundations, many 
 times shipwrecks, and deceive men divers ways, as succuba, or 
 otherwise, appearing most part (saith Tritemius) in women's 
 shape. || Paracelsus hath several stories of them that have lived 
 and been married to mortal men, and so continued for certain 
 years with them ; and after, upon some dislike, have forsaken 
 them, jf Such a one as iEgaria, . . . Diana, Ceres, etc. Olaus 
 Magnus hath a narration of a King of Sweden, that, having 
 lost his company one day as he was hunting, met with these 
 water-nymphs, or fairies, and was feasted by them ; and Hector 
 Boethius tells of Macbeth and Banquo, two Scottish lords, that, 
 as they were wandering in the woods, had their fortunes told 
 them by three strange women. 
 
 "Terrestrial devils are those Lares, Genii, Fauns, Satyrs, 
 Wood-Nymphs, Foliots, Fairies,** Robin Good-fellows, etc., 
 
 through ford and whirlpool, over bog and quagmire. . . . Bless thee 
 from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking." — Lear, III. 4. 
 
 * See how the murder of Macbeth is accompanied and foreshadowed by 
 tempests {Macb. I. 1). This has been well accentuated in Mr. Irving's 
 reproduction of the play. 
 
 f Note the witches and the mariners (Macb. I. 3), and especially the 
 giving of a wind. 
 
 % Ariel and Prospero. 
 
 § Prospero summons them, through Ariel, the most perfect impersona- 
 tion of a Paracelsian nymph. T em-pest V. 1. 
 
 || lb. I. 2 Macb. I. 3. 
 
 ^[ Such is Undine in the lovely story of La Motte-Fouque. 
 
 ** See M. N. D. II. 1. The fairies of Shakespeare are always Bacon's 
 vital spirits of nature, and this seems to be now recognised. The sprites 
 and fairies in Mr. Benson's recent representation of the Midsummer 
 
226 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 which, as they are most conversant with men, so they do them 
 most harm. Some think it was they alone that kept the heathen 
 people in awe of old, and had so many idols and temples erected 
 to them. Of this range was Dagon among the Philistines, Bel 
 among the Babylonians, Astarte among the Sidonians, Baal 
 among the Samaritans, Isis and Osiris among the Egyptians, 
 etc. Some put our fairies into this rank, which have been in 
 former times adored with much superstition, with sweeping their 
 houses, and setting of a pail of clear water, good victuals, and 
 the like, and then they should not be pinched* but find money 
 in their shoes,f and be fortunate in their enterprises.^ These 
 are they that dance on heaths and greens,§ as Lavater thinks 
 with Tritennius, and, as Olaus Magnus adds, leaving that green 
 circle || which we commonly find in plain fields, which others 
 hold to proceed from a meteor falling, or some accidental rank- 
 ness of the ground, so nature sports herself. . . . Paracelsus 
 reckons up many places in Germany where they do usually 
 walk in little coats, some two feet long. A bigger kind of 
 them is called with us hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows, that 
 would, in those superstitious times, grind corn for a mess of 
 milk, cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery work. . . . 
 Cardan holds, ^f they will make strange noises in the night, 
 howl sometimes pitifully, and then laugh again, cause great 
 flame and sudden lights, fling stones, rattle chains, shave men, 
 open doors and shut them, fling down platters, stools, chests** 
 sometimes appear in likeness of hares, crows, black dogs,~\ f etc., 
 
 Nighfs Dream were properly attired as flowers, insects, bullrushes, river 
 weeds, etc., and not, as formerly, in ballet skirts and satin shoes. In 
 Macbeth Mr. Irving not only departs from, the old idea of witches as hags 
 in red cloaks and poke bonnets, but the witches are distinctly arrayed 
 to imitate the winds, and a scene in dumb show is interpolated where 
 these wind-witches filled the sails which are to carry Macduff to England. 
 
 * " Let the supposed fairies pinch him." Mer. Wiv. IV. 4. "Pinch the 
 maids blue ; . . . pinch them, arms and legs and backs ; . . . still pinch 
 him, fairies, pinch him to vour time." lb. V. 5. and Temp. I. 2, 328, and 
 IV. 1,233. 
 
 f " It was told me I should be rich by the fairies." W. T. III. 3. 
 
 % " Fairies and gods prosper it with thee." Lear IV. 6. 
 
 § " Dance our ringlets to the whistling winds." M. N. D. II. 2. 
 
 || " You demi-puppets, that by moonshine do the sour-green ringlets 
 make, whereof the sheep bites." Temp. V. 1. 
 
 ^[ See of Ariel, who makes music in the air. Twanging instruments, 
 voices humming, or howling and thunder. 
 
 ** See how this is illustrated in M. N. D. II. 1. Puck takes the form of 
 a stool. 
 
 tf " In likeness of a filly foal." M. N. D. II. 1. 
 
 " Sometime a horse I'll be, sometimes a hound, 
 A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire ; 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 227 
 
 of which read Pit. Thyraeus the Jesuit, in his tract, de olcis 
 infestis, I. 4, who will have them to be devils, or the souls of 
 damned men that seek revenge, or else souls out of purgatory 
 that seek ease. . . . These spirits often foretell men's deaths 
 by several signs, as knockings, groanings,* etc. Near Rupes 
 Nova, in Finland, in the Kingdom of Sweden, there is a lake 
 in which, before the Governor of the Castle dies, a spectrum, 
 in the habit of Arion with his harp, appears and makes excellent 
 music. . . . Many families in Europe are so put in mind of 
 their last by such predictions, and many men are forewarned 
 (if we may believe Paracelsus) by familiar spirits in divers 
 shapes, as cocks, crows, owls,^ which often hover about sick men's 
 chambers, ... for that (as Bernadinus de Bustis thinketh) 
 God permits the devil to appear in the form of crows, and 
 such-like creatures, to scare such as live wickedly here on 
 earth." 
 
 Farther on, when discoursing of idleness as a cause of melan- 
 choly, the Anatomist describes the men who allow themselves to 
 become a prey to vain and fantastical contemplation, as unable 
 "to go about their necessary business, or to stave off and extri- 
 cate themselves," but as " ever musing, melancholising, and 
 carried along as he that is led round about a heath with Puck in 
 the night, they run earnestly on in this labyrinth of anxious and 
 solicitous meditation." 
 
 Such notes and studies as these appear most conspicuously in 
 the Shakespeare and other plays of Bacon. It is hard to believe 
 that he could have created the fairy world of the Midsummer 
 Night' 8 Dream without some such preparation as is recorded in 
 the scientific notes. Let us give a few minutes' consideration to 
 this play, with the view of showing how dry facts, business- 
 like notes, and commonplace observation were distilled into 
 poetry in that wonderful mind of which John Beaumont said 
 that it was able " to lend a charm to the greatest as well as to 
 the meanest of matters." J 
 
 And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, 
 Like horse, hound, hog, bear, and lire, at every turn." 
 
 M. N. D. III. 1. 
 
 * Compare the sounds, etc., before the deaths of Duncan, Macbeth, and 
 Julius Caesar. 
 
 t " It was the owl that shrieked, that fearful bellman." Macb. II. 3. 
 
 J The following is reprinted from an article published in Shake- 
 speariana, April, 1884. 
 
228 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 To begin with Puck's well-known speech. Oberon desires 
 him to fetch a certain herb and to return " ere Leviathan can 
 swim a league." Puck answers : 
 
 " I'll put a girdle round about the earth 
 In forty minutes. 11 
 
 Bacon, in studying the winds, made many inquiries as to the 
 parts of the globe in which the winds chiefly occur, and where 
 they blow with the greatest swiftness. He finds this to be the 
 case at the tropics. " In Peru, and divers parts of the West 
 Indies, though under the line, the heats are not so intolerable 
 as they are in Barbary and the skirts of the torrid zone. The 
 causes are, first, the great breezes which the motion of the air in 
 great circles, such as are under the girdle of the earth, pro- 
 duceth." Puck, then, is the ministering wind, Oberon's familiar 
 or aerial spirit, who will, at his bidding, sweep round the girdle 
 of the earth, where, according to Bacon's observations, winds 
 travel with the greatest speed. 
 
 Puck is "one of the free winds which range over a wide 
 space." We know this, because he calls himself* "a merry 
 wanderer of the night," and the free winds, Bacon tells us, " last, 
 generally, for twenty-four hours ; " it is the " smaller and lighter 
 winds " which " generally rise in the morning and fall at 
 sunset." f 
 
 The first scene in which the fairies enter suggests the airi- 
 ness of the elves, the " rare " and wind-like nature which 
 Bacon says resembles fame, "for the winds penetrate and 
 bluster everywhere." The fairies here seem to be " the free 
 winds blowing from every quarter," and the first speaker " an 
 attendant wind," whose duty it is "to collect clouds," and 
 which are, according to the " History," of a moist nature. 
 
 Puck. How now, spirit, whither wander you ? 
 Fai. Over hill, over dale, 
 
 Thorough bush, thorough brier, 
 Over park, over pale, 
 
 Thorough flood, thorough fire, 
 I do wander everywhere, 
 Swifter than the moon's sphere ; 
 
 * M. N. D. II. 1. 
 t History of Winds. Spedding, Works, V. 143. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 229 
 
 And I serve the fairy queen, 
 To dew her orbs upon the green. 
 The cowslips tall her pensioners be : 
 In their gold coats spots you see ; 
 Those be rubies, fairy favours, 
 In those freckles live their savours : 
 I must go seek some dewdrops here, 
 And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 
 
 There is something infinitely pleasurable in tracing in the 
 speeches of the fairies which follow all the details, as to their 
 nature, avocations, and abode, of the spirits of fire, air, earth, 
 and water, which are here so exquisitely presented to us — 
 
 The fairies who meet in groves and green — 
 By fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen. 
 
 And although the more popular idea of fairies, because (so we 
 think) it was first so presented in this play, is the idea of "icood 
 nymphs" "terrestrial spirits," we still find the fairies of the hill 
 and dale, of forest and mead, mixed up and consorting with 
 lighter winds and breezes which spring up beside rivers and 
 running water. Titania upbraids Oberon because 
 
 Never, since the middle summer's spring, 
 
 Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, 
 
 By paved fountain or by rushy brook, 
 
 Or on the beached margent of the sea, 
 
 To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, 
 
 But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.] 
 
 In a speech of nearly forty lines, she continues to pour out a 
 string of Baconian observations on the "contagious" effects of 
 fogs, sucked up from the sea by the revengeful winds ; of the 
 " rotting " produced by warm, damp winds (which, Bacon adds, 
 are usually from the south or south-west) ; of the rheumatic dis- 
 orders and changes of season and consequent "distempera- 
 tures" resulting from inundatians, which have "drowned " the 
 fields and filled the nine men's morris with the unwholesome 
 "mud" which Bacon's soul abhorred. The influence of the 
 moon is also noted here, as in the scientific notes : 
 
 11 The moon, the governess of floods, 
 Pale in her anger, washes all the air. 11 
 
 And the effect which she produces, of raising the tides and so 
 of causing inundations and destruction of vegetation, is as clearly 
 
230 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 marked as in the notes on the Ebb and Flow of the Sea, or in the 
 Sylva Sylvarum. 
 
 " The periodical winds," says Bacon, " do not blow at night, 
 but get up the third hour after sunrise. All free winds, likewise, 
 blow oftener and more violently in the morning and evening 
 than at noon and night." So, when midnight approaches, Oberon 
 and his train retire, " following darkness like a dream," but 
 with commands to " meet me all by break of day." 
 
 In the last scene of this charmingly spiritual piece, Puck 
 again declares himself the true child of Bacon's imagination. 
 In describing the frolics of the fairies (perhaps the " frivolous 
 winds," which he describes as " performing dances, of which it 
 would be pleasing to know the order "), Puck speaks of sprites 
 who are let forth to " glide about " : 
 
 "... fairies that do run 
 By the triple Hecate's team, 
 From the presence of the sun." 
 
 For, Bacon says, u the winds cease at noon." Of himself, 
 
 Puck says : 
 
 " I am sent with broom before, 
 To sweep the dust behind the door." 
 
 For as we again read in the History of Winds: "To the 
 earth, which is the seat and habitation of men, the winds serve 
 for brooms, sweeping and cleansing both it and the air itself." 
 
 The poet, then, according to these observations, derived his 
 lovely conceptions of the fairies, in the first instance, from his 
 careful but suggestive notes on the zephyrs and breezes, of 
 whom he makes Puck chief or swiftest. To many other airy 
 nothings he gives neither a local habitation nor a name. Yet 
 we feel sure that they are the vital spirits of nature — " water- 
 nymphs conversant with waters and rivers," such as Oberon 
 has employed to " cause inundations " — or they are terrestrial 
 spirits, like the Hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows of the 
 Anatomy, and who do the same domestic drudgery, and play the 
 same pranks that are there described in similar detail, bringing, 
 in spite of their fun and mischief, good luck to the houses which 
 they frequent. 
 
 Fat. Either I mistake your shape and making quite, 
 Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite 
 Call'd Robin Goodfellow : are not you he 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 231 
 
 That frights the maidens of the villagery ; 
 Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern 
 And bootless make the breathless housewife churn ; 
 And sometimes make the drink to bear no barm ; 
 Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm ? 
 Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck, 
 You do their work, and they shall have good luck : 
 Are not you he ? 
 
 Puck. Thou speak'st aright ; 
 
 I am that merry wanderer of the night. 
 I jest to Oberon and make him smile 
 When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, 
 Neighing in likeness of a filly foal ; 
 And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl, 
 In very likeness of a roasted crab, 
 And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, 
 And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale. 
 The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, 
 Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me ; 
 Then slip I from her, then down topples she, 
 And " tailor " cries and falls into a cough ; 
 And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh, 
 And waxen in their mirth, and neeze and swear. 
 A merrier hour was never wasted there.* 
 
 " Sir Fulke Grevillo . . . would say merrily of himself : that 
 he was like Robin Goodfellow, for when the maids spilt the 
 milk-pans, or kept any racket, they would lay it on Robin ; so, 
 what tales the ladies about the Queen told her, or other bad 
 offices they had, they would put it upon him."| 
 
 There are four fairies besides Puck, who, somewhat less 
 ethereal than the rest, specially connect themselves with the 
 studies of the Natural Philosopher, and appear to be the very 
 coinage of his brain. In recalling the flowers which perfume 
 the air most delightfully in gardens, when crushed or trodden 
 on, Bacon begins with " bean flowers " but checks himself, 
 saying that they are not for gardens, because they are field 
 flowers." Elsewhere he says that "the daintiest smells of 
 flowers are those plants whose leaves smell not, as the bean 
 flower." He suggests "the setting of whole alleys of burnet, 
 wild thyme, and mint, to have pleasure when you walk and 
 tread/' adding, in another place, that " odours are very good 
 
 * Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 t Bacon's Apophthegms, 235 ; Spedding, Works, VII. 158. 
 
232 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 to comfort the heart,'' and the smell of leaves falling and of bean 
 blossoms supplies a good coolness to the spirits. Thus, whilst 
 commending the sweetness of 
 
 " A bank whereon the wild thyme grows," 
 
 bean flowers are, in his estimation, sweeter still, and in the 
 fairy " Peaseblossom " of the play we seem to recognise the 
 " bean flower," sweetest of perfumes amongst field flowers, and 
 whose mission is to supply a " cooling'' and "comforting" 
 odour to the bank whereon the Fairy Queen will repose. 
 " Mustard-seed " is a brisk ministering spirit of the fairy court, 
 for "mustard," says Bacon, has in it "a quick spirit, ready to 
 get up and spread." 
 
 " Where's Monsieur Mustard-seed ? 
 Ready . . . What's your will ? " 
 
 Peaseblossom and Cobweb are also ready, but only the fiery 
 and quick-spirited Mustard-seed is ready to get up and act. 
 
 Then Moth — be not appalled, delicate reader — Moth seems 
 to be the winged product of Bacon's experiments touching living 
 creatures bred of putrefaction. " For putrefaction is the work 
 of the spirits of bodies, which ever are unquiet to get forth and 
 congregate with the air" (the wind fairies), "and to enjoy the 
 sunbeams." Titania is the sunbeam, the vivifying and all- 
 cheering spirit of living things. Her name proclaims her 
 nature. " Moths and butterflies," we are told, " quicken with 
 heat, and revive easily, even when they seem dead, being brought 
 near the sun." What, then, can be more fitting than that 
 the soft, ephemeral white " Moth " should be found hovering or 
 flitting about where Titania, the Sunbeam, is ? 
 
 Cobweb, or Gossamer, is another almost immaterial creature, 
 " bred by dew and sun all over the ground. . . . Cobwebs are 
 most seen where caterpillars abound, which breedeth {sic) by 
 dew and leaves. They are a sign of dryness, . . . and come 
 when the dry east winds have most blown." The ideas 
 springing from these details, and woven into the "Dream," 
 are as subtle as the Gossamer itself, and almost as difficult 
 to handle without destroying their beauty. By means of 
 clues offered by the simple names of attendants upon Titania, 
 we may, if we will, follow, panting, the nimble bounds 
 of the poet's fancy ; bend and twirl and light in unexpected 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 233 
 
 places, while he leads us a dance through the sciences — that 
 " labyrinth," whose paths are " so subtle, intricate, and crossing 
 each other, that they are only to be understoood and traced by 
 the clue of experience." 
 
 We conjure up, perhaps faintly, the dream which he was 
 dreaming of universal nature — the Oberon of the play* — of the 
 nature upon which the zephyrs and soft winds wait, hasting to 
 assist the operations of the Sunbeam, the life-giver. When the 
 east winds have dried the banks, Cobweb overspreads them 
 with his delicate covering to receive the Fairy Queen, and as 
 she sleeps, her "spirits cooled," and her "heart comforted" by 
 the perfumes which Peaseblossom scatters, Moth fans her with 
 his noiseless wings, and Mustard-seed stands ready to spring up 
 to obey her hest or know what is her will. 
 
 Those fairies were the "children of an idle brain" — idle con- 
 sidering whose brain it was. Troubles light as a summer 
 cloud, in comparison to the storms which broke over his later 
 life, had lately passed away when that rare vision was dreamed. 
 The pert and nimble spirit of mirth was again wide-awake. 
 Francis Bacon's pretty device, The Masque of the Indian Boy, 
 had lately been performed before the Queen ; his mind was full 
 of thoughts such as pervade that little, courtly piece, when, in 
 the glades and river-sceues of Twickenham, the poet, as we 
 believe, on some hot summer's night, wrote his fairy story. 
 
 Things had changed when he set his pen to write Macbeth. 
 " There's nothing either good or ill but thinking makes it so." 
 The world and its joys had grown dark to Francis Bacon, and 
 the very elements, the powers of nature, turned wild and gloomy 
 in the distracted globe of his great mind. 
 
 The winds are no longer " frivolous," " dancing," " piping, 
 and whistling to each other," "gamboling with golden locks," 
 " playing with the sedges." They are now the powerful and 
 portentous ministers of fate as well as of nature ; their realm is 
 full of hurly-burly, fog and filthy air ; their nature, still 
 spiritual, is no longer fairy-like, but witch-like and demoniacal 
 
 * Compare Oberon with Pan as described in the essay by Bacon and in 
 the De Augmentis. The universal nature of things, which has its origin 
 from confused matter ; the hairiness of his body representing the rays of 
 things ; his control over the nature and fates of things — as Oberon, in the 
 play, is seen to regulate the general course of events. 
 
 Q 
 
234 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 The beneficent merry spirits have been transformed into the 
 evil geniuses and hell-hags, whose mission is to confound unity, 
 to lead men on to their destruction, to tumble all nature together, 
 even till destruction sickens. 
 
 The witches of Macbeth have about them some points which 
 distinguish them from all other beings of the kind with whom 
 literature acquaints us. They seem to have been created in 
 the poet's brain by a subtle blending or fusion of his lawyer's 
 experience in trials for witchcraft — of " witches, inhabitants of 
 earth " — with his scientific and metaphysical investigations and 
 conceits as to the properties and " versions * of air, breath, and 
 water ; of the " transmissions of spiritual species " ; of " the 
 operations of sympathy in things which have been contiguous." 
 Bacon's witches, inhabitants rather of the air and clouds than 
 of the earth, partake (by sympathy with the elements to which 
 they are "contiguous") of the virtues and characteristics of 
 air, vapours, and exhalations. It was a recognised characteristic 
 of witches, that they ride through the air generally on broom- 
 sticks, and vanish, but the more poetical idea of their conversion, 
 at pleasure, into the elements to which they are made kindred, 
 is, we believe, only to be found in Macbeth. 
 
 In the few descriptive words of Macbeth and Banquo * the 
 scientific doctrine of the convertibility of air, vapour, and water 
 is clearly seen, and with it the poetical and very Baconian 
 doctrine of the mutual influence of body and spirit. It is by 
 sympathy that the witches can turn themselves into either form. 
 Spirits they are, airy, or " pneumatic bodies, which partake both 
 of an oily and watery substance, and which, being converted 
 into a pneumatic substance, constitute a body composed, as it 
 were, of air and flame, and combining the mysterious properties 
 of both. Now, these bodies," continues Bacon, " are of the 
 nature of breaths." 
 
 The witches vanish, and Banquo exclaims : 
 
 " The earth has bubbles as the water hath, 
 And these are of them. Whither are they vanished ? " 
 
 Macbeth replies : 
 
 " Into the air : and what seemed corporal, melted 
 As breath, into the wind.'" 
 
 * Macbeth I. 3, 79—82. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 235 
 
 So, too, he describes to Lady Macbeth how, when he tried to 
 question the witches : 
 
 " They made themselves air, into which they vanished." 
 
 There is in this line something singularly weird, super- 
 natural, and poetic, drawp, as it surely is, and as Bacon tells 
 us that all great sayings are drawn, from the very centre of 
 the sciences. 
 
 The witches, in the first act, appear to be incarnations of air, 
 in violent agitation or motion ; strong winds, accompanied by 
 thunder and lightning, such as Bacon describes. In the third 
 scene two witches, spirits of air, offer to help Hecate by the 
 gift of a wind. They are more generous than the aerial spirits 
 mentioned in the Anatomy, who "sell winds," and Hecate 
 acknowledges their merit. " Thou art kind," she says, for she 
 is busy raising tempest after the manner described by Bacon,* 
 and an extra wind or so is not unacceptable. 
 
 In the same scene the weird sisters describe themselves as : 
 
 " Posters of the sea and land," 
 
 just as, in the History of Winds, Bacon speaks of "clouds 
 that drive fast" " winds traders in vapours," " winds that are 
 itinerant" 
 
 It may be remembered that the aerial spirits were specially 
 described in the Anatomy as causing tempests in which they 
 tear oaks, fire steeples, cause sickness, shipwrecks, and inunda- 
 tions. A similar description is given in the History of Winds 
 and of the Management of Ships. " Winds are like great 
 waves of the air. . . . They may blow down trees; . . . 
 they may likewise overturn edifices; but the more solid 
 structures they cannot destroy, unless accompanied by earth- 
 quakes. Sometimes they hurl down avalanches from the 
 mountains so as almost to bury the plains beneath them ; some- 
 times they cause great inundations of water." 
 
 See how all these points are reproduced by Macbeth w T hen he 
 conjures the witches : 
 
 Macb. I conjure you, by that which you profess, 
 Howe'er you come to know it, answer me : 
 
 * See Hist, of Winds, Sylva Sylvarum, and the passage from the 
 Anatomy, quoted ante. 
 
236 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Though you untie the winds and let them fight 
 
 Against the churches ; though the yesty waves 
 
 Confound and swallow navigation up : 
 
 Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down ; 
 
 Though castles topple on their warders' heads ; 
 
 Though palaces and pyramids do slope 
 
 Their heads to their foundations ; though the treasure 
 
 Of nature's germens tumble altogether, 
 
 Even till destruction sicken ; answer me 
 
 To what I ask you * 
 
 The meetings of the witches in every case derive their 
 picturesqueness and colour from Bacon's notes "on the meet- 
 ings of the winds together, which, if the winds be strong, 
 produce violent whirlwinds,'' and it is interesting to find that 
 the hint for " the sound of battle in the air," and which is 
 introduced as a portent in Julius Ccesar — 
 
 "The noise of battle hurtled in the air"t 
 
 (and which, by the way, is also included in the notes of the 
 Anatomist — " Counterfeit armies in the air, strange noises, 
 swords, etc.) — was originally taken from the poet Virgil, from 
 whom, indeed, the idea of the meeting of the four witches, as 
 of " the rushing together of the four winds" may have been 
 taken. 
 
 " Virgil . . . was by no means ignorant of Natural Philosophy." 
 " At once the winds rush forth, the east, and south, and south- 
 west laden with storms." if 
 
 And again : 
 " I have seen all the battles of the winds meet together in the air." § 
 
 In the Tempest much of the fun and sprightliness of the 
 Midsummer Night's Dream peeps out again, and the "gross 
 matter " of prosaic scientific notes is again vapourised into ideas 
 as light as the airs of the enchanted isle of which the poet- 
 philosopher wrote. 
 
 " Inquire," says the History, " into the nature of the winds, 
 whether some are not free? . . . What do mountains con- 
 tribute to them ? " 
 
 * Macb. IV. 1. f Jul- Cces. II. 2. 
 
 J iEneid I. 85, quoted in Hist, of Winds. 
 
 § Georgics I. 318, and compare Macbeth II. 3, 55, 60. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 237 
 
 Prospero says to Ariel : " Thou shalt be free as mountain 
 winds. 1 '' 
 
 " The poets," continues the History, " have feigned that the 
 Kingdom of Sol was situated in subterranean dens and caverns, 
 where the winds are imprisoned, and whence they xcere occa- 
 sionally let loose. . . . The air icill submit to some compression. 
 * . . At Aber Barry there is a rocky cliff filled with holes, to 
 which if a man apply his ear, he will hear sounds and 
 murmurs." In Potosi are vents for hot blasts. 
 
 Prospero reminds Ariel of his miserable condition as an 
 imprisoned bird under the control of the witch Sycorax, and of 
 how he had to submit to painful compression, " venting his 
 groans " for a dozen years. He threatens further punishment 
 if Ariel continues to murmur : 
 
 And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate 
 
 To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, 
 
 Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee, 
 
 By help of her more potent ministers 
 
 And in her most unmitigable rage, 
 
 Into a cloven pine ; within which rift 
 
 Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain 
 
 A dozen years ; within which space she died 
 
 And left thee there ; where thou didst \>ent thy groans 
 
 As fast as mill-wheels strike. 
 
 Thou best know'st 
 What torment I did find thee in ; thy groans 
 Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts 
 Of ever angry bears : it was a torment 
 To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax 
 Could not again undo : it was mine art, 
 When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape 
 The pine and let thee out. 
 
 Ari. I thank thee, master. 
 
 Pr. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak 
 And peg thee in his knotty entrails till 
 Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters.* 
 
 Sooner than undergo any further compression Ariel asks 
 pardon, and promises to do his spiriting gently. Prospero 
 then commands him to make a " version " of himself from 
 
 * Tempest I. 2. 
 
238 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 air into water (a converse process to that performed by the 
 
 witches). 
 
 " Go, make thyself a nymph of the sea." 
 
 " No wonder," Bacon reflects, " that the nature of the winds 
 is ranked amongst the things mysterious and concealed, when 
 the power and nature of the air which the winds attend and 
 serve is entirely unknown. . . . Inquire into the nature of the 
 attendant winds, their community, etc." This mysterious and 
 concealed characteristic of the winds is hinted when Ariel dis- 
 guises himself, and appears as a harpy. " I and my fellows" he 
 says, " are ministers of fate," incapable of injury, " invulner- 
 able." 
 
 The winds have " a power of conveying spiritual species, that 
 is, sounds, radiations, and the like ; " these Bacon would have 
 inquired into. The excited imagination and uneasy conscience 
 of Alonzo make him nervously impressionable, and able to 
 recognise these spiritual sounds : 
 
 Alon. Oh, it is monstrous, monstrous ! 
 
 Methought the billows spoke and told me of it ; 
 The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder, 
 That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced 
 The name of Prosper : it did bass my trespass.* 
 
 A passage which, in gloomier and more tragic language, is 
 echoed in Macbeth : 
 
 And pity, like a naked new-born babe, 
 Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed 
 Upon the sightless couriers of the air, 
 Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, 
 That tears shall drown the wind.t 
 
 The notes on the tremendous force of the winds are once more 
 distilled into verse in the Tempest, where, also, the gentler 
 winds are described " driving on the tides and currents, some- 
 times propelling, and sometimes flying from one another, as if in 
 sport" These winds, weak masters though they be, assist, 
 Bacon says, in promoting an " agitation " and " collision " 
 amongst the violent winds, and " drive them along in mad fury. 1 ' 
 
 * Tempest III. 3. 
 
 t Macbeth I. 7. The last line seems to refer to Bacon's observation that 
 " showers generally allay the winds, especially if they be stormy." 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 239 
 
 In other words, the tempest, raised by the attendant and minis- 
 tering winds, is combined with an earthquake, over which the 
 winds have no control, but which the magician has caused by 
 his art. 
 
 See the lovely creation from these elements : 
 
 Pros. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, 
 And ye that on the sands with printless foot 
 Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him 
 When he comes back; you demi-puppets that 
 By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, 
 Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime 
 Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice 
 To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid, 
 Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd 
 The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, 
 And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault 
 Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder 
 Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak 
 With his own bolt ; the strong-based promontory 
 Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up 
 The pine and cedar : graves at my command 
 Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let em forth 
 By my so potent art. 
 
 These lines give us hints of Bacon's curious " Experiments 
 Touching the Eudiments of Plants, of Excrescences, 1 ' etc. 
 " Moss," he says, " cometh of moisture," and is made of the 
 sap of the tree " which is not so frank as to rise all the boughs, 
 but tireth by the way and putteth out moss." * A quaint idea ! 
 full of the Paracelsian notion of the spirits or souls of things, 
 and very Baconian, too. Bacon thought that the winds had 
 something to do with such growths, for trees are said to bear 
 most moss that " stand bleak and upon the winds." Next to 
 moss he speaks of mushrooms, which he associates with moss, 
 as being " likewise an imperfect plant." Mushrooms have two 
 strange properties ; " the one is, they yield so delicious a meat " 
 (therefore they are deserving of the fairies' trouble in growing 
 them) ; " the other, that they come up so hastily, and yet they are 
 unsown " (and how could that be except they were sown by the 
 fairies ?). Like moss, " they come of moisture, and are windy, 
 but the xoindiness is not sharp and griping ; " they are, therefore, 
 
 * Nat. Hist. VI. 540. 
 
240 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 unlike " the green-sour ringlets " which the fairies make in the 
 moonlight (where, Bacon says, nothing will ripen), and which 
 even the sheep will not eat, though sheep love mushrooms. 
 
 The wind-fairies " rejoice to hear the solemn curfew.'' This 
 tells us that these are the south winds, " for the south wind is 
 the attendant of the night; it rises in the night, and bloics 
 stronger." * 
 
 The south and west winds, too, are " warm and moist, 
 favourable to plants, flowers, and all vegetation ; " hence the 
 mushrooms spring up quickly under their influence. 
 
 But the north winds are " more potent ministers ; " with them 
 occur " thunder, lightning, and tornadoes, accompanied with 
 cold and hail." f They are " unfriendly" and even destructive 
 to vegetable life, and either " bind the floioer on the opening of 
 it, or shake it off." J 
 
 " The tyrannous breathing of the north 
 Shakes all our buds from growing." § 
 
 " Storms," continues our observant naturalist, " when attended 
 with clouds and fog, are very dangerous at sea." Prospero, 
 therefore, to make his tempest the more terrible, " bedims the 
 noontide sun," before calling forth the winds and the thunder. || 
 
 " The anniversary north winds " come " from the frozen sea, 
 and the region about the Arctic Circle, where the ice and snow are 
 not melted till the summer is far advanced." Prospero taunts 
 
 Ariel : 
 
 " Thou think'st it much to tread the ooze 
 Of the salt deep, 
 
 To run upon the sharp wind of the north 
 When it is bak'd with frost." 
 
 The last lines seem to be suggested by the Latin entry in the 
 Promus (No. 1367) : " Frigus adurit." 
 The idea is repeated in Hamlet : 
 
 " Frost itself as actively doth burn" ^ 
 The philosophic poet does not forget to allude to the effects of 
 
 * Hist. Winds, 1, 2, 10, 12, etc., qualities and powers. 
 
 t Comp. Macb. 1. 1, 2. Ham. V. 2, 97. 
 
 t lb. 21, 24. § Cymb. I. 4. 
 
 || Compare Macb. I. 1, of the witches' storms. 
 
 f Hamlet, III. 4. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 241 
 
 " warm winds and moist airs in inducing putrefaction," and in 
 " increasing pestilential diseases and catarrhs." Caliban's worst 
 imprecation (which, by the way, personifies even dew in true 
 Paracelsian style) is this : 
 
 "As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd 
 With raven's'feather from unwholesome fen 
 Drop on you both ! A southwest blow on ye 
 And blister you all o'er." 
 
 Prospero is equal to the occasion, and answers him in kind • 
 
 " For this, be sure, thou shalt have cramps, 
 Side stitches that shall pen thy breath up. 
 . . . I'll rack thee with old cramps, 
 Fill all thy bones with aches."* 
 
 Bacon's cogitations on winds, contagion, putrefaction, and the 
 doctrines of the human body, of the biform figure of nature, 
 and of the sensitive soul, are inextricably interwoven in the 
 Shakespeare plays of the later period. It is not the intention of 
 this book to enter deeply into anything ; the aim is to excite 
 interest, even opposition, if that will promote study, and at least 
 to encourage our younger readers to believe that all is not yet 
 known on any of these subjects, and that vast fields of delightful 
 and profitable research lie open for them to explore, delve into, 
 and cultivate. But in order to do this, it is quite certain that 
 the tool absolutely indispensable is a knowledge of Bacon's 
 works — not only of those little pithy essays which embody all 
 that the ordinary reader conceives as Bacon's writings, exclusive 
 of " exploded science," and law tracts and speeches, too dull to 
 be tackled. Let those who are of this mind take those very 
 works and read them with the belief that they are the keys 
 to all the great literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries; the touchstones by which the authorship of other 
 works may be tried ; sketches for finished pictures or condensed 
 editions of more casual and discursive works of Bacon's early 
 days. Let them think that even with regard to the Shake- 
 speare plays only these little-read scientific works of Bacon are 
 invaluable, explaining or elucidating, as they so often do, the 
 
 * Tempest, I. 2, and compare where Thersites curses Patroclus (Troilus 
 and Cressida, V. 1), and where Marcius curses the Romans (Coriol. I. 4, 
 30, etc.). 
 
242 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 meaning or original idea of obscure passages, and often enabling 
 the commentator to trace the thought to some author of 
 antiquity, or to some observation drawn from " nature's infinite 
 book of secresy," in which, says the poet, " a little I can read." 
 
 The last scene in The Tempest shows us the philosopher 
 returning from the " recreative " writing, which relieved the 
 overflowing of a full brain, to the graver labours and con- 
 templations which drew Bacon to the retirement of his " full 
 poor cell." Play-time was over, and " these things are but 
 toys." 
 
 " Our revels are now ended. These our actors, 
 
 As I foretold you, were all spirits and 
 
 Are melted into air, into thin air ; 
 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 
 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
 
 Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 
 Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd ; 
 
 Bear with my weakness ; my old brain is troubled ; 
 
 Be not disturbed with my infirmity : 
 
 If you be pleased, retire into my cell 
 
 And there repose : a turn or two I'll walk, 
 
 To still my beating mind." 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 243 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MASONRY. 
 
 " If I mistake 
 In those foundations which I build upon, 
 The centre is not strong enough to bear 
 A schoolboy's top." — Winters Tale. 
 
 ACCORDING to many books on Freemasonry, the " Rosicru- 
 cians had no connection with the Masonic fraternity."* 
 In the face of collective evidence to the contrary, it is 
 very difficult for non-Masonic people to credit the statement ; it 
 would rather seem as if the desire of Masonic writers to draw a 
 hard and fast line between the two societies were confirmatory 
 of hints dropped in certain books concerning schisms which, 
 during the last two centuries, have occurred amongst the brethren 
 or brotherhoods. Originally one and the same, alike in aims, 
 alike in symbolic language, with similar traditions tracing back 
 to similar origins, some, at least, of the members supposed to 
 have constituted the Rosicrucian society actually were, we find, 
 members of the Freemason lodge. The only conspicuous 
 differences which appear to have existed three hundred years ago 
 were : (1) That the Rosicrucians were distinctly Christian and 
 church people, and that the magnificent literature brought out 
 under their auspices was all either religious or written with an 
 elevating tendency, invariably loyal, patriotic, and unselfish. 
 (2) That the society was unostentatious and retiring to such an 
 extent as to gain the name of the Invisible Brotherhood. It 
 laboured silently and secretly for the good of men, but not to be 
 seen of men. It went not to church with brass bands and 
 banners ; neither did it assume magniloquent titles or garments 
 and decorations of obsolete or grotesque quaintness. 
 
 * Since the above was written the matter has been settted by the pro- 
 nouncement of Dr. Wynn Westcott, before a Lodge of Masons, that 
 "Freemasons are Masons with secrets — the Rosicrucians are a Secret 
 Society.' 1 It is added that the Rosicrucians are the superior section ; the 
 Freemasons their helpers and subordinates. 
 
244 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 The Rosicrucians were and are a powerful, but unobtrusive, 
 Christian literary society. The Freemasons are, we believe, 
 the lower orders of the same ; deists, but not necessarily Chris- 
 tians ; moral, but not necessarily religious ; bent on benefiting 
 the human race by all means humanitarian, and chiefly devoting 
 themselves to the development of the practical side of life ; to 
 architecture, printing, medicine, surgery, etc. ; to the arts and 
 crafts, the habitations, the recreations of the million. It i3 
 easy to see that, in the first instance, such societies might have 
 worked as part of one system. Whether or not they continue 
 in any degree so to work, we cannot positively say ; but it seems 
 to the mere looker-on as if, once one, the society divided, sub- 
 divided, and in its lower branches underwent such changes as to 
 be not only divergent, but, at the present day, different in 
 character and aim. We speak, hoping to be contradicted, and 
 give, as an instance, that the Freemasonry of Germany seems to 
 differ very much from that of the most respectable lodges of 
 England, being in some cases not only not Christian, but not 
 even deistic ; on the contrary, persons professedly atheists are 
 enrolled amongst its members, and this miserable degradation 
 of the brotherhood has, we are told, unhappily extended to 
 England and America. Need it be said that to atheism and 
 irreligion is too frequently added the so-called socialism, which 
 has, in these latter days, done so much to stir up discontent 
 where content reigned, destroying order and respect for 
 authority, and setting men by the ears who should be joined for 
 mutual aid. 
 
 Of course, this is the bad and dark side of the question ; there 
 is a very bright side, too, and researches (we cannot say 
 inquiries, for they are fruitless) encourage us to hope that 
 there are signs, either of the "drawing together" of opposite 
 parties, for which Bacon so earnestly strove, or else that the 
 much-suppressed Rosicrucians, the gallant little band who held 
 together through all the stormy times of the Puritans, the civil 
 wars, the Restoration, and the many subsequent troubles, are 
 now rapidly multiplying in number, increasing in power, and 
 everywhere extending their beneficent operations. " By their 
 fruits ye shall know them." 
 
 But all this is, after all, mere conjecture ; it is only submitted 
 as such in order that others may pin down these statements, 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 245 
 
 proving or disproving them. Having no means of doing so, we 
 fall back, for the present, upon our old plan of quoting " the 
 best authorities," and when, as is frequently the case, these 
 doctors disagree, readers will, perhaps, cross-examine them, and 
 decide between them. 
 
 Dr. Mackey is positive tfrat the Rosicrucians have no connec- 
 tion with the Masons. He is indignant that anyone should 
 doubt this. " Notwithstanding this fact" says the Doctor (but 
 bringing no proof of the fact), " Barnel, the most malignant of 
 our revilers, with a characteristic spirit of misrepresentation, 
 attempted to identify the two institutions. This is an error into 
 which others might unwittingly fall, from confounding the Prince 
 of Rose Croix, a Masonic degree somewhat similar in name, but 
 entirely different in character." Here, again, it is not explained 
 how the writer has become so intimately acquainted with the 
 characteristics of the Rosicrucians, seeing that he is not himself 
 an initiate of that brotherhood. He proceeds in the same strain 
 of assertion, without proof : " The Rosicrucians do not derive 
 their name, like Rose Croix Masons, from the rose and cross, for 
 they have nothing to do with the rose, but with the Latin ros, 
 dew, and crux, the cross, as a hieroglyphic of light. ... A 
 Rosicrucian philosopher is one who, by the assistance of dew 
 (previously explained as the most powerful solvent of gold) 
 seeks for light, or the philosopher's stone." * 
 
 This author is evidently possessed with the notion that there 
 is something rather discreditable in Rosicrucianism, for he con- 
 cludes with an apology for having introduced the subject, which 
 only a fear of the error into which Masons might unwittingly fall 
 would, apparently, have induced him to touch upon. 
 
 Another work of the same kind has a long article on Rosi- 
 crucianism, in which all the old traditions and errors are repeated : 
 that the Rosy Cross brethren were alchemists ; that their origin 
 was of great antiquity, etc. ; adding, also, other errors, namely, 
 that " the fraternity seldom had meetings together," and that 
 " its corporate character was by no means marked." The writer, 
 who evidently takes a much more correct view of the aims of the 
 society than his predecessor, yet adds this statement : " The 
 
 * Lexicon of Freemasonrv, A. G. Mackey, D,D, (Griffin & Co,, Exeter 
 St., Strand), 7th edition, 1883. 
 
246 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 modern society of Rosicrucians is constituted upon a widely 
 different basis than that of the parent society. While the adepts 
 of former times were contented with the knowledge of their 
 mutual obligations, and observed them as a matter of course and 
 custom, the eighteenth century Kosicrucians forced the world to 
 think that, for a time, they were not only the precursors of 
 Masonry, but, in essentia, that body itself. This has led to many 
 misconceptions. With Freemasonry the occult fraternity has only 
 this much to do, i.e., that some of the Rosicrucians were also 
 Freemasons ; and this idea was strengthened by the fact that a 
 portion of the curriculum of a Rosier ucian consisted in theosophy ; 
 these bodies had, however, no other substantial connective ties. 
 Jn fact, Freemasons have never actually laid claim to the pos- 
 session of alchymical secrets. Starting from a definite legend — 
 that of the building of Solomon's temple — they have, .mejeely 
 moralised on life, death, and the resurrection/' But this, we 
 know, is the same definite legend from which the Rosicrucians 
 started, and they moralised after the same fashion, and in the 
 same strictly Baconian manner, metaphorically and by analogy ; 
 or, as our author here formidably puts it, " correspondentially 
 with the increase and decrease and the palingenesia of nature. ,, 
 He pays a proper tribute to the superiority of the Rosicrucians 
 over the Freemasons when he says that, as the science of mathe- 
 matics contains the rude germs of things, and the science of 
 words comprehends the application of these forms and intel- 
 lectual purification, so " the Rosicrucian doctrine specifically 
 pointed out the uses and inter-relations between the qualities 
 and substances in nature, although their enlarged ideas admitted 
 of a moral survey. The Freemasons, while they have deserved 
 the esteem of mankind for charity and works of love, have never 
 accomplished, and, by their inherent sphere of operation, never 
 can accomplish, what these isolated students effected" 
 
 But, although the extent and precise nature of the connec- 
 tion between the two societies may not be accurately definable ; 
 though, indeed, it may be unknown, excepting to a select few, 
 in the very highest degree of initiation, yet, the ceremonies 
 and symbols of this degree of Prince Rouge Croix approach 
 more nearly to those of the Rosy Cross Brotherhood than they 
 do even to other degrees of their own Masonic lodges. For the 
 Rose Croix alone, of all the degrees in Masonry, is said by " the 
 
 f, 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 247 
 
 best authorities" to be "eminently a Christian degree, 1 ' and 
 hence unattainable by an immense number of Masons. We 
 observe, moreover, that the " monk " mentioned by the Masonic 
 writer whom we are about to cite is none other than our old 
 friend Johann Valentin Andreas, the formerly accredited author 
 of the " Chemical Marriqge of Christian Rosenkreuz" which 
 we now find to have been written by Francis Bacon at the age 
 of fifteen. 
 
 It will also be observed in the following extracts that Ragon 
 attributes to Andreas the same motive for inaugurating the 
 secret society as that which chiefly influenced Bacon, the grief, 
 namely, which he felt at the loss of truth through vain disputes 
 and pedantic pride. Clavel, as we shall see, adds another thread 
 to strengthen the evidence which we have collected to show 
 that, whilst on the one hand the Rosicrucians were bound in 
 every way to oppose the bigotry and superstition of the Church 
 of Rome, and the anti-Christian pretences of the pope to infalli- 
 bility, yet it was not the Church of Rome, or its chief head or 
 pope, against which the Rosy Cross brothers were militant ; it 
 was against the errors, the bigotry and superstition which that 
 Church indulged in ; against the ignorance aud darkness in 
 which the mass of its members were intentionally kept by its 
 priesthood. The highly cultivated and sometimes heavenly- 
 minded members of the Society of Jesus must doubtless have 
 often had reason to share the distress attributed to the monk 
 Andreas, and we think that it will probably be found that the 
 Rosy Cross brethren did, in fact, obtain great, though secret, 
 help from the more liberal amongst the Jesuit communities. 
 
 Ragon, in his treatise entitled Orthodoxie Maconnique, at- 
 tributes the origin of the Eighteenth Degree, or the " Sovereign 
 Prince of Rose- Croix Heredom," to a pious monk named John 
 Valentine Andreas, who flourished in the early part of the seven- 
 teenth century, and who wrote, amongst other works, two trea- 
 tises, one entitled Judicorum de Fraternitate R. C, the other 
 Noces Chimiques de Rosen Crutz. Ragon says that Andreas, 
 grieved at seeing the principles of Christianity forgotten in idle 
 and vain disputes, and that science was made subservient to the 
 pride of man, instead of contributing to his happiness, passed 
 his days in devising what he supposed to be the most appro- 
 priate means of restoring each to its legitimate moral and 
 
248 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 benevolent tendency. Clavel absurdly affirms that the degree 
 was founded by the Jesuits, for the purpose of counteracting 
 the insidious attacks of free-thinkers upon the Eomish faith, 
 but he offers no evidence in support of his assertion ; in fact, 
 the Jesuits were the great enemies of Masonry, and, so far from 
 supporting it, wrote treatises against the order. Many of the 
 Eosicrucians were amongst the reformers of the age, and hence 
 the hostility of the Romish Church. The almost universal 
 recognition of this degree in all countries would favour the 
 theory of its being of long standing. 
 
 Hurd y in his Treatise on Religions, speaks of the Brethren of 
 the Rose, or Ne Plus Ultra. " They were to declare openly that 
 the Pope was Antichrist, and that the time would come when 
 they should pull down his triple crown. . . . They claimed 
 a right of naming their successors, and bequeathing to them all 
 their privileges ; to keep the devil in subjection ; and that their 
 fraternity could not be destroyed, because God always opposed 
 an impenetrable cloud to screen them from their enemies." 
 
 Rosetti, in his work on the Antipapal Spirit of Italy, asserts 
 similar statements with regard to this and other societies con- 
 nected with Freemasonry. " The ceremonies of the degree of the 
 Rose-Croix are of the most imposing and impressive character, 
 and it is eminently a Christian degree. Its ritual is remarkable 
 for elegance of diction, while the symbolic teaching is not only 
 pleasing, but consistent with the Christian faith, figuratively 
 expressing the passage of man through the valley of the shadow 
 of death, accompanied and sustained by the Masonic virtues — 
 faith, hope, and charity — and his final reception into the abode 
 of light, life, and immortality." * 
 
 In the Rose-Croix transparency which is used during the 
 ceremonies there is a cross of Calvary raised on three steps. On 
 the cross is hung a crown of thorns with one large rose in the 
 centre ; two smaller crosses are on either side, with skulls and 
 cross-bones. 
 
 These symbols would alone be almost sufficient to satisfy our 
 readers of the Christian character of that degree ; but the jewel 
 worn by the initiate is even more distinct in its announcement. 
 
 * From the Freemason's Manual, J. How, K. T. 30°, pp. 272-3, 3rd edn. 
 revised and illustrated. J. Hogg, London, 1881. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 249 
 
 This jewel includes all the most important symbols of the degree. 
 It is a golden compass, extended on an arc to twenty-two and a- 
 half degrees, or the sixteenth part of a circle ; the head of the 
 compass is surmounted by a crown with seven emerald points. 
 The compass encloses a cross of Calvary formed of rubies or 
 garnets, having in its centre a full-blown rose, whose stem 
 twines round the lower limb of the cross. At the foot of the 
 cross is a pelican, wounding her breast to feed her young, which 
 are in a nest beneath. 
 
 On the reverse is an eagle instead of the pelican, and on the 
 arc of the circle is engraved in cipher the pass-word of the 
 degree.* 
 
 Taking all things together, evidence favours the following 
 conclusions with regard to the Rosicrucians and the Free- 
 masons : 
 
 1. That the aims of the Freemasons are (in a lower degree) 
 much the same as those of the Rosicrucians. 
 
 2. That the Masons begin by meeting on a common platform 
 of humanity, and that they propose to raise their initiates step 
 by step to a somewhat higher level. 
 
 3. That their highest level is a kind of theosophy or deism, 
 or at least that no more than this is required, excepting in the 
 Rose Croix degree. | Here the Rosicrucians, therefore, seem to 
 part from them, and to continue to mount. Whereas with the 
 Freemasons Christ and His Church are practically ignored, with 
 the Rosicrucians Christianity is the life and soul of all that they 
 have done, and are doing. Whereas the words " Christ," 
 " Church," " Religion," are almost banished from Freemason 
 books, the mighty literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, and all that is good, great, and enduring in the 
 present age, will probably be traced to the agency of this 
 universal Church literary society. 
 
 * How's Manual. For the meaning of the symbols above mentioned, see 
 ante, Emblems and Symbols. 
 
 fin connection with the Rose Croix degree, it may be observed, says the 
 same authority, that the initials of the Latin inscription placed on the 
 cross, I. N. R. I., representing Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Judceorum, were used 
 by the Rosicrucians as the initials of their Hermetic Secrets — Igne Natura 
 Renovatur Integra — " By fire, Nature is perfectly renewed." They also 
 adopted them to express the names of their three elementary principles, 
 Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury, by making the initials of the sentence, Igne 
 Nitrum Roris Invenitur. 
 
 R 
 
250 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 4. There seems to be no evidence that Freemasonry, in the 
 present acceptation of the term, or as a mutual benefit society, 
 existed before the middle of the sixteenth century. Church 
 architects and builders, who had secrets of their own, and to 
 whom, probably, we owe the magnificent structures which con- 
 tinue to be models to our own time, were a trade guild and a 
 church guild too. Their secrets were of the nature of the 
 printer's secrets of the present day, not only for mutual use and 
 protection, but also enclosing certain information to their craft 
 and, perhaps, to a select few, beyond that enchanted circle. 
 But in no way can we say that these old builders filled the places 
 of the ubiquitous, many-headed Freemasons. Moreover, if we 
 mix them up with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, we still 
 find ourselves linked with " the Holy Catholic Church " of our 
 forefathers, to which the Eosicrucians were inseparably bound, 
 but from which the Freemason writers seem most anxious to 
 separate themselves. 
 
 Hep worth Dixon* tells us that the scheme which Sir Nicholas 
 Bacon presented to Henry VIII. for the endowment of a school 
 of law, policy, and languages, in London, was, perhaps, the 
 original germ of the New Atlantis ; the idea being transferred 
 from statecraft to nature. It is, therefore, possible that Francis 
 Bacon, whose admiration and reverence for his father is very 
 perceptible, may have considered that the foundation-stone of 
 his Solomon's House was laid by Sir Nicholas. Nowhere can we 
 find irrefutable statements or proofs that this society had any 
 earlier history. The professed records of its antiquity seem, 
 like the similar records of the Rosicrucians, to be fictitious, mere 
 shams, which cannot pass current amongst initiated readers ; 
 playing upon words, intended to convey to some members a 
 knowledge or reminder of their true origin, whilst veiling it 
 from the profane vulgar. 
 
 The object of this concealment was probably the same as with 
 the greater mysteries of the Rosicrucians, and two-fold. It 
 enabled the society to work more freely, and unsuspected of 
 dangerous or reforming aims. It also bestowed upon the 
 fraternity a fictitious dignity and importance, by the glamour 
 shed over its ceremonies of a supposed " antiquity," which, as 
 
 * Story of Bacons Life, p. 17. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 251 
 
 Bacon shows, men are prone to adore ; for in history, as in other 
 matters, we often see "'tis distance lends enchantment to the 
 view." Freemasonry frequently lay under the charge of irre- 
 ligion, and not always without cause. Yet the goodness of the 
 institution should not be rashly maligned because of the wicked- 
 ness or weakness of some o| its members, and its " authorities " 
 come forward to defend it from this charge. 
 
 " Masonry is not an irreligious institution, but it assumes no 
 special dogmatic form ; it demands at the hands of its candidates 
 a sincere and honest belief in a Creative Being, ever attentive to 
 the honourable aspirations of those who seek Him in spirit and 
 in truth, and it rejects with scorn those who would degrade the 
 Contriver into a part of the contrivances, and thus would set 
 bounds to the limitless Author of all Being." * 
 
 The estimation in which the Masons hold themselves is so 
 amusing to non-Masons, and their traditions concerning them- 
 selves so quaint, that we cannot refrain from quoting a few 
 passages : 
 
 " Freemasonry is undoubtedly the oldest society in the world, 
 and it is not a political, but a religious society, strange as such 
 an assertion must be to the uninitiated. Before letters were 
 invented, the only means of teaching divine truths, and handing 
 down divine traditions, was by symbols and signs. In that way, 
 before the deluge, the people of the old world had the whole 
 history of the creation, the fall of our first parents, etc., handed 
 down to them by tradition in the primitive lodges, the serpent 
 being a common symbol employed for the purpose then, as it has 
 been since. After the deluge, the ark became one of the com- 
 monest symbols, and the history of that event was thereby taught 
 to the initiated. A lodge must have been in full working order 
 on the plains of Shinar during the lifetime of Noah : for, when 
 the dispersion took place, lodges of a similar nature were estab- 
 lished in every part of the world, though, probably, not for 
 many years after the settlement of the emigrants in their new 
 countries. . . . They all, however, used the same symbols, 
 and it has generally been admitted by scholars that they had one 
 common origin. That common origin was Freemasonry. . . . 
 According to the traditions of our venerable society, Enoch was a 
 very eminent Mason, and preserv^jjie^ti^e name of God. which 
 the Jews subsequently lost, 'fhe descendants ~ol Abraham 
 
 * Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia. 
 
252 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 ♦ 
 
 write it Jao ; in the mysteries it was Om, but most commonly 
 expressed in a triliteral form, Aum, as we learn from Wilkins' 
 notes on Bhagvat Veta. Both in the genuine and spurious 
 lodges the doctrine of a trinity in unity was taught. 
 
 " The Mysteries, or spurious Masonic rites, were introduced 
 into India by Brahma ; into Egypt by Thoth ; into China and 
 Japan by Buddha ; into Persia by Zeradusht, i.e., Zoroaster ; 
 into Greece by Melampus, according to Herodotus, II. 4, or by 
 Cadmus, according to Epiphanius ; into Boetia by Prometheus ; 
 into Samothrace by Dardanus ; into Crete by Minos ; into 
 Athens by Erectheus ; into Thrace by Orpheus ; into Italy by 
 Pelasgis ; into Gaul and Britain by Gomer ; into Scandinavia 
 by Odin ; into Mexico by Vitziphtzli (Purch. VIII. 10) ; and into 
 Peru by Manco Capac." * 
 
 There is no date to the little tract at the British Museum 
 from which these extracts are made, but it seems to be of 
 recent production, and continues throughout in the same strain, 
 assuming that because ancient symbols are introduced into 
 Masonic language and ceremonies, therefore Masonry is of 
 extremest antiquity. 
 
 This same line of argument is adopted in many books which 
 seem to be of Freemason extraction, and in some of the modern 
 an ti- Christian works on Buddhism and " Theosophy." These 
 go farther still, maintaining not only the superior antiquity, 
 but the superior beauty and value of the religions of India 
 and Arabia, which, well suited as they doubtless were to the 
 rude or ignorant minds which they were to impress, can only be 
 regarded by Christians as gropings before daylight, or as the 
 altars erected by ignorant but well-meaning worshippers of the 
 unknown God. 
 
 In the ancient mysteries, all sorts of uncomfortable methods 
 were resorted to in order to test the nerves and constancy of the 
 initiate. He was made suddenly to see great lights which were 
 as suddenly eclipsed, leaving him plunged in total darkness. 
 Terrible sounds and sights were in succession forced upon him. 
 Thunder and lightning, visions of hideous monsters and horrible 
 objects were designed to fill him with awe and consternation. 
 Finally he was restored to daylight, and to a delightful calm in 
 a lovely garden, where music and dancing revived his spirits, 
 
 * Freemasonry : An Address. Bro. J. Milner, M.A., F.R.G.S. Lond. : 
 Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 253 
 
 and, perhaps, charmed him the more by reason of all the horrors 
 to which he had been subjected. It seems to have been held as 
 a crime, punishable only by death, for a man to reveal what he 
 had seen in these mysteries, which for ages were kept secret. 
 But, as with the somewhat similar ordeals said to be imposed 
 upon Masonic initiates, die secrets which now seem to us 
 foolish, and almost cruel, have, by some means or another, 
 leaked out. In the present day such things appear to be 
 anachronisms, profane rather than impressive. Nevertheless, 
 they would, doubtless, have an effect on weak nerves, and may 
 possibly aid in deterring the lower orders of initiates from 
 revealing these secrets, or others of greater importance. 
 
 In all cases initiation represents death, and a renaissance or 
 renovation, a new birth, not a resurrection from the dead. " In 
 the British mysteries, the novitiate passed the Eiver of Death in 
 the boat of Garanhir, the Charon of antiquity (the boat typified 
 the corporal body) ; and before he could be admitted to this 
 privilege, it was requisite that he should be mystically buried, 
 as well as mystically dead, which is implied in the ancient Greek 
 formulary, ' I was covered in the bed,' the body being a sort of 
 grave or bed of the spirit." * With the Freemasons, this sym- 
 bolic death and burial is or was initiated by the ceremony of 
 putting the novitiate into a coffin and covering him with a pall. 
 We have heard, but cannot answer for the fact, of a young man 
 who fainted under this " nerve test." It is hard to conceive 
 that such things should be done in civilised countries at the 
 present hour, and if it be true that they are yet practised, it 
 must be that vows taken by the initiates bind them to continue 
 a system which, at its first invention, had some use in conveying 
 certain instruction to very rude minds, incapable of otherwise 
 receiving it. 
 
 The earliest Rosicrucian documents do not enforce the special 
 doctrines of any Church. The later documents are, however, 
 professedly Christian. We know that Bacon " was religious ; 
 . . . well able to render a reason of the hope which was in him ; " 
 that he conformed to the ordinances of the Christian religion ; | 
 
 * The Book of God, Vol. II., p. 125, quoting from Davies' Mythology of 
 the Druids, p. 392. 
 
 * Life of Bacon, by his Chaplain and Secretary, p. 14. See ante, Bacon's 
 character. 
 
254 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 that he died in the communion of the Church of England ; and 
 the thought suggests itself that, during the period of his life 
 when he was "running through the whole round" of the 
 ancient philosophies (a terrible and unsettling process to young, 
 excitable minds) — at that time, when his ardent soul was 
 striving after definite truth, and trying to free itself from the 
 clouds of error, bigotry, and superstition which obscured it — he 
 may have found himself, like Malvolio, " more puzzled than the 
 Egyptians in their fog. 1 ' Besides this, the quarrels and division 
 on religious questions sorely disturbed him. He could not 
 believe in the religion of men who hated each other, who would 
 " dash the first table against the second, and who would so act 
 as Christians as to make us forget that they are men. 11 Such 
 divisions, he says, " were evils unknown to the heathen ; " yet he 
 lived in the very midst of such divisions. He was eleven years 
 old at the time of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, when 60,000 
 Huguenots or Protestants were butchered by the order of 
 Charles IX. and his mother, the victims including Admiral de 
 Coligny, one of the most virtuous men that France possessed, 
 and the mainstay of the Protestant cause. He was a child 
 when the tyranny and barbarity of the Inquisition was in full 
 force, and for thirty-one years of his life he was witness to the 
 scenes of intolerable cruelty and iniquity which were perpetrated 
 under the name of religion by the Spanish Tiberius, Philip II., 
 not only in his own country and amongst the unhappy Moors, 
 but, almost worse, in Flanders or the Netherlands, where the 
 miserable Protestants, at first patient under the extravagant 
 oppression to which they were subjected, at last rebelled, and, 
 at the sight of the tribunals of the Inquisition erected in their 
 principal cities, forgot their own weakness, and, impelled by 
 rage and fury, pulled down churches, subverted altars, and 
 obliged the clergy to fly. The atrocities which followed, the 
 execrable cruelties which were committed, and the detestation of 
 the papists which was inspired in the formerly peaceable 
 Flemings, are matters of history. No one will read Motley's 
 graphic narrative of the events of this time, and marvel that a 
 thoughtful man, witnessing such scenes, should be led to doubt 
 if religion, if Christianity, in whose name such deeds of dark- 
 ness were performed, could be a true thing ? 
 
 In the Essay of Unity, Bacon speaks of " Lucretius, the poet, 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 255 
 
 who, when he beheld the act of Agamemnon, that could endure 
 the sacrificing of his own daughter, exclaimed : ' Could religion 
 prompt to deeds so dreadful ? ' What would he have said if he 
 had known of the massacre in France, or the powder treason in 
 England ? He would have been seven times more epicure and 
 atheist than he was. 11 V 
 
 But Bacon seems to have said to himself : " Since men thus 
 quarrel over their religious opinions, I will seek for some ground 
 upon which all mankind may meet in common consent and 
 harmony. All men who have any claim to intelligence and 
 goodness acknowledge the existence of a God, an all-wise, 
 all-powerf ul Being, to whom we must render an account of our- 
 selves. Let us, then, leave quarrelling and controversies, and 
 meet as men and brethren on this wide platform of belief in a 
 God, and desire to benefit each other." Some such sentiment 
 seems certainly to have been in the mind of the Founder of 
 Masonry, and, perhaps, the method adopted in rude times for 
 enlisting the sympathies of the majority of ignorant but 
 intelligent persons of various nationalities and creeds was the 
 best that could be devised. There is no doubt that to the great 
 society of the Freemasons we owe a vast debt of gratitude, for 
 the many humanitarian works which they have inaugurated ; for 
 the many " fair houses," for purposes of charity and education, 
 which they have reared ; for many good lessons in morality and 
 self-control which they have systematically endeavoured to 
 teach. And yet, although the society was founded expressly 
 to uphold order, and respect for authority, as well as to promote 
 learning and works of charity ; though its members were to 
 consist of " men who are not only true patriots and loyal subjects, 
 but the patrons of science and the friends of all mankind, 1 ' 
 there is reason to believe that Bacon found the rules of the 
 society, and the doctrines of pure Deism, insufficient to ensure 
 either patriotism or loyalty ; insufficient to ensure the attainment 
 of the highest truth, or of the greatest good to the greatest 
 number. 
 
 It is clear that he himself could not endure to remain in this 
 low ground, and he mounted, as we have seen, into the clearest 
 and sublimest heights to which the human intelligence or the 
 human spirit is permitted to penetrate. Not so all his followers, 
 if the scanty gleanings which we have been able to make in this 
 
256 FBANCIS BACON 
 
 field are of any value. There is reason to think that more than 
 once the harmony of the Masonic brethren has been broken ; 
 selfishness, ambition, and other ills which frail humanity is heir 
 to — ills not to be checked by any code of human laws, by 
 morality, however philosophical, by philanthropy, however 
 well meaning — seem to have crept in, creating quarrels and 
 ruptures, and, doubtless, in every case, fresh divergence from 
 the original scheme. 
 
 If we read aright some ambiguous narratives in books which 
 are nothing if not mystical, and which bear marks of being of 
 Masonic origin, there have been, not only quarrels, but faithless 
 members in the society, who, instead of "handing down the 
 lamp " which had been consigned to their charge — instead of 
 merely preserving or publishing, in due season, some work, not 
 their own, have clung to it, claimed it, and endeavoured to profit 
 by it Is that true, which such hints in books, endorsed by 
 verbal information, incline us to believe, namely, that the Masons 
 are no longer all " true patriots and loyal subjects," and that, in 
 some countries, at least, " mutual toleration in matters of specu- 
 lative opinion and belief " is no longer one of the " valuable 
 characteristics of the craft " ? These, joining to their disrespect 
 for religion the kindred disrespect for any authority except 
 their own, are applying themselves to degrade, if possible to 
 demolish, all forms of church worship, defacing the Beauty of 
 Holiness, reducing Christianity to Humanitarianism, and landing 
 their followers in a cold Agnosticism, or a worse spirit of 
 antagonism to Christianity. 
 
 The causes of atheism are, Bacon says, " divisions in religion, 
 scandal of priests, custom of profane scoffing in holy matters, 
 which doth little by little deface the reverence of religion ; and, 
 lastly, learned times with peace and prosperity ; for troubles and 
 adversities do more bow men's minds to religion. They that 
 deny a God, destroy man's nobility ; for certainly man is of kin 
 to the beasts by his body ; and if he be not of kin to God by his 
 spirit he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys, likewise 
 magnanimity and the raising of human nature, . . . and as 
 atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it deprives 
 human nature of the means to exalt itself above human 
 frailty." * Bacon's axiom, " Thought is free," expressed some- 
 
 * Essay Of Atheism. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 257 
 
 thing very different from irreverent license of thought ; neither 
 did he advocate the idea that " the raising of human nature " 
 was to be achieved by disregard of the Powers that be. The 
 majority of right-minded and loyal Masons are, doubtless, of his 
 opinion, and it is suggested that the large and increasing 
 number of the members oMhe Rose-Croix degree may be a tacit 
 protest against the irreligious tendencies of some of the other 
 lodges.* It is possible that Bacon perceived the beginnings of 
 such deviations as have been indicated, and that his foresight 
 as to the ultimate issue caused him to make Rosy Cross the 
 highest and most secret degree, whose members form a com- 
 munity of the ablest, most earnest and influential Christians in 
 the Masonic ranks. 
 
 Since the statements and opinions of Masonic writers differ, it 
 is, of course, impossible for a non-Mason to obtain information 
 so accurate as to be incapable of contradiction or refutation. 
 These remarks, therefore, are merely intended to form a basis 
 for further inquiries and researches. No one hook must be taken 
 as an absolute authority ; for if anything is made plain to the 
 uninitiated student of Masonic literature, it is that comparatively 
 few Masons know much about the true origin and aims of their 
 own society. Books ostensibly published for the purpose of 
 giving information consist, for the most part, of names of persons 
 and lodges, of places and orders, with very scanty notices on any 
 subject which will not be found discussed in ordinary cyclo- 
 paedias. The Masonic books are palpably constructed so as to 
 disclose nothing of any value ; some contradict others, and 
 doubtless they are only intended to be thoroughly useful to those 
 who have other and verbal information imparted to them. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the most helpful plan which can 
 be adopted seems to be to ignore recent utterances, and to give 
 transcripts from a book whose ninth edition was published 
 nearly a hundred years ago, and which is still continually referred 
 to in the chief Masonic manuals. The subject is " The Idea of 
 Masonry," | its tenets, objects, and practical works, the place 
 
 * In 1881 there were eighty-five Rose Croix chapters on the roll, and the 
 members numbered nearly 4,000. 
 
 | " Illustrations of Masonry" by Wm. Preston, Past Master of the Lodge 
 of Antiquity, 9th edn., with considerable additions. London : Wilkie, 
 57, Paternoster Row, 1796. In the volume before us (carefully preserved 
 
258 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 where, and the person by whom it was first introduced into 
 England. The reader will judge for himself as to how much or 
 how little of the historical part he will credit ; but he may 
 observe that this author tells us nothing of Masonic lodges before 
 the Deluge, or on the plains of Shinar. 
 
 The Illustrations are in six " books," of which the first 
 displays the excellence of Masonry, and deals with reflections on 
 the symmetry and proportion perceptible in the works of nature, 
 and on the harmony and affection amongst other species of 
 things. 
 
 "Whoever attentively observes the objects which surround 
 him, will find abundant reason to admire the works of nature, 
 and to adore the Being, who directs such wonderful operations. 
 He will be convinced that infinite wisdom could alone design, 
 and infinite power finish, such amazing works. . . . Besides 
 the symmetry, good order, and proportion which appear in all 
 the works of creation, something farther attracts the reflecting 
 mind and draws its attention nearer to the Divinity — the 
 universal harmony and affection among the different species of 
 beings of every rank and denomination. These are the cements 
 of the rational xoorld, and by these alone it subsists. When 
 they cease nature must be dissolved, and man, the image of his 
 Maker, and the chief of His works, be overwhelmed in the 
 general chaos." 
 
 As to the origin of Masonry, we are told that we may trace its 
 foundations from the beginning of the world. " Ever since 
 symmetry began and harmony displayed her charms, our order 
 has a being." It almost seems as if the idea of the extreme 
 antiquity of the order was encouraged by the frequent use of 
 quibbles on the word order. Bacon's aim was to reduce know- 
 ledge and all else to a method, or order, for " Order is heaven's 
 first law." In the dark and rude ages of the world knowledge 
 was withheld from our forefathers incapable of receiving it. * 
 Masonry then diffused its influence, science was gradually 
 unveiled, arts arose, civilisation took place, and the progress of 
 
 as it has been) abundant " marks " of six or seven different kinds assure us 
 that the publishers and printers — yes, and the readers themselves — have 
 wished to draw especial attention to it as a work of importance to their 
 society. 
 
 * Compare with Preston's Illustrations of Masonry, Section III., Bacon's 
 concluding paragraphs in his preface to the Wisdom of the Ancients. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 259 
 
 knowledge and philosophy gradually dispelled the gloom of 
 ignorance * and barbarism. 
 
 Next we read of the advantages of secrecy, and of a system of 
 secret signs carefully preserved among the fraternity. A Univer- 
 sal Language is thus formed, and contributes to the union, in 
 an indissoluble bond of affection and mutual interest, of men of 
 the most opposite tenets, of the most distant countries, and of 
 the most contrary opinions. The Chinese, the wild Arab, the 
 American savage, will embrace a brother Briton, and will find a 
 stronger obligation than even the common tie of humanity to 
 induce him to kind and friendly offices. 
 
 " As all religions teach morality, if a brother is found to act 
 the part of a truly moral man his private speculative opinions 
 are left to God and himself." 
 
 " Masonry, 11 we are told, is a term which expresses a double 
 meaning, the work, that is, and the abstract ideas of which that 
 work is the symbol or type. Masonry passes under two denomi- 
 nations, operative and speculative. 
 
 " By the former we allude to a proper application of the use- 
 ful rules of architecture, whence a structure derives figure, 
 strength, and beauty, and whence result a due proportion and a 
 just correspondence in all its parts. By the latter we learn to 
 subdue the passions, act upon the square, keep a tongue of good 
 report, maintain secrecy, and practise charity. 
 
 " Speculative Masonry is so far interwoven with religion as to 
 lay us under the strongest obligations to pay that rational 
 homage to the Deity which at once constitutes our duty and our 
 happiness. It leads the contemplative to review with reverence 
 and admiration the glorious works of creation, and inspires 
 them with the most lofty ideas of the perfections of the divine 
 Creator. 
 
 " Operative Masonry furnishes us, indeed, with dwellings and 
 sheltering edifices, and demonstrates how much can be done for 
 the benefit of man by science and industry. Yet the lapse of 
 time and the ruthless hand of ignorance, and the devastations of 
 war, have laid waste and destroyed many valuable monuments of 
 antiquity on which the utmost exertions of human genius have 
 been employed. Even the Temple of Solomon, so spacious and 
 magnificent, and constructed by so many celebrated artists, 
 escaped not the unsparing ravages of barbaric force." 
 
 * " There is no darkness but ignorance.' 1 (Twelfth Night, IV. 2). 
 
260 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 We are arrested by the very Baconian and Shakespearian 
 sentiments, and the combination of words in which they are 
 expressed. 
 
 " Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 
 Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme ; 
 
 When wasteful war shall statues overturn, 
 
 And broils root out the work of masonry, 
 
 Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn 
 
 The living record of your memory." * 
 
 " The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power," 
 etc. f 
 
 " We see, then, how far the monuments of wit and learning 
 are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. 
 For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred 
 years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter ; during 
 which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been 
 decayed and demolished. . . . But the images of men's wits 
 and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of 
 time, and capable of perpetual renovation/' J 
 
 Throughout the Masonic books the reader is led to suppose 
 that the survival and transmission of Freemasonry is the matter 
 of extremest importance. Read, however, by the light of Bacon, 
 we perceive that the whole object is to get possession of the rude 
 and ignorant, and, by working upon their innate vanity — or 
 shall we say their self-respect ? — to draw them on to works of 
 mutual benefit, and to raise them by gentle stages up the steps 
 of knowledge and morality under the impression that their 
 superiority consists chiefly in the possession of some great and 
 mysterious secret. The lower orders are indeed the stepping- 
 stones for the cleverer and more helpful higher initiates. The 
 subscriptions of the vast number of members are of immense 
 value in promoting many useful works, which, without some such 
 organisation, would never have been attempted ; and doubtless 
 the members of every degree share in the pleasure and pride 
 which Freemasons evidently take in the numerous charitable 
 works which they have inaugurated and liberally supported. 
 
 * Sonnet LV. Compare Sonnets LXXXL, LXIV., LXV., CVII. 
 
 | Device of Philantia, Hermit's Sp. 
 
 $ Advt. of L. I. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 261 
 
 Yet it is much to be doubted if the lower orders of Masons 
 either guess at their own origin, or perceive that the true aim of 
 the society is to raise the level of patriotism and morality until 
 the former may fulfil Heaven's first law of universal order and 
 harmonious obedience to earthly authority, and the latter shall 
 lift man above the flats £>f mere worldly wisdom and morality 
 to the sublime heights of divinity or religion, to heights, indeed, 
 to which probably many Freemasons do not aspire ; they are 
 content to live in the valley. 
 
 " The attentive ear," says the Masonic Manual, " receives the 
 soul from the instructive tongue, and the sacred mysteries are 
 safely lodged in the repository of faithful breasts. Tools and 
 implements the most expressive ! [sic] are selected by the frater- 
 nity, to imprint on the memory serious truths ; and thus the 
 excellent tenets of the institution are transmitted unimpaired, 
 under circumstances precarious and adverse, through a succes- 
 sion of ages." 
 
 The fraternity is said to consist of three classes, each with 
 distinct privileges. Honour and probity are recommendations 
 to the first class. Diligence, assiduity, and application are 
 qualifications for the second class, in which is given an accurate 
 elucidation of science, both in theory and practice. The third 
 class is restricted to a selected few, whom truth and fidelity 
 have distinguished, whom years and experience have improved, 
 and whom merit and abilities have entitled to preferment. We 
 should expect this class to be initiated into some of the mysteries 
 of the printing-house, and of the collating-room, and the ciphers, 
 for, in the next section, the author enters into a discussion of 
 the objections raised to the secrets of Masonry, which, he says, 
 are not mere trivialities, but " the keys to our treasure." He 
 exhorts his readers not to regard the mysteries or the cere- 
 monials of the order as nominal and frivolous. Those who 
 hurry through the degrees or stages, without considering the 
 steps which they pursue, or without possessing a single qualifi- 
 cation for the duties which they undertake, are doing a positive 
 injury to the society which they profess to aid, and deriving no 
 benefit themselves ; for " the substance is lost in the shadow." 
 
 Then comes an explanation of some of the causes why 
 Masons have, from time to time, brought upon themselves dis- 
 credit and censure. The very " variety of members of which 
 
262 FKANCIS BACON 
 
 the society of Masons is composed, and the small number who 
 are really conversant with the tenets of the institution" render 
 it almost certain that some will transgress, and prove faithless 
 to their calling. When mild endeavours to reform such persons 
 are fruitless, they are expelled the lodge, as unfit members of 
 the society. But no wise man will condemn a whole community 
 on account of the errors of a few individuals. " Friendship and 
 social delights cannot be the object of reproach, nor can that 
 wisdom which hoary time has sanctified be subject to ridicule. 
 Whoever attempts to censure what he does not comprehend, 
 degrades himself ; and the generous heart will always be led to 
 pity the mistakes of such ignorant presumption" In the 
 " charge, at the initiation into the first degree," the initiate 
 is enjoined never to suffer his zeal for the institution, however 
 laudable, to lead him into argument with those who may ridi- 
 cule it ; " but rather extend your pity toward all who, through 
 ignorance, contemn what they never had an opportunity to 
 comprehend." * 
 
 Charity is next extolled as the chief of every social virtue, 
 and the distinguishing characteristic of the order, and of the 
 Deity Himself. f 
 
 " The bounds of the greatest nation, or the most extensive 
 empire, cannot circumscribe it. It is a God-like disposition, 
 . . . since a mutual chain of dependence subsists throughout 
 the animal creation. The whole human species are, therefore, 
 proper objects of charity." 
 
 Further : all kinds of men may, in their different spheres, 
 prove useful ; but the officers of a lodge in Freemasonry ought 
 to be principally restricted to those " whose early years have 
 been dedicated to literary pursuits, or whose circumstances and 
 situation in life render them independent." They should also 
 be men of superior prudence and good address, with a tranquil, 
 well-cultivated mind and retentive memory. But " he who 
 v:ishes to teach, must be content to learn." A self-sufficient, 
 conceited person, however able, can, therefore, never be a good 
 Mason. " Arrogance and presumption appear not on the one 
 
 * " Disparage not the faith thou dost not know." (Midsummer Night's 
 Dream.) 
 
 t See Merchant of Venice, IV. 1, 193 —7. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 263 
 
 hand, or diffidence and inability on the other, but all unite in 
 the same plan." 
 
 The second book of Masonry gives an illustration of the 
 ceremonies connected with the opening and closing of a lodge, 
 in which account we seem to see a reflection of Bacon's cogita- 
 tions on the means of ensuring help from worthy and capable 
 men, who should prepare to guard the entrances and approaches 
 to the Temple of Wisdom. In the first sentence note the use of 
 of his Promus entry, " Avenues." * 
 
 " Our care is first directed to the external avenues of the 
 lodge, and the proper officers, whose province it is to discharge 
 that duty, execute the trust with fidelity." f 
 
 By certain mystic forms these officers intimate that it is safe 
 for the ceremonies to proceed, or they detect impostors and 
 unfit persons who must be excluded. The ceremonies are 
 religious, and intended not only to remind the master and 
 brethren of their many duties, but also to inculcate a reverential 
 awe of the Deity, that " the eye may be fixed on that object 
 from whose radiant beams light only can be derived." 
 
 At the closing of the lodge, " each brother faithfully locks 
 up the treasure which he has acquired in his own repository, 
 and, pleased with his own reward, retires to enjoy and dis- 
 seminate among the private circle of his friends the fruits of 
 his labour and industry in the lodge." This paragraph seems 
 to imply that the brethren adopted Bacon's advice regarding 
 the taking of notes, and that they habitually stored up their 
 newly gained treasures of learning in order to add to the 
 common fund, and to distribute them at a later period for 
 the benefit of the world in general. 
 
 We observe amongst other peculiarities in Rosicrucian books 
 the large number of fly-leaves at one or both ends. These, 
 however, in the old volumes, have been in most instances cut 
 out. Only one explanation of this singular circumstance seems 
 satisfactory, namely, that the brethren, by Bacon's original 
 instructions, took notes of all that they heard or read, and that 
 these fly-leaves, or note-books, were thus made the " repositories 
 
 * Promus, 1432 ; and comp. Montaigne Ess. " To Learn to Die " — Ed. 
 Hazlitt, p. 76. 
 t Preston, p. 33. 
 
264 FJRANCIS BACON 
 
 of treasure stored up," so that nothing should be lost, but that 
 ultimately all newly acquired learning should flow into the 
 common treasury. 
 
 " No brother is supplanted, or put out of his work, if he be 
 capable of filling it. All meekly receive their rewards . . . and 
 never desert the master till the work is finished. ... In a lodge 
 Masons meet as members of the same family, and representa- 
 tives, for the time being, of all the brethren throughout the 
 world. All prejudices, therefore, on account of religion, country, 
 or private opinion, are removed." 
 
 In the charge delivered at the closing of the lodge, the Masons 
 are instructed to be " very cautious in your words and carriage, 
 that the most penetrating stranger' may not discover or find out 
 what is not proper to be intimated, and, if necessary, you are to 
 waive a discourse* and manage it prudently, for the honour 
 of the fraternity. ... If a stranger apply . . . beware 
 of giving him any secret hints of knowledge." The charge 
 ends with renewed exhortations to " brotherly love, the foun- 
 dation and cap-stone, the cement and glory of this ancient 
 fraternity. 1 ' 
 
 In the first Masonic " lecture," " virtue is painted in the 
 most beautiful colours," and the duties of morality are strictly 
 enforced. In it the Masons are prepared for " a regular advance- 
 ment in knowledge and philosophy, and these are imprinted on 
 the memory by lively and sensible images, the lecture being 
 suited to all capacities, and necessary to be known by every 
 person who would wish to rank as a Mason." 
 
 Unhappily for the uninitiated, the author can annex to this 
 remark no explanation consistent with the rules of Masonry, but 
 refers " the more inquisitice to our regular assemblies for further 
 instruction." So, " out goes the candle, and we are left dark- 
 ling ; " yet we need not despair, but may believe that by a 
 due study of Bacon's Colours of Good and Evil (and other 
 works based upon it), his Advancement of Learning, and his 
 emblematic and metaphoric language, we may furnish ourselves 
 with all the useful knowledge which the Masonic initiates will 
 gain by their lecture on the colours of virtue, the advance- 
 
 * This injunction is excellently complied with, and is, no doubt, a chief 
 obstruction to non-Masons in the attainment of information. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 265 
 
 ment of philosophy, and the images by which the novices are 
 instructed. 
 
 Just as the Eosicrucians in The New Atlantis, and else- 
 where, are commanded to dispense their medicines gratis, so 
 Masons are called upon solemnly to declare themselves un- 
 influenced by mercenary motives, but prompted by a desire for 
 knowledge, and a sincere wish of being serviceable to their 
 fellow-creatures. 
 
 They pledge themselves to study the Bible, to consider it as 
 the unerring standard of truth and justice, and to regulate 
 their lives according to its divine precepts. The three great 
 moral duties to be observed are : (1) To God, by reverence and 
 submission to His Will ; (2) To your neighbour, by " acting 
 on the square," and by unselfishness in dealing with him ; 
 (3) " To yourself, by avoiding irregularity and intemperance, 
 which might impair your faculties and debase the dignity of 
 your profession." 
 
 This section concludes with another exhortation to secrecy 
 and caution in recommending new initiates. Next we come to 
 a page of observations on the origin and advantages of hiero- 
 glyphical instruction, a subject which, in view of Bacon's in- 
 structions on this very subject, and the evidently close relation 
 which his remarks bear to the illustrations and ornaments of 
 the books published during his life, and (with various modifica- 
 tions) from that time till now, possesses for the inquirer a 
 strong attraction and interest. 
 
 Since nothing can be more noble than the pursuit of virtue, 
 nor any motive more alluring than the practice of justice, "what 
 instruction," we are asked, " can be more beneficial than an 
 accurate elucidation of those symbols which tend to embellish and 
 adorn the mind ? Everything that strikes the eye more imme- 
 diately engages the attention, and imprints on the memory serious 
 and solemn truths. Hence, Masons have universally adopted the 
 plan of inculcating the tenets of their order by typical figures 
 and allegorical emblems, to prevent their mysteries from descend- 
 ing to the familiar reach of inattentive and unprepared novices, 
 from whom they might not receive due veneration. It is well 
 known that the usages and customs of the Masons have ever 
 corresponded with those of the ancient Egyptians, to which 
 they bear a near affinity. These philosophers, unwilling to 
 
266 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 expose their mysteries to vulgar eyes, concealed their particular 
 tenets and principles of polity under hieroglyphical figures, and 
 expressed their notions of government by signs and symbols, 
 which they communicated to their Magi alone, who were bound 
 by oath not to reveal them. Pythagoras seems to have estab- 
 lished his system on a similar plan, and many orders of a more 
 recent date have copied the example. Every character, figure, 
 and emblem, depicted in a lodge, has a moral tendency, and 
 tends to inculcate the practice of virtue. 1 ' 
 
 Here, as will be seen when we come to emblems and hiero- 
 glyphic pictures, Freemasons are again adopting Bacon's ideas 
 and doctrines, and using his words, though their charm is lost 
 by dilution and paraphrase. No addition or alteration seems to 
 improve either his phraseology or his ideas ; usually the copyists 
 limp after him in " what imitation they can borrow " ; but even 
 where they most craftily prick in, or transfer to their own work 
 his beauties of language and quaint conceits, it is easy to 
 distinguish the original from the imitation, the pearls from the 
 beads, and at least one-third of Preston's Illustrations is, we 
 believe, taken directly from Bacon, perhaps originally dictated 
 by him. 
 
 The charge at initiation into the second degree again enforces 
 the study of the liberal arts, " especially of geometry, the basis 
 of our art ; geometry and Masonry, originally synonymous 
 terms, being of a divine and moral nature, which, while it proves 
 the wonderful properties of nature, demonstrates the more im- 
 portant truths of morality." It will readily be perceived that 
 here is a double meaning ; for geometry does not really teach 
 morality, and no one can believe that the terms geometry and 
 Masonry were ever truly synonymous. The next instructions, 
 concerning the five orders of architecture, confirm the notion 
 that the teaching is symbolic, requiring verbal elucidation. The 
 information on architecture is of the most elementary character, 
 and converts itself, at the end of the second page, into " an 
 analysis of the human faculties," where we are taught to con- 
 sider the five senses as the gifts of nature, " the channels by 
 which knowledge is conveyed." 
 
 In the treatment of the senses of hearing, seeing, and feeling,* 
 
 * See " Metaphors." Also of the book-marks, in which not only the 
 sight, but the touch, is appealed to. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 267 
 
 the analogies between the bodily organs and the spiritual 
 faculties are ever present to the writer. It is " the ear, the gate 
 of the understanding ; the eye, the gate of the affections ; ''* the 
 touch of nature which makes the whole world kin, which we 
 perceive shadowed in the architectural instructions of Masonry. 
 
 When these topics are proposed in Masonic assemblies, the 
 brethren " are not confined to any peculiar mode of explana- 
 tion," which probably means that the eye may be interpreted 
 the eye of the mind, as well as of the body ; that the ear, in the 
 same way, may be intellectual or physical; that the Masonic 
 signs may be palpable to the eye by symbols, gestures, or marks 
 in printing, engraving, and sculptures, or sensible (as they have 
 been found) to the touch, in the pages or edges of books ; that 
 the contents of the books themselves may be tasted, chewed, and 
 swallowed, or their secrets smelt out by discerning initiates. 
 For, though " the senses are the gifts of nature, reason, properly 
 employed, confirms the documents of nature, which are always 
 true and wholesome ; she distinguishes the good from the bad ; 
 rejects the last, and adheres to the first. Hearing is the sense 
 by which we can best communicate to each other our thoughts 
 and intentions, our purposes and desires, while our reason is 
 capable of exerting its utmost power and energy. (The descrip- 
 tion of this sense seems to point to the verbal teaching of the 
 Masons.) But the " sight is the noblest of all the senses, the 
 organ is the masterpiece of Nature's work," and the large 
 amount of symbols and metaphors which connect themselves 
 with this sense show the important place which it occupies in 
 Masonic symbolism. Then, by feeling, we distinguish the 
 different qualities of bodies (or, it might be added, of spirits). 
 They are hot or cold, hard or soft, rough or smooth, and have 
 other qualities which are seen to be connected " by some original 
 principle of human nature, which far transcends our inquiry." 
 " Hast thou," says Prospero to Ariel — " hast thou, though a 
 spirit, some touch, some feeling of their afflictions ? " f Shake- 
 speare makes great use of the metaphor, " The inly touch of 
 love." X "A sweet touch, a quick venue of wit." § " The most 
 bitter touch of sorrow." || " Touched with noble anger," 1[ with 
 
 * Promus, 1137, where are many Shakespeare references. 
 t Temp. V. 1. X Tw. Gen. Ver. II. 7. § L. L. L. V. 1. || All's Well, 
 I. 1. % Lear, I. 5. 
 
268 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 pity, etc. No one can doubt that Shakespeare, like Enoch, 
 was a good Mason. 
 
 Surely, too, the eye of the perceptive intellect, the ready ear for 
 truth (in other works, the Will, which, Bacon says, rules 
 thought, free as it is), and the tender sympathy which is in touch 
 with all created nature, are the three senses of hearing, seeing, 
 and feeling, which are deemed particularly essential amongst 
 Masons. 
 
 . Then of smelling, " that sense by which we distinguish 
 odours," we recall " Ovidius Naso smelling out the odoriferous 
 flowers of fancy ; ''* the Fool's exposition of " why one's nose 
 stands V the middle on 's face, to keep one's eyes of either side 's 
 nose ; that what a man cannot smell out he may spy into"^ 
 with many other similar figures ; of smelling out villainy, f at 
 which " Heaven stops the nose " ; § of the air and smell of the 
 court ; of calumny ; of sin, offence and corruption ; of mortality 
 and Heaven's breath. || Ariel's graphic description of the effect 
 produced upon the varlets Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban, by 
 his music, shows the tendency throughout Bacon's works to 
 associate many or opposite ideas in such a manner as to make 
 them blend into one harmonius thought. Here all the five senses 
 do their part and are shown to be mutually connected. The 
 men were drinking, and striking out, striving to touch something. 
 Ariel beats his tabor, and their senses are so confused that they 
 try to see or to smell his music, following it to the detriment of 
 their shins, the sense of hearing beguiling the sense of touch, 
 until they are plunged into the midst of foul-svielling mud. We 
 feel throughout that the author is illustrating his doctrine of the 
 Biform Figure of Nature, showing how a man who takes no 
 pains to cultivate the intellectual and spiritual side of his nature 
 reduces himself to the level of the brutes, to which by his body 
 he is kin. 
 
 Ari. I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking; 
 
 So full of valour that they smote the air 
 
 For breathing in their faces ; beat the ground 
 
 For kissing of their feet ; yet always bending 
 
 Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor ; 
 
 * L. L. L. IV. 2. f Lear, I. 5. % Othello, V. 2. § lb. IV. 2. 
 || There are about fifty passages in Shakespeare alone which illustrate 
 this one idea. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 269 
 
 At which, like unback'd colts, they prick' 'd their ears, 
 Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses 
 As they smelt music : so I charm'd their ears 
 That calf-like they my lowing follow'd through 
 Tooth'd briars, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns, 
 Which entered their frail shins : at last I left them 
 r the filthy-mantled -pool beyond your cell, 
 There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake 
 0"erstunk their feet* 
 
 Lastly, with regard to the organ of taste, " which enables us 
 to make a proper distinction in the choice of our food : this 
 sense guards the entrance of the alimentary canal, as that of 
 smell guards the entrance of the canal for respiration. Smelling 
 and tasting are inseparably connected, and it is by the unnatural 
 kind of life men commonly lead in society that these senses are 
 rendered less fit to perform their natural offices. . . . The senses 
 are the channels of communication to the mind, and when the 
 mind is diseased every sense loses its virtue." In the noblest 
 arts the mind of man is the subject upon which we operate, and 
 wise men agree that there is but one way to the knowledge of 
 Nature's works, the way of observation and experiment. 
 " Memory, imagination, taste, reasoning, moral perception, and 
 all the active powers of the soul . . . constitute a proper 
 subject for the investigation of Masons, and are mysteries 
 known only to Nature and to Nature's God, to whom all are 
 indebted for every blessing they enjoy." In other words, " the 
 proper study of mankind is Man," and humanity must be led 
 to inquire, and " to look from Nature up to Nature's God." Yet 
 it is difficult to see how this dissertation has any true connection 
 with the adjoining passages on architecture, or with those which 
 immediately follow, on " geometry, the first and noblest of the 
 sciences," the same as symmetry, and "order, Heaven's first 
 law," unless we take the view that all this is the symbolic 
 language. In this section God is called, in Baconian language, 
 the Divine Artist, the Great Artificer of the Universe, the Archi- 
 tect of Nature. The Universe itself is God's vast machine, 
 framed by Himself, and through which, by geometry, " we may 
 curiously trace Nature, through her various windings, to her most 
 concealed recesses." 
 
 * Tempest, IV. 1. 
 
270 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 In the really poetical and very Baconian description here 
 given of the beauty and order displayed in the various parts of 
 animate and inanimate creation, the writer delights to prove 
 " the existence of a first cause. . . . Every blade of grass 
 that covers the field, every flower that blows, every insect which 
 wings its way into unbounded space, . . . the variegated carpet 
 of the terrestrial creation, every plant that grows, every flower 
 that displays its beauties or breathes its sweets, affords instruc- 
 tion and delight. When we extend our views to the animal 
 creation, and contemplate the varied clothing of every species, 
 . . . the hues traced by the divine pencil in the plumage of the 
 feathered tribe, how exalted is our conception of the heavenly 
 work. . . . The apt disposition of one part to another is a 
 perpetual study to the geometrician. . . . Even when he 
 descends into the bowels of the earth he finds . . . that every 
 gem and pebble proclaims the handiwork of an Almighty 
 Creator." 
 
 In the sixth section of the second degree, previous utterances, 
 suggestions, and lessons are repeated, still in diluted Baconian 
 terms. Evaporating a little superfluous phraseology, we again 
 come upon familiar exhortations to temperance, fortitude, 
 prudence, and justice. Temperance, which governs the passions. 
 Fortitude, which he who possesses is seldom shaken, and never 
 overthrown by the storms that surround him. Prudence, the chief 
 jewel of the human frame. Justice, the bound of right, the 
 cement of civil society, which, in a great measure, constitutes real 
 goodness, and which should be the perpetual study of the good 
 Mason. Virtue, true nobility. Wisdom, the channel through 
 which virtue is directed and conveyed. The mind, the noblest 
 subject of our studies. Observation and experiment, the one way 
 to the knowledge of nature's works. 
 
 Masonry, we are repeatedly told, is a progressive science, 
 including almost every branch of polite learning. The omission 
 implied consists, apparently, in all matters connected with 
 Christianity and the Church of Christ ; in fact, if, as we think, 
 Bacon framed these rules, we see that this must be so. For, 
 after a dissertation (still in Baconian language paraphrased), 
 upon " geometry, the noblest of the sciences ; " . . . upon the 
 " numberless worlds framed by the same Divine Artist, which 
 roll through the vast expanse, conducted by the unerring laws 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 271 
 
 of nature," and of the " progress made in architecture, particu- 
 larly in the reign of Solomon," these instructions finish up with 
 a short explanation of the liberal arts, which are computed by 
 the Masons to be seven in number.* 
 
 These arts are grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, 
 music, astronomy (which-includes the doctrine of the spheres), 
 geography, navigation, and the arts dependent on them. " Thus 
 end the different sections of the second lecture," . . . which, 
 besides a complete theory of philosophy and physics, contains a 
 regular system of science, demonstrated on the clearest prin- 
 ciples, and established on the firmest foundations. 
 
 Truly this must be a wonderful lecture, and it seems quite a 
 pity that the majority of mankind should be excluded from this 
 short cut to the seven liberal arts and sciences. Perhaps, how- 
 ever, it only points the way, as Bacon did, to so many studies 
 which ultimately lead to knowledge fitting its possessor for 
 admission to the last and highest degree of initiation. For the 
 third and last lecture consists of twelve sections, composed of 
 " a variety of particulars, which render it impossible to give an 
 abstract without violating the laws of the order. . . . Every 
 circumstance that respects government and system, ancient lore 
 and deep research, curious invention and ingenious, is accurately 
 traced, while the mode of proceeding, on public as well as on 
 private occasions, is explained. Among the brethren of this 
 degree the land-marks of the order are preserved ; and from 
 them is derived that fund of information which expert and 
 ingenious craftsmen only can afford, whose judgment has been 
 matured by years and experience." 
 
 "Toa complete knowledge of this lecture few attain ; . . . 
 from this class the rulers of the craft are selected ; and it is only 
 from those who are capable of giving instruction that we can 
 properly expect to receive it." 
 
 It is, then, this highest class of Masons that we should con- 
 fidently expect to find in possession of all the histories of the 
 building and endowing of the great libraries, colleges, schools, 
 hospitals, etc., of which we have elsewhere spoken. We should 
 expect them not only to be able to give account of the origin 
 
 * Seven, that mystical number, which, as we have elsewhere said, is so 
 closely associated with Masonic symbols and traditions. 
 
272 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 and builders of these and other structures — gateways, fountains, 
 etc., to ancient houses ; tombs and monumental tablets and 
 sculptures ; of wood-carvings, of pulpits, choir stalls, etc. ; of 
 ironwork in churches, gateways, and old signs ; designs in 
 stained windows and ceilings. We should also expect from them 
 a clear and indubitable explanation of the meaning of the 
 peculiar designs and figures which we observe, not only in 
 buildings, but in books, dress, furniture, and ornaments. 
 
 A very brief account of the building of the Temple of 
 Solomon, and of the dedication of that edifice, follows. " We 
 can," says the author, " afford little assistance to the industrious 
 Mason in this section, as it can only be acquired by oral communi- 
 cation.'''' A remark again plainly showing us that the temple 
 to be built is not a mere structure of brick or stone. Two 
 pages more bring us to an explanation of " the seven liberal 
 arts," of which five at least seem to have nothing to do with 
 architecture, and as these, together with "the doctrine of 
 the spheres," are all to be included in one lecture, we may 
 rest satisfied that this lecture is not so profound as its title 
 might lead us to suppose. 
 
 Here we should be inclined to break off this review of Masonry, 
 because, having extracted as much as we can of the pith and 
 meaning and aim of these Masonic mysteries, it seems undesir- 
 able to spend time and space upon particulars which apparently 
 have for their object to puzzle and confuse the uninitiated 
 reader ; though to the initiated they may, perhaps, convey some 
 information or reminder. We continue, nevertheless, chiefly for 
 the sake of illustrating a theory set forward in another place, 
 with regard to feigned or disguised histories, records and biogra- 
 phies, and changed names. 
 
 In Book III. a short paper is printed which professes to con- 
 tain " Certayne questions, with answers to the same, concerning 
 the mystery of Maconrye, writtene by the hande of Kynge Henrye, 
 the sixthe of the name, and faithfullye copyed by me Johan 
 Leyland, antiquarius, by the commande of his Highnesses 
 Whether this document is all that it pretends to be, is not to 
 the present purpose ; our object is to draw attention to the 
 strange footnotes which accompany the questions, and which 
 occupy much more letter-press than the document itself. None 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 273 
 
 of these notes appear to be both genuine and necessary ; some 
 contain the elaborate quibbles or puns said to be irresistible 
 to Bacon, but which, also, we think, formed a part of the secret 
 and ambiguous language of his society ; others speak of the 
 invention of arts which Bacon suggested or commenced ; all 
 include touches of his style ; one mentions his name. For 
 instance, footnote 6 turns upon a supposed confusion between 
 Venetia and Phoenicia : " perhaps similitude of sound might 
 deceive the clerk who first took down the examination." Then to 
 the question, " Howe commede ytt yn Engelonde ?" we are 
 informed that Masonry was brought by "Peter Gower, a Grecian," 
 who, after travelling through Egypt and Syria, and every coun- 
 try where " the Venetians " had planted Masonry, " framed a 
 grate lodge at ' Groton.' " The footnotes again correct this 
 passage at much length : 
 
 " Peter Gower must be another mistake of the writer. I was 
 puzzled at first to guess who Peter Gower should be, the name 
 being perfectly English ; or how a Greek could come by such a 
 name. But as soon as I thought of Pythagoras, I could scarce 
 forbear smiling to find that philosopher had undergone a metem- 
 psychosis he never dreamt of. We need only consider the 
 French pronunciation of his name, Pythagore, that is, Petagore, 
 to conceive how easily such a mistake may be made by an 
 unlearned clerk." 
 
 The true object of this note seems to be to draw attention to 
 the connection between Pythagoras and the wisdom and religious 
 mysteries of the Egyptians. " That he was initiated into 
 several different orders of priests, who in those days kept all 
 their learning secret from the vulgar" is a hint which seems to 
 point to a similar system in Masonry, and the subsequent 
 remarks about Pythagoras discovering the Fort} 7 -seventh Propo- 
 sition of the First Book of Euclid, and that he " made every 
 geometrical theorem a secret, and admitted only such to the 
 knowledge of them as had first undergone a five years' silence," 
 seems to contain a further hint concerning the nature of certain 
 highly scientific systems of cipher-writing which we have else- 
 where found mentioned in connection with the name of 
 Pythagoras. 
 
 With regard to " the grate lodge " which Pythagoras is said 
 to have founded at Groton, another footnote corrects the error 
 after this fashion : " Groton is the name of a place in England. 
 
274 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 The place here meant is Crotona," etc. From the many Masons 
 made by Pythagoras " yn processe of tyme, the arte passed yn 
 Engelonde." 
 
 In answer to the question, " Whatte artes haveth the Maconnes 
 techedde mankynde ? " we are told that they taught agriculture, 
 architecture, astronomy, numbers, music, poesy, chemistry, 
 government, and " rehjgyonne " (religion). To this a footnote 
 appends the remark, " What appears most odd is, that they 
 reckon religion among the arts" and this appears to give another 
 hint of the double-meanings, and symbolism, and, perhaps, of 
 the cipher-system introduced, then as now, into religious books, 
 pictures, designs, and edifices. 
 
 But the next note is even more suggestive. In reply to an 
 inquiry as to what the Masons conceal, we learn that " they 
 coneelethe the arte of ffyndynge neue artes." Here our com- 
 mentator becomes more than usually communicative : 
 
 " The art of finding arts must certainly be a most useful art. 
 My Lord Bacon's Novum Organum is an attempt toward some- 
 what of the same kind. But I much doubt that, if ever the 
 Masons had it, they have now lost it, since so few new arts have 
 been lately invented and so many are icanted. The idea I have 
 formed of such an art is, that it must be something proper to be 
 employed in all the sciences generally, as algebra is in numbers, 
 by the help of which new rules of arithmetic are and may be 
 found. 1 ' 
 
 The Masons, also, are said to conceal the art of keeping secrets, 
 though what kind of an art this may be the commentator pro- 
 fesses not to know. They also conceal " the art of changes " (but 
 he knows not what it means) and " the f acuity e of Abrac." Here 
 he is utterly in the dark. Lastly, Masons conceal their " universal 
 language." The footnote to this statement might be supposed 
 to be a mere transcription, either of some rough notes or of 
 verbal instructions given by Bacon himself : 
 
 "An universal language has been much desired by the learned 
 of many ages. It is a thing rather to be wished than hoped for. 
 . . . If it be true, I guess it must be something like the 
 language of the pantomines amongst the ancient Romans, who 
 were said to be able, by signs only, to express and deliver any 
 oration intelligibly to all men and languages." 
 
 Bacon makes many references to the silent language conveyed 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 275 
 
 by pictures or sculptures, but the passage just qouted may 
 contain a hint of the instruction which may be given by dumb 
 shows, or stage plays, for it continues as Bacon does where, in 
 the De Augmentis, he upholds the benefits derivable from a 
 wise use of the theatre. Yet in all that regards these arts of 
 concealment, there are, to the mind of the present writer, strong 
 hints of a system not so much of secret studies as of secret 
 methods of communication, whether by means of cipher-writing, 
 hieroglyphic designs, pantomimic gestures, or double-meaning 
 language. This can only be tested by a comparison of many 
 books in which veiled information of the same kind is to be 
 found. May some industrious reader follow up the subject, 
 which seems to become easier as we plod on. 
 
 The fourth and last book in this strange little volume professes 
 to give " The History of Masonry in England." Whether or not 
 anyone was ever found to believe the statements made in the 
 opening chapters of this " History " we know not, but hitherto 
 we have not found them repeated, excepting in Masonic 
 dictionaries and manuals. We are to believe that " Masonry " 
 flourished in England before the time of the Druids ; that lodges 
 and conventions were regularly held throughout the period of 
 Roman rule until Masonry was reduced to a low ebb through 
 continual wars. At length the Emperor Carausius, having 
 shaken off the Roman yoke, contrived the most effectual means 
 to render his person and government acceptable to the people 
 by assuming the character of a Mason. ... He raised the 
 Masons to the first rank as his favourites and appointed Albanus, 
 his steward, the principal superintendent of their assemblies. 
 Later on, " he granted them a charter and commanded Albanus 
 to preside over them as Grand Master. Some particulars of a 
 man so truly exemplary among Masons will certainly merit 
 attention. Albanus was born at Verulam, now St. Albans, in 
 Hertfordshire, of a noble family." Some account of the proto- 
 martyr, St. Alban, is then introduced ; it ends by saying that St. 
 Alban built a splendid palace for the Emperor at Verulam, and 
 that to reward his diligence " the Emperor made him steward of 
 his household and chief ruler of the realm. . . . We are assured 
 that this knight was a celebrated architect and a real encourager 
 of able workmen; it cannot, therefore, be supposed that Free- 
 masonry would be neglected under so eminent a patron." 
 
276 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 This remarkable and authentic history further enlightens us 
 as to St. Alban's munificence and liberality in paying his 
 servants. " Whereas before that time, in all the land, a Mason 
 had but a penny a day and his meat, St. Alban mended it," for 
 " he gave them two shillings a day, and threepence to their cheer. 
 . . . He also got them a charter from the King."* An 
 additional note adds that "a MS. written in the time of 
 James II. contains an account of this circumstance, and 
 increases the weekly pay to 3s. 6d. and 3d. a day for the bearers 
 of burdens/' These payments were liberal for the seventeenth 
 century. For the days of St. Alban, martyred a.d. 303, the 
 allowance strikes us as remarkable for labouring masons and 
 hod-men. Perhaps we may find three shillings and sixpence per 
 week was the pay for scribes, amanuenses, etc., and threepence 
 a day for messengers. 
 
 The editor of the Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia is so considerate 
 as to grant his readers the full use of their faculties in this 
 investigation. To be sure, he complicates it as much as possible 
 by cross-references, but it seems to be the rule rather than the 
 exception to hinder students from obtaining any information of 
 value without the exercise of some perseverance and considerable 
 loss of time. Thus, we wish to ascertain the origin of Free- 
 masonry. Finding nothing to the point under " Freemason," 
 we try " Origin of Freemasonry," and are more happy. This 
 article summarises the theories promulgated on the subject : 
 " 1. Masonry derived from the patriarchs. 2. From the mysteries 
 of the pagans. 3. From the construction of Solomon's Temple. 
 4. From the Crusades. 5. From the Knights Templars. 6. 
 From the Roman Collegia of Artificers. 7. From the operative 
 masons of the middle ages. 8. From the Rosicrucians of the 
 sixteenth century, f 9. From Oliver Cromwell. 10. From 
 Prince Charles Stuart, for political purposes. 11. From Sir 
 Christopher Wren, at the building of St. Paul's. 12. From Dr. 
 Desaguliers and his friends, in 1717." 
 
 " It is hardly necessary," adds this accommodating instructor, 
 "to express any opinion on the point: the Fraternity has the 
 
 * Why has the Emperor become suddenly only the King ? 
 f Observe that the Rosicrucians are here traced by the Freemasons no 
 farther back than Bacon's time. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 277 
 
 advantage of being able to choose for itself, and, as Masonry is 
 now worked, any dicision on the point is as impossible as the 
 value of that decision would be futile." This is discouraging. 
 Nevertheless, we cannot fail to observe that, amongst the twelve 
 distinct theories as to the origin of the Freemasons, the legend 
 of St. Alban is omittea\ The writer refers us to a previous 
 article on the " Antiquity of Freemasonry." The words with 
 which this article greets us are doubtless intended to deter us 
 from investigation : 
 
 " On this subject much has been written to little purpose, and it 
 is not proposed to further discuss them here. That mystical 
 societies flourished long before the dawn of history, is not to be 
 denied, but that such societies essentially resembled Freemasonry, 
 it is more than futile to opine." 
 
 Then the writer goes off into a discussion of hieroglyphics 
 and Egyptian symbolism, and speaks of Hiram, Osiris, and 
 Adonis, and of Numa Pompilius, king of Rome. He is not much 
 interested in his own remarks, and evidently does not expect 
 anyone else to be so. " It is idle to speculate upon such a topic 
 as the antiquity of these secret associations, and it is far wiser 
 to accept the development, as being in essentia all that we 
 know upon the subject." 
 
 Alas ! not everyone has so much wisdom as to find bliss in 
 ignorance. We next try "Alban, St. — See Saint Alban." 
 
 "Saint Alban. — The proto-martyr of England, born at 
 Verulam or Saint Alban's, in Herefordshire. He is the reputed 
 legendary introducer of Freemasonry into England, but without 
 much evidence." 
 
 So the writer takes no heed of all the accurate historic infor- 
 mation about the Emperor Carausius which the " Past Master 
 of the Lodge of Antiquity " was so particular in chronicling ! 
 We are now referred to a sixth article on " Grand Masters of 
 Freemasonry," which opens by again cautioning the reader 
 against putting any trust in the information which is about to be 
 imparted to him. 
 
 " Grand Masters of England before the Revival of Masonry 
 in 1717. This list has been collated from several authorities. 
 It is, however, not given as fact, but as tradition." 
 
 Here the "tradition" of St. Alban, which in Preston's Illus- 
 
278 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 trations is presented as true history, is repeated. The first 
 Grand Master is said to have been — 
 
 "A. D. 287. Saint Alban, a Roman Knight, when Carausius 
 was Emperor of Britain." 
 
 Say that the origin of Freemasonry was traditional, yet what 
 need is there to invent an Emperor Carausius ? * 
 
 After a sketch of the History of Masonry in England, under 
 St. Augustine, King Alfred, and the Knights Templars, we are 
 gradually made to perceive how, from very early times, the 
 great family of the Pembrokes and the Montagues were con- 
 nected with (or said to be connected with) Masonry. Roger de 
 Montgomery, Earl of Shewsbury, is said to have employed the 
 fraternity in building the Tower of London. Gilbert de Clare, 
 Marquis of Pembroke, presided over the lodges in the reign of 
 Stephen, when the Chapel, afterwards the House of Commons, 
 at Westminster, was built by the Masons. On the accession of 
 Edward I., 1272, the care of the Masons was entrusted to the 
 Archbishop of York, the Earl of Gloucester, and " Ralph, Lord 
 of Mount Hermer, the progenitor of the family of the Mon- 
 tagues," who finished the building of Westminster Abbey. 
 Even when we come down to the history of Inigo Jones, as a 
 Mason and architect of the palace at Whitehall, and of many 
 other magnificent structures in the time of James I., we are 
 reminded that it was to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, 
 that Inigo Jones owed his education ; that by his instrumentality 
 Inigo Jones was introduced to the notice of the King, " nomi- 
 nated Grand Master of England, and deputised by his sovereign 
 to preside over the lodges." Again, we read that William Herbert, 
 Earl of Pembroke, became warden to Grand Master Jones, 
 and that when the architect resigned, in 1618, the Earl of Pem- 
 broke succeeded him, and presided over the Fraternity until 
 1630. Others of Bacon's friends accepted office for short 
 periods — Henry Dan vers, Earl of Derby ; Thomas Howard, 
 Earl of Arundel, and Francis Russel, Earl of Bedford. Then 
 
 * We can only suppose that Carausius was either a pseudonym for James 
 I., whose " steward and chief ruler of the realm " Bacon really was ; or that 
 two facts are mixed, and that a record of something connected with Prince, 
 afterwards King Charles (Carolus) may be here hinted. Those who follow 
 up these devices for imparting knowledge will not find either of these sug- 
 gestions to be impossible, or exceptionally strange. (See Note to this chapter). 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 279 
 
 in 1636, Inigo Jones returned to his office of Grand Master, 
 which he retained till his death, in 1646. He designed Wilton 
 House, the seat of the Earls of Pembroke, where there was a 
 private theatre, and where Measure for Measure was first per- 
 formed by Shakespeare's company, in order, it is said, to 
 propitiate the King at vtime when Sir Walter Raleigh was 
 about to be tried for his life at Winchester, and when James I. 
 and his suite were staying at Wilton. 
 
 In the early accounts of Freemasonry, it really appears that 
 the actual building of "fair houses/' or magnificent edifices 
 for public utility, or for religious purposes, was the sole or 
 chief object and mission of the Masons. Even at these 
 early dates, however, the friends of Bacon's family were 
 apparently always mixed up with the affairs of the society. 
 Long after Bacon's death, the records of Masonry are seen 
 recording the same connection. On the 27th December, 1663, 
 a general assembly was held, at which Henry Jermyn, Earl 
 of St. Albans, was elected Grand Master, who appointed Sir 
 John Denham his deputy, and Mr. (afterwards Sir) Christopher 
 Wren and John Webb his wardens. 
 
 We pause, in order to draw especial attention to a footnote 
 appended to the name of Christopher Wren : 
 
 " He was the only son of Dr. Christopher Wren, Dean of 
 Windsor, and was born in 1632. His genius for arts and 
 sciences appeared early. At the age of thirteen he invented a 
 new astronomical instrument, by the name of Pan-Organum, and 
 wrote a treatise on Rivers." 
 
 It is, perhaps, needless to say no such " astronomical instru- 
 ment " is known at the Royal Society ; neither is it mentioned 
 in any other account of Sir Christopher Wren which we have 
 met with, although the fact that he was, in 1680, chosen Presi- 
 dent of that society, might naturally suggest some instances of 
 his connection with mathematical science and mechanical inven- 
 tions. Observe, that here is another precocious boy who 
 " invents " or designs a plan for a universal Method, a Novum 
 Organum. Will anyone produce Sir Christopher Wren's Trea- 
 tise on Rivers, or any proof of his having written such a work ? 
 
 In no life or biography of Sir Christopher Wren do we find 
 any of the statements which this work on Freemasonry inserts 
 
280 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 concerning him, and which (as usual in these cases) are rele- 
 gated to a footnote. His biographer continues : 
 
 "His other numerous juvenile productions in mathematics 
 prove him to be a scholar of the highest eminence. He assisted 
 Dr. Scarborough in astronomical preparations, and experiments 
 upon the muscles of the human body ; whence are dated the 
 first introduction of geometrical and mechanical speculations in 
 anatomy. He wrote discoveries on the longitude ; on the varia- 
 tions of the magnetical needle ; de re nautica veterum ; how to 
 find the velocity of a ship in sailing; of the improvements of 
 galleys, and how to restore wrecks. Besides these, he treated 
 on the convenient way of using artillery on ship-board ; how to 
 build on deep water ; how to build a mole into the sea, without 
 Puzzolan dust or cisterns, and of the improvement of river navi- 
 gation in joining of rivers. In short, the works of this excellent 
 genius appear to be rather the united efforts of a whole century 
 than the production of one man" 
 
 Here, it will be observed, the writer is saying of Sir Christo- 
 pher Wren the same, in other words, that Dr. Sprat said of 
 Bacon, that " though he might not allow him to be equal to a 
 thousand men, he was at least equal to twenty" 
 
 And, looking back at the catalogue of Wren's performances, 
 not only are we disposed to look askance upon statements which 
 come to us in such questionable shape, and which have such a 
 curious affinity with particulars of researches which we do know 
 to have employed the nimble brain and the equally nimble pen 
 of Bacon ; but further (since it is pleasant to understand what 
 we read) will anyone inform us as to Puzzolan dust, and what 
 can any kind of dust have to do with the building of a mole, or 
 with cisterns? Is it possible that in Puzzolan dust we meet 
 with one of those egregious puns, those quibbles or jests which, 
 according to Ben Jonson, Bacon never could pass by ? Was this 
 the dust which is to be cast in the eyes of the mind to " puzzle 
 the understanding," or to " puzzle the will " of man ? We read 
 in Rosicrucian works of " dusty impressions," * of brains which 
 " trot through dust and dirt," f and the quibble is as well suited 
 to convey its meaning as many others which we find in these and 
 
 * Bruno's Heroic Enthusiasts, Part II., p. 176, edited by L. Williams, 
 published by Quaritch. 
 t Quarks' Emblems, I. 11. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 281 
 
 similar books. Perhaps when Ben Jonson said that Bacon never 
 could pass by a jest, he said it with a purpose, to draw attention 
 to these endless ambiguities of speech, the trivial puns which 
 conveyed such weighty meanings. 
 
 The names of distinguished Masons are well worthy of note. 
 They afford much insighir into the connection between certain 
 famous old firms in printing and kindred trades and those of 
 to-day. It will be seen how many names well known in litera- 
 ture, art, and science are Masons, as it were, hereditary, and 
 handing down the lamp of tradition, each in his own line. We 
 have noticed some interesting tombs in connection with this 
 subject, and younger readers are advised (having filled their 
 minds with the symbols of these societies) to keep their eyes 
 open when visiting old churches and church-yards. 
 
 To return to the point whence we started in this chapter, we 
 find it almost impossible to believe that the Eosicrucians and the 
 Freemasons were separate and totally disconnected fraternities, 
 all evidence showing them as, originally, one and the same, the 
 Rosicrucians forming the pinnacle to the lower orders of Masons, 
 and although a mass of suggestive evidence has come before us, 
 by means of the Rosicrucian books and documents, the more 
 solid historical facts have all been reached by an examination of 
 the old works which are professedly Masonic. 
 
 It is more than probable that at some period within a hundred 
 years from the death of Bacon the " little knowledge " of many 
 of his followers became indeed a " dangerous thing," that the 
 " puffed," " swelling " and " windy " pride which he reprobated 
 took the place of the patient, humble, self-effacing spirit of his 
 first fraternity, and that the " Free Thought " for which he 
 laboured M from curbed license pluck'd the muzzle of restraint." 
 Instead of exercising a gentle and benign practice of tolerance 
 in matters of religious ceremonial or of opinion, the Masons, 
 in many cases, seem to have lost sight of the universality or 
 catholicity of true faith, their religious principles degenerating 
 into mere abuse and vituperation of the Romish Church, whereas 
 their duty was but to resist and expose its errors and imposture, 
 and the initiation of Roman Catholics (not Papists) was per- 
 mitted by the laws of the brotherhood. The violent and in- 
 temperate behaviour of the Freemasons seems to have produced 
 a rupture, and Freemasonry became not the handmaid, but the 
 
 T 
 
282 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 enemy and opponent of Christianity, and the result affords a 
 melancholy illustration of the saying of Bacon concerning 
 atheism and its causes : 
 
 " The causes of atheism are divisions in religion, if they be 
 many, for one main division addeth zeal to both sides, but many 
 divisions introduce atheism. 1 ' 
 
 Scandal of priests, and a custom of profane scoffing in holy 
 matters are also causes which he notes for that atheism which 
 to him is especially "hateful in that it depriveth human 
 nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty." He 
 quotes the speech of Cicero to the conscript fathers, in which he 
 says that they may admire themselves as much as they please, 
 yet, neither by numbers, nor by bodily strength, nor by arts and 
 cunning, nor by the inborn good sense of their nation, did they 
 vanquish their many powerful antagonists; "but through our 
 devotion and religious feeling, and this the sole, true wisdom, — 
 they having perceived that all things are regulated and governed 
 by the providence of the immortal gods, — have we subdued all 
 races and nations. * 
 
 * Essay Of Atheism. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 283 
 
 CfiAPTER X. 
 
 PAPER-MARKS USED UNTIL THE TIME OF SIR NICHOLAS BACON. 
 
 AMONGST the helps to the understanding in the Interpreta- 
 tion of Nature, Bacon " puts in the tenth place instances 
 of power, or the fasces, which, also, I call instances of the 
 wit or hands of man. These are the noblest and most consum- 
 mate works in each art, exhibiting the ultimate perfection of it." 
 Such works should, he says, " be noted and enumerated, especi- 
 ally such as are the most complete and perfect ; because, starting 
 from them, we shall find an easier and nearer passage to new 
 works hitherto unattempted. . . . What we have to do is 
 simply this, to seek out and thoroughly inspect all mechanical 
 arts, and all liberal, too, as far as they deal with works, and 
 make therefrom a collection or particular history of the great 
 and masterly and most perfect works in every one of them, 
 together with the mode of their production and operation. And 
 yet, I do not tie down the diligence that should be used in such 
 a collection, to those works only which are esteemed the master- 
 pieces and mysteries of an art, and which excite wonder. For 
 Wonder is the child of Rarity ; * and if a thing be rare, 
 though in kind it be no way extraordinary, yet it is wondered 
 at. . . . For instance, a singular instance of art is paper, 
 a thing exceedingly common." 
 
 He proceeds to describe the nature and qualities of paper, 
 "as a tenacious substance, that may be cut or torn,' , and 
 that, in its resemblance to the skin of an animal, and to the 
 leaf of a vegetable, imitates Nature's workmanship ; and he 
 winds up as he began, by pronouncing paper to be " altogether 
 singular. 11 
 
 Then, as it would at first seem, going off at a tangent from 
 his subject, he says : "Again, as instances of the wit and hand 
 of man, we must not altogether condemn juggling and conjuring 
 
 * Miranda : '* O brave new world that hath such creatures in it ! " 
 
284 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 tricks. For some of them, though, in use, trivial and ludicrous, 
 yet, in regard to the information they give, may be of much 
 value" * 
 
 The chain of ideas in this passage — helps to the understand- 
 ing ; many particulars united ; by the wit and hands of man ; 
 these helps illustrated by the masterpieces and mysteries of the 
 art of paper-making; and these arts, again, connected with 
 juggling and tricks, suggested to the present writer the idea 
 of examining the paper on which those books are printed, and 
 which had already been specially noted on account of their 
 " Baconian " matter and style ; books which also contain the 
 numberless unaccountable typographical peculiarities which 
 seem to have some relation to a system of cipher, to be discussed 
 in another part of this work. 
 
 A few hours of study were sufficient to prove that the very 
 same " method of tradition," or system of secret communica- 
 tion, which is perceptible in the hieroglyphic pictures and 
 wood-cuts, hereafter to be described, prevails, though in a 
 simpler and rougher form, throughout the so-called "water- 
 marks " or paper-marks of the Baconian books, pamphlets and 
 manuscripts. 
 
 It was also found that the use and aim of these paper-marks, 
 and their interpretation, are to be most easily reached by 
 means of the metaphorical and parabolical language devised 
 and taught by Bacon himself, and which continues to be used, 
 whether consciously or unconsciously, not only by his acknow- 
 ledged followers, but by the whole civilised world. These 
 symbols were introduced with a purpose higher than that of 
 mere decoration ; they were, in the first instance, used not only 
 as a means of mutual recognition, but also for covertly instilling 
 or asserting truths and doctrines, in days when bigotry, 
 ignorance, and persecution prevented the free ventilation of 
 opinions and beliefs. But the secret language of the Renaissance 
 philosophers requires a full volume for its elucidation, so, for 
 the present, we must be content to limit inquiry to its simplest 
 manifestations, in the payer-marks of their printed books or 
 manuscripts. 
 
 If one thing more than another can assure the inquirer into 
 
 * Nov. Org. XXXI. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 285 
 
 these subjects that here he has to do with the workings of a 
 secret society, it is the difficulty which is encountered in all 
 attempts to extract accurate information, or to obtain really 
 useful books concerning paper-making, printing, and kindred 
 crafts. In ordinary books, ostensibly instructive on such 
 matters, the particulars, however detailed and accurate up to 
 a certain point, invariably become hazy or mutually contra- 
 dictory, or stop short altogether, at the period when works on 
 the subject should teem with information as to the origin of 
 many of our English translations of the Bible, and of the sudden 
 outburst of literature and science in the sixteenth century. 
 This is notably the case with one large and very important work, 
 Sotheby's Principia Typographical which, for no apparent 
 cause, breaks off at the end of the fifteenth century, and to 
 which there is no true sequel. 
 
 There are, likewise, at the British Museum | eight folio 
 volumes of blank sheets of water-marked paper. But these 
 papers are all of foreign manufacture, J chiefly Dutch and 
 German, and the latest date on any sheet is about the same as 
 that at which the illustrations stop in Sotheby's Principia. 
 
 If it be worth while to collect, classify, and catalogue, in 
 handsomely bound volumes, the water-marked papers of foreign 
 
 * Brit. Mus. Press-mark 2050 G. Principia Typographies The wood- 
 blocks or xylographic delineations of Scripture History, issued in Holland, 
 Flanders, and Germany during the fifteenth century, exemplified and 
 considered in connection with the origin of printing ; to which is added 
 an attempt to elucidate the character of the paper-marks of the period. 
 Sam'l Leigh Sotheby. Printed by Walter McDowell, and sold by all 
 antiquarian booksellers and printers. 1858. (Paper-Marks. See Vol. III.) 
 
 | Since there seems to be no catalogue accessible to the general reader, 
 by which these volumes are traceable, we note the press-mark at the 
 British Museum " Large Room, 1 ' 318 C. 
 
 J Two loose sheets are slipped between the pages in two volumes. One 
 is classified as Pitcher, the other as Vase. They are specimens of the one- 
 handled and two-handled pots of which we have so much to say. These 
 are English, and we believe of later date than any of the specimens bound 
 up in the collection. Their presence is again suggestive. They hint at 
 the existence of an English collection somewhere. Another particular 
 points to the same conclusion. In " Paper and Paper-making" by Richard 
 Herring, of which the third edition was printed in 1863 (Longmans), there 
 are, on page 105, five illustrations of paper-marks. They are all specimens 
 of the patterns used circa 1588 and later, and they are numbered 1418, 
 1446, 1447, 1449, 1450. These numbers evidently refer to a collection such 
 as we have anxiously sought, but which we have been repeatedly assured 
 is not known to exist. That it does exist, we have not the slightest doubt ; 
 but where is it, and why is it withheld ? 
 
286 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 countries before the middle of the sixteenth century, one would 
 think that it would be of at least equal interest and importance 
 to preserve a similar collection, such as could easily be made 
 from the papers manufactured in England circa 1588, the date 
 of the erection of the first great paper mill. If such matters 
 are interesting or important in other respects, it would be 
 natural to suppose that literary experts would find pleasure 
 and instruction in connecting the paper with the matter 
 printed upon it, and that a collection of paper used by the 
 printers of all the greatest works published in the reigns of 
 Elizabeth and James, whether that paper was home-made or 
 imported, would have been formed by the careful observers who 
 were so keen to preserve the older foreign papers, which 
 concern us much less. 
 
 But such a collection, we have been repeatedly assured, does 
 not exist at the British Museum, or indeed at any public library 
 or museum to which authorities on such subjects can — or may — 
 direct us.* 
 
 During this pursuit of knowledge under difficulties we have 
 constantly been told that the subject is one of deep interest. 
 "Instructive," "wide," "complicated," "vast," are the terms 
 by turns applied to it by those to whom we have applied for 
 help, so that sometimes we have been oppressed and discouraged 
 (as was perhaps occasionally intended) by the apparent hopeless- 
 ness of following up the quest, or of fathoming these mysterious 
 difficulties, which seemed to have no bottom. 
 
 But then came comfort. The mysteries, such as they are, are 
 evidently traditional, of no real use to living individuals ; no 
 one can be personally interested in keeping them up, and where 
 such mystifications are kept up the thing concealed is pretty 
 sure to be something simple and easy to master when once it is 
 reached. And there must be means of reaching it, because how 
 can it be known that these subjects of inquiry are either in- 
 structive or worthy of pursuit unless someone has studied and 
 pursued them, and discovered whither they tend ? 
 
 Further effort, stimulated by reflections of this kind, have not 
 
 * Recently we have been told that the Trustees of the Bodleian Library 
 at Oxford have secured a private collection of the kind, concerning which, 
 however, no information is forthcoming to the present writer. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 287 
 
 been altogether unrewarded, and, although much remains to be 
 cleared up, we trust that, regardless of scratches, we may have 
 broken such a gap into the matter as to secure an easier passage 
 for successors. 
 
 In A Chronology of Paper and Paper-making, * there is the 
 following entry : < 
 
 " 1716 — John Bagford, the most extraordinary connoisseur of 
 paper ever known, died in England. His skill was so 
 great that it is said that he could, at first sight, tell 
 the place where, and the time when, any paper was 
 made, though at never so many years' distance. He 
 prepared materials for a History of Paper-Making, 
 which are now in the British Museum, numbered 5891 
 to 5988." t 
 
 One hundred and eight volumes by this extraordinary con- 
 noisseur of paper ! The hint did not remain unheeded, and it 
 was to be hoped that at last some true and reliable information 
 would be forthcoming. But, so far as any fresh knowledge 
 concerning paper and paper-marks is concerned, an examination 
 of many of these curious scrap-books and note-books has proved 
 disappointing. Yet we glean further evidence as to the pains 
 and care which in past years have been bestowed upon the 
 laying of plans, and the carrying of them out in small details, 
 for the purpose of preventing these subjects from becoming 
 public property ; for the books bear silent witness that one of 
 
 * Joel Munsell, 4th edition, 1870 ; 5th edition, 1878. 
 
 | These form, in fact, part of the Harleian collection. For some reason 
 the Bagford portion has recently been divided. The bulk of it now 
 reposes in charge of the librarians of the rare old printed books, " Large 
 Room," British Museum. The MS. portions are in the MS. department, 
 where, until lately, the whole collection were bound together. Most of 
 the folios are scrap-books, containing thousands of book plates and wood 
 cuts, large and small. Of these we shall have to speak by and by. Some 
 were moved from the collection by order of the chief librarian in 1814 and 
 in 1828. These extracts, " transferred to the portfolios of the Print Room," 
 are not to be found. There is said to be no record of them. Similarly, 
 the evidences of John Bagford's extraordinary knowledge of paper are 
 absent from these collections. Some folios are made up of paper bearing 
 six or eight different water-marks, and there are MS. notes of printers, 
 which may lead to further knowledge. But the whole collection gives 
 the impression that it has been manipulated for purposes of concealment, 
 rather than to assist students, and the authorities at the British Museum 
 in no way encourage the idea that information on paper-marks is pro- 
 curable from this source. 
 
288 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 two things has occurred : Either the portions relating to paper 
 and paper-marks, their use and interpretation, have been at 
 some time carefully eliminated (and probably stored elsewhere), 
 or else they never were in this collection. In the latter case, 
 Joel Munsell, Hearne, and others, must have derived their 
 information about John Bagford and his extraordinary and 
 almost unique knowledge of paper, i.e., of paper-marks, from 
 some other sources which they do not disclose, but which must 
 be discoverable. For the present, we rest in the persuasion that 
 all these " secrets " are in the possession of a certain Freemason 
 circle, or perhaps, more correctly speaking, of the paper-makers' 
 and printers' " Kings," and since it is not possible that these 
 can a tale unfold of the secrets of the printing-house which have 
 come to them traditionally, and under strigent vows, we must be 
 content, as before, to grope and grub after scraps of information 
 which, poor and despicable as they may seem in their disjointed 
 state, afford, .when pieced together, a valuable contribution 
 toward the " furniture " of knowledge. 
 
 Ordinary works, whether of general information, or particular 
 instruction on matters connected with paper-making, uniformly 
 convey the impression that "water-marks" are either mere 
 ornaments in the paper, or else trade-marks of the paper- 
 manufacturer. One writer defines them as " ornamental figures 
 in wire or thin brass, sewn upon the wires of the mould, which, 
 like those wires, leave an impression, by rendering the paper, 
 where it lies on them, almost translucent." * 
 
 Another writer, whose book has gone through several editions, 
 and who is cited as an authority, distinctly claims for these 
 water-marks that they are trade signs analogous to those of a 
 public-house, a tea store or a pawnbroker. 
 
 " The curious, and in some cases absurd terms, which now 
 puzzle us so much, in describing the different sorts and sizes of 
 paper, may frequently be explained by reference to the paper- 
 marks which have been adopted at different periods. In ancient 
 times, when comparatively few people could read, pictures of 
 every kind were much in use where writing would now be 
 employed. Every shop, for instance, had its sign, as well as 
 every public-house ; and those signs were not then, as they often 
 
 * Objects in Art Manufacture. Edited by Charles Tomlinson. No. 1 
 Paper. Harrison, 1884. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 289 
 
 are now, only painted upon a board, but were invariably actual 
 models of the thing which the sign expressed — as we still 
 occasionally see some such sign as a bee-hive, a tea-cannister, or 
 a doll, and the like. 
 
 " For the same reason printers employed some device, which 
 they put upon the title-pages and at the end of their books, and 
 paper-makers also introduced marks by way of distinguishing 
 the paper of their manufacture from that of others — which 
 marks, becoming common, naturally gave their names to 
 different sorts of paper." * 
 
 These conclusions are, really, in no way satisfactory. They 
 are in direct opposition to facts which present themselves in the 
 process of collecting these water-marks — facts such as these : 
 
 1. That the same designs are often varied in the same book, 
 some volumes containing as many as eight, twelve, or twenty- 
 five variations of one pattern. (See Plates, Ben Jonson, Selden, 
 etc.) 
 
 2. That similar designs appear in books of widely different 
 periods printed and published by various firms, whilst, so far as 
 we have found, they appear in the MS. letters of only one limited 
 period. 
 
 3. That three kinds of water-marks (and so, according to 
 Herring, payer from three different firms) are often found in 
 one small book. 
 
 4. That these water-marks, infinitely varied as they are, often 
 contain certain initial letters which seem to connect them with 
 private persons, authors, or members of a secret society. 
 
 5. That, even in the present day, two or three firms use the 
 same designs in their paper-mark. 
 
 These points, which it is our purpose to illustrate, assure us 
 that it is an error to suppose either the most ancient or the most 
 modern paper-marks to be mere trade-signs. True, that there 
 are now some such which have been used, since the revival, as a 
 fashion, of the hand-made or rough-edged paper. But these are 
 quite easily distinguishable, and those who follow us in this 
 investigation will have no hesitation in deciding to which class 
 each paper belongs. On the other hand, Mr. Sotheby arrives, 
 
 * " Paper and Paper-making" p. 103, by Richard Herring, 3rd edition, 
 1863. See also Dr. Ure's " Mines and Manufactures." — Paper-making. 
 
290 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 from his own point of departure, at the same conclusion reached 
 by the present writer. 
 
 " I venture," he says, " to assert that until, or after, the close 
 of the fifteenth century, there were no marks on paper which 
 may be said to apply individually to the maker of the paper." 
 With Jansen, he agrees that "the study of water-marks is calcu- 
 lated to afford pretty accurate information as to the country 
 where, and the probable period when, a book without date or 
 place was printed. . . . Until toward the close of the fifteenth 
 century there occur no marks in paper used for the making of 
 books, from which we are led to infer that they were intended 
 for the motto or device of the maker. That paper-marks were, 
 or rather became general, and not confined to particular manu- 
 factories, is in fact inferrible from the fact that we are able to 
 trace similar marks in use from the commencement to the end 
 of the fifteenth century." In some instances the varieties of the 
 same mark are, as Mr. Sotheby says, so abundant that, " instead 
 of the eight plates engraved by Jansen, it would require more 
 than fifty plates of similar size to give the tracings of all the 
 varieties of even two marks ; the letter P, and the ■ Bull's Head.' 
 . . . Hence it is that the frequent remark, ' with little varia- 
 tions,' is so generally found in the writings of all those, even 
 from the earliest period to the present time, who have touched 
 upon this subject, unaccompanied, however, by any attempt to 
 account for or explain them." 
 
 Here we are reminded of the dictum of the Freemason Cyclo- 
 paedia : "A very minute difference may make the emblem or 
 symbol differ widely in its meaning," and of Bacon's similar 
 hint as to the necessity for noting small distinctions in order to 
 comprehend great things : 
 
 " Qui in parvis non distinguit, in magnis labitur." 
 
 This he connects with the following note : 
 
 " Everything is subtile till it be conceived" * 
 
 It is reasonable to attempt this explanation of the " little 
 variations " that the symbol, whatever it may be — a bull's head, 
 unicorn, fleur-de-lis, vine, or what not — illustrates some single, 
 fundamental doctrine or idea. But the " little variations " may, 
 
 * Promus, 186, 187. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 291 
 
 as Jansen and Mr. Sotheby agree, afford pretty accurate in- 
 formation as to the country where, and the period when, the 
 book was written or " produced." They may even indicate 
 the paper-maker or the printer, or that the persons connected 
 with the writing of the book were members of a certain secret 
 society. Jr 
 
 " The marks that are found on the paper used for the printing 
 of the block-books assigned to the Netherlands, are/' continues 
 Mr. Sotheby, " for the most part confined to the unicorn, the 
 anchor, the bull's head, the letter P, the letter Y,* and, as we 
 shall endeavour to show, the arms of the dynasties of the Duke 
 of Burgundy, and their alliances ; initials of particular persons, 
 and arms of the popes and bishops. It must not, however, for 
 a moment be supposed that no marks similar to those we assign 
 to the Netherlands occur in books printed in Germany ; but, 
 taking it as a general rule, the paper there used for printing 
 was, no doubt, confined to the manufactories of the country." 
 
 These remarks do not touch the matter of English books and 
 paper-marks ; nor do they explain the appearance, simul- 
 taneously, or at different periods, of the same marks in different 
 countries, and sometimes with the names of different paper- 
 makers. 
 
 If the paper used for printing books was usually made in the 
 country where the books were printed (and this seems to be the 
 most natural and reasonable arrangement), then we must inquire 
 at what English mill was the paper manufactured which was to 
 be the means of transmitting to a world then plunged in dark- 
 ness and ignorance the myriad-minded and many-sided litera- 
 ture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ? 
 
 * In Principia Typographica (Vol. III., Paper-mar ks), we read that plain 
 P stood for the initial of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, surmounted in some 
 cases by the single fleur-de-lis, arms proper of Burgundy, and that in 
 certain copies Y is added for Isabella — thus, as the author considers, 
 proving the date. Students will, we think, find cause for doubting this 
 explanation of the P and Y so frequent in veiy old books, and so long 
 used. In Hebrew the sacred name of God is associated with the letter 
 P — Phoded or Redeemer. As is well known, this same form, with a cross 
 drawn through the stem, was the sign adopted by the first Christian 
 emperor of Rome, Constantine the Great. The Roman Church still uses 
 this symbol, so frequently seen stamped upon our Books of Common 
 Prayer. The Y is of far greater antiquity as a symbol, and was held by 
 Pythagoras to signify the different paths of virtue and vice. Hence, says 
 the Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, it was termed "Litera Pythagoroz." 
 
292 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 As in everything else connected with printing, the inquirer is 
 at once met witli difficulties and rebuffs. Authors contradict 
 each other. Experts in the trade plead ignorance, or decline to 
 give information, and once more we are obliged to perceive how 
 jealously everything connected with these matters is guarded 
 and screened from public notice by the Freemasons. The 
 following is extracted from the little book by E. Herring, which 
 we have already quoted : 
 
 " With reference to any particular time or place at which this 
 inestimable invention was first adopted in England, all re- 
 searches into existing records contribute little to our assist- 
 ance.* The first payer-mill erected here is commonly attributed 
 to Sir John Spielman, a German, toho established one in 1588 
 at Dartford, for which the honour of knighthood was afterwards 
 conferred upon him by Queen Elizabeth, who was also pleased 
 to grant him a license ' for the sole gathering, for ten years, of 
 all rags, etc., necessary for the making of such paper.' It is, 
 however, quite certain that paper mills were in existence here 
 long before Spielman's time.t Shakespeare, in 2 Henry VI. 
 (the plot of which is laid at least a century previously), refers to 
 a paper-mill. In fact, he introduces it as an additional weight 
 to the charge which Jack Cade brings against Lord Saye. 
 ' Thou hast,' says he, ' most traitorously corrupted the youth 
 of the realm, in erecting a grammar school, and whereas, be- 
 fore, our fathers had no other books but the score and tally, 
 thou hast caused printing to be used, and, contrary to the King, 
 his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill.' An earlier 
 trace of the manufacture in this country occurs in a book J 
 printed by Caxton, about the year 1490, in Avhich it is said of 
 John Tate : 
 
 " ; Which late hathe in England doo make thys paper thynne 
 That now in our Englyssh thys booke is printed inne. 1 
 
 " His mill was situate at or near Stevenage, in Hertfordshire ; 
 and that it was considered worthy of notice is evident from an 
 
 * The editor of the Paper-Mills Directory, in his Art of Paper-making 
 (1874), says distinctly that the first paper mill in England "appeared in 
 1498 ; the second, Spielman's, sixty years later," 1558 ; a third at Fen 
 Ditton, near Cambridge, " if it was not erected just before. 1 ' 
 
 f The writer of an article on paper in the Encyclopaedia Britannica 
 argues, with reason, that the cheap rate at which paper was sold, even in 
 the inland towns of England, in the fifteenth century, affords ground for 
 assuming that there was at this time a native industry in paper, and that 
 it was not all imported. 
 
 X Be Proprietatibus Rerum, Wynken de Worde's edition, 1498. 
 
AND HIS SECEET SOCIETY. 293 
 
 entry made in Henry the Seventh's Household Book on the 25th 
 of May, 1498 : ' For a reward given at the paper mylne 16s. 3d.' 
 And again in 1499 : ' Geven in rewarde to Tate of the mvlne, 
 6s. 3d.'* 
 
 " Still, it appears far less probable that Shakespeare alluded 
 to Tate's mill (although established at a period corresponding in 
 many respects with that of occurrences referred to in connection) 
 than to that of Sir John Spielman. 
 
 " Standing, as it did, in the immediate neighborhood of the 
 scene of Jack Cade's rebellion, and being so important as to call 
 forth at the time the marked patronage of Queen Elizabeth, the 
 extent of the operations carried on there was calculated to 
 arouse, and no doubt did arouse, considerable national interest ; 
 and one can hardly help thinking, from the prominence which 
 Shakespeare assigns to the existence of a paper mill (coupled, 
 as such allusion is, with an acknowledged liberty, inherent in 
 him, of transposing events to add force to his style, and the 
 very considerable doubt as to the exact year in which the play 
 was written), that the reference made teas to none other than Sir 
 John Spielman's establishment of 1588, concerning which we 
 find it said : 
 
 " ' Six hundred men are set to work by him, 
 
 That else might starve or seek abroad their bread, 
 Who now live well, and go full brave and trim, 
 And who may boast they are with paper fed' " f 
 
 What Shakespeare lover is there who will not recall the echo 
 of the last words in Nathaniel's answer to his fellow pedant's 
 strictures upon the ignorance of Dull, the constable : 
 
 Holofernes. Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus ! 
 O, thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look ! 
 
 Nathaniel. Sir ; he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a 
 book ; he hath not eat paper, as it were ; he hath not drunk ink ; his in- 
 tellect is not replenished, etc.J 
 
 The supposed date of Love's Labour's Lost is 1588-9, precisely 
 the date of the establishment of our first great mill. Can the 
 poet, we wonder, have been en rapport with the inditer of the 
 
 * " The water-mark used by Tate was an eight-pointed star within a 
 double circle. A print of it is given in Herbert's Typis Antiquit. I. 200. 
 Tate died 1514."- J. Munsell, 
 
 | Herring, pp. 41 — 44. See also A Chronology of Paper and Paper- 
 making, by Joel Munsell, fourth edition, 1870. 
 
 X Love's Labour's Lost, IV. 2. 
 
294 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 lines quoted by Herring (who, by the way, omits to say whence 
 he quotes them) — and which of the two poets, if there were two, 
 originated the notion of men being fed with paper ? 
 
 The omissions of Eichard Herring, quite as much as his state- 
 ments, raise in our mind various misgivings and suspicions 
 concerning him and the information which he gives. Does this 
 writer know more than he " professes " to know ? Are these 
 remarks, in which he draws in Shakespeare, hints to the initiated 
 reader as to the true facts of the case ? Like the Rosicrucians, 
 we cannot tell ; but recent research leads us more and more to 
 discredit the notion that particulars such as these about the 
 establishment of the first English paper-mill are unknown to 
 those whom they chiefly concern ; or that shifting, shadowy, 
 contradictory statements, of the kind quoted above, would 
 pass unchallenged, were it not that an excellent mutual under- 
 standing exists between the writer and his expert readers. 
 
 If speaking from without the charmed circle, we are expected 
 to declare an express opinion regarding these things, it must be 
 after this kind : Whatever paper-mills may have existed in 
 England before the erection of Sir John Spielman's at Dartford, 
 they must have been small, private (perhaps attached to religious 
 houses), employed only in the manufacture of writing paper, and 
 at all events quite inadequate to Bacon's purposes when he " was 
 for volumes in folio," when he " feared to glut the world with 
 his writings," and when the " Reformation of the whole wide 
 world " was to be attempted by means of the press. The erec- 
 tion of the first great paper-mill in England is almost coincident 
 with the establishment of the great printing-houses, whose first 
 and noblest work was the printing and publication of the Bible 
 in nearly every language of the globe. 
 
 " It is certain that printing was the great instrument of the 
 Reformation in Germany, and of spreading it throughout 
 Europe ; it is equally certain that the making of paper, by 
 means of the cotton or flaxen fibre, supplied the only material 
 which has been found available for printing. Whether this 
 coincident was simply accidental, or was the effect of that high 
 arrangement for high purposes, which we so often find in the 
 history of Providence, may be left to the consideration of the 
 Christian. But it is evident that if printing had been invented 
 in any of the earlier ages, it would have been comparatively 
 thrown away. . . . But at the exact period when printing 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 295 
 
 was given to the world, the fabric was also given which was to 
 meet the broadest exigency of that most illustrious invention."* 
 
 And who in those days had reason to know these things 
 better than Francis Bacon ? Who more likely than he to have 
 inspired the enterprise of erecting the great paper-mill which 
 was to serve as an " instance of the wit or hands of man," and to 
 be ranked by him amongst " Helps to the Understanding in the 
 Interpretation of Nature " ? 
 
 Bacon never uttered opinions on subjects which he had not 
 studied. Neither did he exhort others to undertake works which 
 he had in no way attempted. When, therefore, we find him 
 saying that all mechanical arts should be sought out and 
 thoroughly inspected, and when, within a few lines, he associates 
 these remarks with the masterpieces and mysteries of the art of 
 paper-making, no shadow of doubt remains on our mind as to 
 his own intimate knowledge and observation of the processes in 
 the recently established paper-mill. 
 
 Going forward into the regions of speculation or anticipation, 
 we can quite conceive that when Mr. Donnelly's cipher system 
 shall be brought to bear on the second part of the play of 
 Henry VI. 9 it will be found that the erection of this mill is 
 recorded in cipher. This seems to be the more probable because 
 it appears that, five-and-thirty or forty years ago, it was asserted 
 by the then occupier of North Newton Mill, near Banbury, in 
 Oxfordshire, that this was the first paper-mill erected in Eng- 
 land, and that it was to this mill that Shakespeare referred in 
 the passage just quoted ; and further (take note, my readers) — 
 this Banbury mill was the property of Lord Saye and Sele. 
 
 Now, although the late Lord Saye and Sele distinctly dis- 
 credited the story of this mill taking precedence of Sir John 
 Spielman's, by showing that the first nobleman succeeding to 
 that title who had property in Oxfordshire was the son of the 
 first Lord Saye,~\ yet it is a coincidence not to be overlooked, 
 that the Lord Saye and Sele of modern times should possess a 
 paper-mill with the tradition attached to it of its being the 
 mythical mill alluded to by Shakespeare. 
 
 * Dr. Croly's introduction to Paper and Paper-making, p. xii. 
 t Shakespeare's reference is to the first Lord Saye ; there is no hint or 
 suspicion that his son had anything to do with a paper-mill. 
 
296 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 The perplexity involved in these statements seems to be dis- 
 entangled if we may venture to surmise that the cryptographer 
 had to introduce into his play a sketch of the history of Eng- 
 land's first great mills, erected in 1588, for the manufacture of 
 paper for printed books* The other small mills (which, for our 
 own part, we think, did previously exist) were probably private 
 establishments, producing paper for the special use of religious 
 houses, for state papers, or for the letters and other documents 
 of important personages. In short, the earlier paper was, so far 
 as we may yet judge, writing paper, too expensive to be used for 
 books, but, as a rule, substituted, in important documents, for 
 the costly parchment and vellum of earlier times. 
 
 It strikes us as a curious thing that, when our expert instructor 
 comes to the point at which he affords some " general observa- 
 tions^ on what are termed water-marks,''' he should, for the 
 second time, be drawn to illustrate his subject by circumstances 
 connected with Shakespeare. Having briefly commented upon 
 the use which has sometimes been made of water-marks in the 
 detection of frauds, monkish or legal, he continues in a long 
 passage, which we abridge : 
 
 " A further illustration of the kind occurs in a work entitled, 
 Ireland's Confessions, respecting his fabrication of the Shake- 
 speare manuscripts, — a literary forgery even more remarkable 
 than that which is said to have been perpetrated by Chatterton, 
 as ' Eowley's Poems.' . . . This gentleman tells us that the 
 sheet of paper which he used was the outside of several others, 
 on some of which accounts had been kept in the reign of Charles 
 the First ; and ' being at the time wholly unacquainted with the 
 water-marks used in the time of Elizabeth, I carefully selected 
 two half sheets, not having any mark whatever, on which I 
 penned my first effusion.' " 
 
 After relating, with a naivete which borders on the comical, 
 the way in which, by a payment of iive shillings to a bookseller 
 named Verey, the narrator obtained permission to take from all 
 the folio and quarto volumes in his shop the fly-leaves which 
 they contained, " by which means I was stored with that com- 
 
 * Note Cade's words : " Whereas, before, our forefathers had no other 
 books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used." 
 (2 Hen. VI., IV. 7.) 
 
 | They are rightly described as general. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 297 
 
 modity," Ireland goes on to say that the quiet, unsuspecting 
 disposition of the bookseller would, he was convinced, never 
 lead him to make the transaction public. 
 
 " As I was fully aware, from the variety of water-marks which 
 are in existence at the m;esent day, that they must have con- 
 stantly been altered since the time of Elizabeth, and being for 
 some time wholly unacquainted with the water-marks of that 
 age, I very carefully produced my first specimens of the writing 
 on such sheets of old paper as had no marks whatever. Having 
 heard it frequently stated that the appearance of such marks 
 on the papers would have greatly tended to establish their 
 validity, I listened attentively to every remark which was made 
 upon the subject, and from thence I at length gleaned the intelli- 
 gence that a jug was the prevalent water-mark of the reign of 
 Elizabeth, in consequence of which I inspected all the sheets of 
 old paper then in my possession, and, having selected such as had 
 the jug upon them, I produced the succeeding manuscripts upon 
 these, being careful, however, to mingle with them a certain 
 number of blank leaves, that the production on a sudden of so 
 many water-marks might not excite suspicion in the breasts of 
 those persons who were most conversant with the manuscripts." 
 
 " Thus," continues our guide, " this notorious literary forgery, 
 through the cunning ingenuity of the perpetrator, ultimately 
 proved so successful as to deceive many learned and able critics 
 of the age. Indeed, on one occasion, a kind of certificate was 
 drawn up, stating that the undersigned names were affixed by 
 gentlemen who entertained no doubt whatever as to the validity 
 of the Shakespearian production, and that they voluntarily 
 gave such public testimony of their convictions upon the 
 subject. To this document several names were appended by 
 persons as conspicuous for their erudition as they were perti- 
 nacious in their opinions.'' | 
 
 And so the little accurate information which is vouchsafed to 
 us poor " profani," standing in the outer courts, the few 
 acorns which are dropped for our nourishment from the wide- 
 spreading tree of knowledge, begin and end in Shakespeare. 
 In Shakespeare we read of the erection of the first great paper- 
 mill — an anachronism being perpetrated to facilitate the record. 
 In the forged Shakespeare manuscripts, the workings of that 
 
 * Readers are invited to bear in mind this sentence in italics. 
 t Paper and Paper-making, p. iii. 
 
 V 
 
298 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 same paper-mill, and the handing down of Bacon's lamp of 
 tradition, are even now to be seen. These signs are so sure as 
 to have gulled the learned, " as conspicuous for their erudition 
 as for their pertinacity." 
 
 What further need have we of arguments to show that the 
 true history of our paper-marks, and their especial value and 
 importance, was perfectly well-known to the learned of two 
 generations ago ? Are we prepared to believe that such accurate 
 knowledge is now lost? Surely not. The Freemasons, and 
 more particularly the Eosicrucians, could tell us all about it. 
 But, though they could if they might, they may not. Therefore, 
 let us persevere, and seek for ourselves to trace, classify, and 
 interpret the multitudinous paper-marks which are to be found 
 onward from the date at which Mr. Sotherby has thought fit to 
 cut off our supplies. 
 
 As to other works, we have given the names of a few from 
 which, out of an infinite deal of nothing, we have picked a few 
 grains of valuable matter hidden in a bushel of chaff. But, 
 indeed, the reader, if he " turns to the library, will wonder at 
 the immense variety of books which he sees there on our 
 subjects, and, after observing their endless repetitions, and how 
 men are ever saying what has been said before, he will pass from 
 admiration of the variety to astonishment at the poverty and 
 scantiness of the subjects ; " and he will agree " that it is 
 nowise strange if opinion of plenty has been the cause of want ; 
 ... for by the crafts and artifices of those who have handled 
 and transmitted sciences, these have been set forth with such 
 parade, and brought them into the world so fashioned and 
 masked as if they were complete in all parts, and finished. . . . 
 The divisions seem to embrace and comprise everything which 
 can belong to the subject. And although these divisions are 
 ill-filled and empty cases, still, to the common mind they present 
 the form of a perfect science." Bacon goes on to show how the 
 most ancient seekers after truth set to work in a different way 
 by storing up short opinions and scattered observations which 
 did not profess to embrace the whole art. " But as the matter 
 now is, it is nothing strange if men do not seek to advance in 
 things delivered to them as long since perfect and complete." * 
 
 * Nov. Org. I. LXXXVI. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 299 
 
 The early paper-marks were very rude and irregular. They 
 ■did not greatly improve until the time of the Bacons and the 
 Renaissance. Still, they were common in all the manuscripts 
 (whether books, letters, or other documents) which issued from 
 religious houses, and as soon as printing began, then also began 
 to appear these marks in printed books published on the Conti- 
 nent, and on foreign paper imported into England. 
 
 Bat, rough as the early paper-marks are, from the very first 
 they had a meaning; and so distinctly are they symbolic, so 
 indubitably is their symbolism religious, that it would seem 
 strange and incongruous to meet with them equally in the 
 various editions of the Bible, and in the early editions of the 
 masques and plays of the Elizabethan period, were there not 
 strong evidence that these, and scores of other secular works, 
 were brought out by a society established with a high religious 
 purpose, and which, guided by Bacon's " great heart " and vast 
 intellect, was bent upon ameliorating the condition of the world 
 to its lowest depths, and by the simplest and least obtrusive 
 methods. 
 
 Bacon drew no hard and fast line between religious and 
 secular, or between good and evil, in things, in individuals, or 
 in ideas. He thought that Nature, and pre-eminently human 
 nature, were " biform," a mixture of the earthy and the 
 spiritual. Man, he said, is of all creatures the most com- 
 pounded ; and, knowing this, he appealed by turns, in the 
 multifarious works which he wrote for man's instruction or 
 recreation, to the many sides of the human mind, and of nature ; 
 to the dull animal who could take in ideas only through the eye 
 and the ear, in dumb shows, masques, or stage plays, as to the 
 bright, keen intellect of the man whose brain he compares to a 
 diamond cut with many facets. 
 
 Everywhere, and by all means, he would endeavour to raise 
 u man, who by his body is akin to the brute," to the higher and 
 more spiritual level, where he would be, in some degree, " akin 
 to the Image of God." 
 
 So, when we find within the pages of Every Man in His 
 Humour and Bartholomew Fair the sacred symbols of the vine, 
 and the pot of manna, we may reflect that this is no mere 
 accident, no advertisement of the firm who manufactured the 
 paper. These are some of the many records handed down by 
 
300 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 good Baconians of their " great master's " desire to draw together 
 the most opposite ends of human society, and human thought 
 and to mingle with the coarsest earthy matter some bright 
 and imperishable grains of the heavenly gold of truth and 
 knowledge. 
 
 Let us turn to the plates of illustrations, of which a complete 
 catalogue will be found appended to this volume. 
 
 There we see, first, a reduced mark from Jansen's Essai sur 
 VOriginc de la Gravure, etc. Jansen rocords that this is the 
 earliest mark known ; it occurs, says Mr. Sotheby, " in an 
 account book dated 1301 ; a circle or a globe surmounted with 
 a cross ! A mark that is capable of suggesting much to the 
 mind of a Christian." * 
 
 Probably the scarabeus forms (of which several may be seen 
 on the plate) are not so capable of suggestion to most minds as 
 the former symbol, but their deep signification is interesting, 
 and should lead us to search into the origin of these mystical 
 marks, admiring the wonderful way in which the wisdom of the 
 earliest antiquity endeavoured to inform and teach, whilst the 
 minds of men were too childish and uncultivated to receive 
 truths except in the form of a picture or of a story. 
 
 That the matters to be instilled were in many cases eternal 
 truths, thoughts and doctrines of the most sublime description, 
 is seen in that these very same symbols, with a deeper intensity 
 of meaning, and with further light shed upon them, have been,, 
 in various forms, passed on from one nation to another, from 
 generation to generation ; adopted and modified to suit the 
 requirements of religious expression in many different forms of 
 worship. However the external appearance may shadow or 
 disguise the true substance, there are found in these symbol* 
 the same fundamental ideas, the same great universal doctrines 
 and conceptions of the one God — all-knowing, all-powerful, ever 
 present — of His divine humanity, or manifestation in the flesh, 
 of His Holy Spirit, comforting, sustaining, inspiring. The 
 mystical teaching of the Universal Church of Christ was shown 
 first as in a shadow or from behind a curtain, then with 
 increasing clearness, until it reached its full development in 
 the light of Christianity. Now with regard to the Egyptian 
 
 * Principia, III. 10. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 301 
 
 Beetle or elliptical form, introduced into the secret water-marks 
 of Christian books. The beetle or Scarabeus, like the Peacock, 
 or the Iris, was, on account of its burnished splendour and 
 varied colours, a symbol of the Heavenly Messenger. In many 
 cases it was synonymous with the mystic Phoenix and Phanes, 
 or Pan — another name fof the Messenger or Holy Spirit. The 
 Phoenix was supposed to return every six hundred years, upon 
 the death of the parent bird, and thus it exemplified the 
 perpetual destruction and reproduction of the world. The 
 scarabeus, like the Phoenix, was the symbol of both a messenger 
 and of a regenerated soul. It was the most frequent impression 
 upon seals and rings in ancient Egypt, and hence the insignia 
 of the Apocalyptic Messenger, the " Seal-opener." 
 
 With such hints as these, it is easy to see, not only why the 
 old religious writers and secret societies used this scarabeus, 
 mixed with the cross and other Christian symbols, but, also, the 
 cause and meaning of the extensive adoption of ellipitical forms 
 in engraved portraits in the mural tablets, monuments, and 
 frames to memorial busts, on the tombs of the Rosicrucians 
 and their friends. These memorials, when in black with gold 
 lettering (typifying light out of darkness), reproduce absolutely 
 the ancient idea adopted and assimilated by the Rosicrucians, of 
 the perfect regenerate soul, destined by God to show forth His 
 praises, who had called him out of darkness into His glorious 
 light ! * 
 
 Where the orb or globe and the ellipse are united with the 
 cross, or where the undulating water-line on an ill-drawn circle 
 represents the Spirit of God, as waters upon the face of the 
 earth, Bacon's idea is before us of the "mingling earth with 
 heaven," which was his dream, and his perpetual endeavour. 
 
 The few specimens which are given of the various and frequent 
 unicorns and panthers, or dogs, as ecclesiastical symbols, are 
 curious not only from their quaintness, and the persistent 
 manner in which, by one device or another, they exhibit the 
 emblems of the Church, but also because here in the anchors 
 we see spots which should incite inquiry. These have been 
 explained as caused by the crossing or junction of wires in the 
 
 * Pet. ii. 9. The ellipse bore in ancient symbolism the same interpreta- 
 tion as the beetle. 
 
302 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 paper-mark, but this explanation seems to be unsatisfactory, 
 considering the position of the spots. They are usually in 
 places where wires do not cross ; and what is to be said of the 
 unicorn (Plate II., fig. 1) with a line through his head ? Do not 
 these dots suggest to the cryptographic expert some of the 
 many systems by which words can be spelt out, or information 
 conveyed, by means of counting, or by the relative position of 
 dots? 
 
 . The nearest approach to the figure of a dog which we have 
 found in Baconian times is the nondescript creature in Plate II., 
 fig. 8. This is in some letters in Anthony Bacon's corre- 
 spondence. * It seems to be intended to delude the eye as a 
 serpent, but to be really the Sacred Horn, combined with the 
 head of the dog or hound, in Hindu symbolism a type of the 
 messenger of truth. 
 
 Serpents or serpentine lines are very frequent in early paper- 
 marks, usually in combination with a cross, an anchor, or a 
 Mercury's rod ; they are conspicuous in the large collection of 
 Bull's-head water-marks which fill a folio volume in the British 
 Museum, f 
 
 Bull's heads in every conceivable variety of size and arrange- 
 ment, in every degree of good and bad drawing, prevail 
 throughout most of the MS. Bibles of the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries. Bulls with two eyes, or with one or none, 
 with horns flat or exalted ; curved like the crescent moon, or 
 rounded like leaves. Bulls with bland expressions and regular 
 features, formed by the adroit arrangement of a fleur-de-lis for 
 eyes, nose and mouth. Bulls with a Greek cross growing out at 
 the tops of their heads, or a Mercury's rod entwined with a 
 serpent descending from their chins, and terminated by various 
 symbols, as the triangle, the figure 4, the Rose, or five-petaled 
 flower, the fleur-de-lis, or the so-called Templar's or Maltese 
 Cross. Ubiquitous as this mark is in the old paper of the 
 continent before the da} 7 s of printing, and although fine speci- 
 mens may be seen of it in letters from foreign ecclesiastics and 
 statesmen, in Cotton's collection of Baconian MSS., we have not 
 yet found one specimen in an English printed book. Special 
 
 * Tenison MSS., Lambeth Palace. 
 t Press-mark 318 C, Vol. VII. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 303 
 
 attention is, however, drawn to it because we are sure that this 
 bull's head, more and more disguised, was, in England especially, 
 changed into the mock shields which pervade Baconian literature, 
 and which, as we will presently show, are used in the present 
 day by the same society which introduced them three hundred 
 years ago. * ^ 
 
 This paper-mark is peculiarly interesting, and to the present 
 purpose as a forcible witness to the fact that the origin and 
 meaning of these marks is distinctly religious, and the symbolism 
 of the mediaeval and modern Churches in direct and legitimate 
 descent from that of the most ancient forms of worship, when 
 men, groping after truth, sought for means by which they might 
 make visible, to those who were more dull and dark than them- 
 selves, thoughts and aspirations which they had hardly words to 
 express, or their hearers intelligence to comprehend. 
 
 The Bull was one of the most ancient Indian and Egyptian 
 emblems of God ; a symbol of patience, strength, and persistency 
 in effort. It is said to be in consequence of these attributes of 
 the bull that Taurus became the appointed zodiacal sign at the 
 vernal equinox; and under that sign God was adored as The 
 Sun, or the Bull. 
 
 We read in the Bible how the Jews, despairing of the return 
 of Moses from the mount, wished to make for themselves the 
 image of a god who should lead them through the desert, and 
 cast out the ungodly from before them. To this end they melted 
 down their golden ornaments, and made the shape of a calf or 
 bull.t 
 
 The bull's head, although not reproduced in England in its 
 original form, was and is, as has been said, preserved in dis- 
 guise. Plates IV. and V. show a few of the many patterns of 
 these disguised heads in mock shields. They are exceedingly 
 various and frequent in Baconian works, and in editions of the 
 
 * The bull is considered by Jansen to distinguish books by Dr. Faustus, 
 or Fust. The single head belongs to Germany. 
 
 t It is said by some learned authorities that there seems to have been 
 confusion in words, and that the Greeks put into Greek characters the 
 Egyptian Ma-v-oein, which means the place of light, or the sun. (See 
 commentary on the Apocalypse, III. 317.) But even this error, if it exists, 
 only serves to show more clearly the close connection in the minds of the 
 translators of Holy Writ between the most ancient religious symbols and 
 those which they themselves employed. Bacon shows, in his Essay of 
 Pan, the connection in parabolic language between horns and rays. 
 
304 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 Bible of which Bacon, we think, superintended the revision and 
 publication. A comparison of the specimens given from the 
 1632 edition of Shakespeare, the works of " Joseph Mede" 1677, 
 and the modern-contemporary water-mark used by L. Van 
 Gelder (Plate V.) will explain our meaning. In Van Gelder's 
 paper the Bull's head is clearly discernible, and so is the mutual 
 connection between this and the earlier marks. In the speci- 
 mens from the "Diodati " Bible, 1648, there is the same general 
 effect as in those from the Shakespeare of 1623, and Bacon's 
 works 1638. Certain particulars are never failing — indications 
 of horns, eyes, and in some cases protuberant ears. Doubtless 
 these mock shields were intended to pass with the profane 
 vulgar for coats of arms of some great personage, as Jansen and 
 Sotheby would lead us to think them. But a pennyworth of 
 observation will correct this notion. The sacred symbols of the 
 fleur-de-lis, the trefoil, cross, horns, pearls, and diamonds, with 
 the sacred monograms, numbers, and mystic or cabalistic 
 marks, show plainly whence the old paper-maker derived 
 them. 
 
 In the Bible, Horns are frequently used as emblems of pushing 
 and conquest. They are, as we see on the Ninevah marbles at 
 the British Museum, signs of prophet, priest, and king. In many 
 emblem pictures the idea of Omnipotence is so mixed up with 
 the further god-like attributes of Omniscience, Omnipresence, 
 and universal beneficence, that it is often difficult to decide 
 whether the design is most suggestive of the horns of power, the 
 rays of spiritual and intellectual light, or the cornucopise of 
 Abundance. Sometimes Serpents or serpentine lines found in 
 connection with the bull, the cross, and the anchor are (espe- 
 cially in connection with wood-cuts) so rendered as to suggest 
 the same mixed symbolism. 
 
 To the mystics in India and Greece, as well as to the ecclesi- 
 astics of the middle ages, and the philosophers of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, the Serpent of Eternity was the sign 
 of God, the Holy Spirit. The symbol is retained in the stained 
 glass of our church windows, and in emblematic designs from 
 the Apocalypse, where St. John the Divine is distinguished by 
 the chalice whence issues the Serpent, typifying wisdom, or 
 reason and speech, the gifts of the Spirit. 
 
 In the caduceus of Mercury, whilst the symbolism is somewhat 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 305 
 
 changed, the idea is similar. The rod is said formerly to have 
 been a scroll or ancient book, and the two serpents entwined 
 round it typify everlasting wisdom. It is likewise the emblem 
 of peace ; for Mercury (according to pagan mythology), finding 
 two serpents fighting, reconciled them by a touch of his wand, 
 and thenceforward bore this symbol of reconciliation. This is 
 held to figure the harmonising force of religion, which can tame 
 even the venomous and cold-blooded snakes. The same line of 
 thought may be followed up in Bacon's Essay of Orpheus, and 
 in other places where he expounded his own views of the best 
 methods for " tuning discords to a concord." 
 
 The old Bugle mark, of which innumerable instances are found 
 in old letters and MS. books, and which is in use at the present 
 day, seems to have been originally derived from the bull and his 
 horns. In the first instance, associated with the conception of 
 the Supreme Being and His universal power, wisdom, and good- 
 ness, it became after a time, the bugle or trumpet which was to 
 call forth men to their duties — the Ecclesia — called oat to do 
 especial service for God and for Humanity.* 
 
 Bacon and his friends adopted this Bugle or Trumpet, and, 
 giving it an additional or secondary significance, assimilated it 
 in their hieroglyphic pictures and their parabolic phraseology. 
 Bacon is about to treat of the " Division of the Doctrine concern- 
 ing Man into the Philosophy of Humanity and Philosophy 
 Civil." He shows throughout this chapter, as elsewhere, that 
 
 " The proper study of mankind is man," 
 
 and this his prologue : 
 
 " If any one should aim a blow at me (excellent King) for 
 anything I have said, or shall hereafter say in this matter (be- 
 sides that I am within the protection of your Majesty), let me 
 tell him that he is acting contrary to the rules and practices of 
 warfare; fori am. a trumpeter, not a combatant; one, perhaps, 
 of those of whom Homer speaks : 
 
 ' Hail, heralds, messengers of Jove and men ! ' | 
 
 * Until recently, when the assizes were being held in country towns in 
 England, the judges and council (barristers, etc.) were thus, when the 
 court was to begin business, called out from their lodgings by the 
 sound of a bugle or horn. 
 
 t Horn. I. 334. 
 
306 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 and such men might go to and fro everywhere unhurt, between 
 the fiercest and bitterest enemies. Nor is mine a trumpet which 
 summons and excites men to cut each other to pieces with 
 mutual contradictions, or to quarrel and fight with one another ; 
 but, rather, to make peace between themselves, and, turning 
 with united forces against the nature of things, to storm and 
 occupy her castles and strongholds, and extend the bounds of 
 human empire as far as God Almighty in his goodness may 
 permit." * 
 
 In the 1658 edition of the History of Life and Death, you may 
 see a fine example of the Bugle with the SS in a shield-frame of 
 olive, surmounted by the usual crown, with pearls, horns, and 
 fleur-de-lis. f The Olive, commoner, even, in the hieroglyphic 
 wood-cuts than in the paper-marks, is an evergreen, figuring 
 eternity. This tree was sacred to Minerva, wisdom. From it 
 was distilled the ambrosia, drink of the gods, " divinest olive 
 oil," with which Achilles was anointed in order to make him 
 invulnerable. " My friends, chew upon this." Try to realise 
 the deep symbolism of that pretty water-mark. See how, by a 
 few well-chosen outlines, within two square inches of paper, it 
 calls up the thought of one specially endowed for the benefit and 
 service of the whole human race, of winning for it all provinces 
 of learning ; winning, " not as a combatant," but with sweet, 
 smooth, and winning words of divinest poesy — that " oil of 
 gladness " with which he was anointed above his fellows. 
 Songs of joy and gladness are for times of peace, and " the olive 
 is symbolical of the joy which peace diffuses. The leaves of the 
 olive (as a wreath) suggest the thought of its oil, used for the 
 anointing of the head. Thou anointest my head with oil, says 
 David, recounting the abundant blessings which he had re- 
 ceived from God ; and the ancients were accustomed to anoint 
 the head with oil on all festive occasions." X 
 
 "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 
 Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the 
 children of God." § Gentle, conciliating, peace-making, and 
 peace-loving ; endowed with powers and knowledge beyond all 
 
 * De Aug. IV. 1. 
 
 t Observe also the distinct form of a pot in the outline of the shield or 
 wreath. 
 % Free Masonry, C. I. Paton, 1873, p. 158. 
 § Quoted 2 Hen. VI. II. 1. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 307 
 
 other men, yet modest, retiring, and totally free from dogmatism 
 and intolerance ; a herald, not a trumpeter of his own learning 
 — such was Francis Bacon. Apparently, in his own day, and 
 with some of his biographers, he would have been more highly 
 esteemed, had he asserted himself, defended himself, stood upon 
 his rights, and refused torbe thought wrong or to confess an 
 error even for carelessness. By nature we know that he was, 
 according to his own showing, hasty, impatient, disposed to be 
 over-impetuous in his zeal, and exhibiting, though at rare 
 intervals, " the flash and outbreak of a fiery mind." But before 
 setting forth to conquer others, he studied to conquer himself, 
 with what result we see. The sweetness and calm beneficence 
 which pervaded his whole being are the perpetual theme of 
 letters and other anthentic records which remain of him. His 
 great desire, " as much as lay in him, to live peaceably with all 
 men," made him shrink from controversy and disputations, 
 prefer self-effacement, misconstruction, even disgrace, to the risk 
 of endangering the realisation of his visions and schemes for the 
 happiness of the future ages. 
 
 And truly this " celestial peace " has perpetually hovered 
 over his work ; truly may this work, begun in faith and meek- 
 ness, be said to inherit the earth. For lvhere is there a region, 
 inhabited by civilised man, which is left unpossessed by it ? 
 Founded upon Eternal Truth, that work must be, as Bacon 
 himself believed, imperishable as Truth itself, and rightly is it 
 figured by evergreen branches of the olive, sacred to Pallas.* 
 
 Sometimes the mock shields sprout into wreaths of Laurel and 
 Bay (figuring triumph and victory). These seem to have been 
 used for books published after the author's death. Other 
 shields, whether foreign or English, of later date than 1626, 
 have Chains or interlinked SS, representing, perhaps, " not only 
 the Cliain of nature and the thread of the fates, which are one 
 and the same thing, but the famous chain of Homer, that is, the 
 chain of natural causes" " a chain which is confederate and 
 linked together, and which, when the mind of man beholdeth it, 
 must needs fly to Providence and Deity." The chains have, as 
 
 * Having stumbled across a quaint coincidence which may interest some 
 readers, we give it for what it may be worth. " Pallas (wisdom) takes her 
 name from vibrating a lance." In other words shakes a spear, " represent- 
 ing heroic virtue with wisdom."— (See The Book of God, III. 98). 
 
308 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 usual, a double and Masonic meaning. Love, friendship, and 
 true " brotherhood " are also chains held together by many 
 bands or links firmly soldered, and difficult to break. 
 
 Bacon moves the Queen to friendly relations with France by 
 showing how their mutual interests should form a bond of union 
 between them, and, by means of her Majesty's friendship, 
 " solder the link * which religion hath broken." 
 
 He is expressing much the same thought about the Queen 
 which is in the speech of King Philip to Pandulfo, the Pope's 
 legate, regarding his own recent alliance with the English 
 King : 
 
 * This royal hand and mine are newly knit, 
 And the conjunction of our inward souls 
 Married in league, coupled and linked together 
 With all religious strength of sacred vows. 1 ' f 
 
 The wise words of Ulysses, commenting upon the anger of 
 Ajax because " Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him," come 
 often to the mind in reading such Baconian sayings. 
 
 " The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie." t 
 Nestor has rejoiced and laughed over the quarrel and conse- 
 quent disunion of the two rival parties. 
 
 " All the better, their fraction is more our wish than their 
 faction — but it was strong counsel a fool could disunite ! " 
 
 Bacon furnishes a reply. The wisest of princes, he tells us, 
 choose true and wise friends " participes curaruto," care-sharers, 
 for it is that which tieth the knot.§ Divisions and factions 
 weaken the state, and " the cord breaketh at last by the weakest 
 pull." Those are the strongest whose welfare joineth and 
 knitteth them in a common cause, || and since religion is, after 
 all, the chief band of human society, "it is well when church 
 and state are alike contained within the true band of unity." If 
 He is not so Utopian as to expect that men will ever think all 
 alike, on any one subject — there are " certain self-pleasing and 
 humorous minds which are so sensible of every restraint as 
 they go near to think their girdles and garters to be bonds and 
 shackles" — yet he gives this advice according to his "small 
 
 * Compare : " They are so linked in friendship." — 3 Hen. VI. IV. 3, 116. 
 t John III. 1. X Troilus and Cressida, II. 3. 
 § See Essay of Friendship. jj Ess. Sedition. «[ Of Unity 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 300 
 
 model." " In veste xarietatis sit, scissura non sit. 11 Uniformity 
 not the same as Unity — the bond of peace and of all virtues — and 
 humanity should be drawn together by the chains of sympathy 
 and mutual dependence, not rent asunder by hatred, jealousy, 
 and uncharitableness. 
 
 Thus we interpret the Cttains surrounding the Shields, foreign 
 or English, to be seen amongst our drawings. These shields 
 form links with many paper-marks, assuming the shapes by 
 turns of mirrors or hearts, or suppressing the escutcheon in 
 favour of the crown which should surmount it. Or the outline 
 of the shield is marked only by a wreath, or (in works, we think, 
 not original, but the product of many translators, editors, etc.) 
 by the chain, which sometimes includes shells and a pendant — 
 and which points to the order of the Golden Fleece as its origin. 
 
 The Heart Shields often contain or are surmounted by a cross 
 something like Luther's seal, or hearts are introduced into the 
 frame of a mirror-shield, as in the example taken from the 
 posthumous edition of Bacon's History of Henry VII. What a 
 parable the old paper-makers have given us here ! No need 
 for " drawing it into great variety by a witty talent or an in- 
 ventive genius, delivering it of plausible meanings which, it 
 never contained." * The parabolic meaning stands out plain 
 before our eyes as we hold that old sheet against the light for 
 the sun to stream through. 
 
 This Shield, modified to the form of a Mirror, is " the glass of 
 the understanding," the mirror of man's mind, which Bacon 
 calls the Microcosm — the little World reflecting the great world 
 without. " To hold the mirror up to nature," was one of his 
 chief endeavours. He would " show vice its own deformity," 
 kindly, gravely, or laughingly, "for it is good to mingle jest 
 with earnest,"! and " what forbids one to speak truth with a 
 laughing face ? "if 
 
 See the Bugle of which we have spoken, the Heart reminding 
 us of the whole-hearted devotion which must be brought to the 
 work of raising fallen humanity and regaining our paradise lost. 
 Then the scrolls, are they not to bring to mind the magic wand 
 of Mercury, once a scroll or book ? It was by books that this 
 
 * Pref . to Wisdom of the Ancients. 
 | Ess. of Discourse. X Horace quoted Promus, 10-11. 
 
310 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 regeneration was to be chiefly effected. By the Pearls of know- 
 ledge uniting the Scrolls, the ellipse which surrounds the mirror, 
 and the fleur-de-lis which surmounts the whole, we are again 
 bidden to confess that every good and perfect gift of genius, wit, 
 or knowledge comes from the great God who has created and 
 redeemed us, and who ever comforts, helps, and inspires us, 
 that we may glorify Him with our bodies and with our spirits, 
 which are His. 
 
 Returning for a minute to the bugles, we must say that it 
 appears incomprehensible how a paragraph such as the follow- 
 ing should be allowed to find its way into a book professedly 
 instructive, " founded upon lectures delivered at the London 
 Institution," and thereby claiming a certain authority : 
 
 " Post paper seems to have derived its name from the post- 
 horn, which, at one time, was its distinguishing mark. It does 
 not appear to have been used prior to the establishment of the 
 General Post-office (1670), when it became the custom to blow a 
 horn, to which circumstance, no doubt, we may attribute its 
 introduction." 
 
 The Post-horn or Bugle, was at the time of the establishment 
 of the post-office, more than three hundred and fifty years old. 
 Even supposing the writer to be speaking of the bugle or horn, 
 as used only in printed books, still it seems almost incredible 
 that an expert should be unaware of the presence of this same 
 "post-horn" in the works of Bacon thirty years before the 
 establishment of the post-office. As for the bugles or "post- 
 horns " in the writing-paper of Baconian correspondence, we 
 pass them lightly over, on account of their multitude, but some 
 specimens are given in the plates. 
 
 One more paper-mark, common in old religious books, is the 
 Fool's-cap. There are, as usual, various forms, some resemb- 
 ling a mitre, others diverging into distinct rays, five or seven, 
 which rays sometimes develop into coronets or radiant rising 
 suns. 
 
 The book before quoted proceeds to throw another sprinkling 
 of " puzzling dust " in our eyes by the following observa- 
 tions : 
 
 " The foolscap was a later device (than the jug or pot) and 
 does not appear to have been nearly of such long continuance 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 311 
 
 as the former. It has given place to the figure of Britannia, or 
 that of a lion rampant, supporting the cap of liberty on a pole. 
 The name, however, has continued, and we still denominate 
 paper of a particular size by the title of foolscap. The original 
 figure has the cap and bells, of which we so often read in old 
 plays and histories, as the particular head-dress of the fool who 
 at one time formed part of every great man's establishment. 
 
 " The water-mark of a cap may sometimes be met with, of a 
 much simpler form than just mentioned, resembling the jockey- 
 caps of the present day, with a trifling ornamentation or addition 
 to the upper part* The first edition of ' Shakespeare,'' printed 
 by Isaac Jaggard and Ed Blount, 1623, will be found to con- 
 tain this mark interspersed with several others of a different 
 character. No doubt the general use of the term cap to various 
 papers of the present day owes its origin to marks of this 
 description." f 
 
 Turning our backs for a short time upon authority, we ask 
 counsel of experience and research. First, as to the antiquity 
 of the Fool's cap ? The earliest printed book which contains it 
 seems to be the Golden Legend, written in 1370, but printed by 
 Caxton. J After this it is not infrequent, especially in the 
 modified forms which sometimes suggest a coronet or crown, 
 sometimes the rays of a rising sun. 
 
 Perhaps the thoughts which the fool's cap suggested were 
 akin to those in " Quarles' Emblems " : 
 
 " See'st thou this fulsome idiot : in what measure 
 He seems delighted with the antic pleasure 
 Of childish baubles ? Canst thou but admire 
 The emptiness of his full desire ? 
 Canst thou conceive such poor delights as these 
 Can fill th 1 insatiate soul, or please 
 The fond aspect of his deluded eye ? 
 Reader, such fools are you and I." § 
 
 The text which furnishes the motif of these lines is from 
 Psalm lxix. 5 : " O God, Thou knowest my foolishness, and my 
 sins are not hid from Thee." 
 
 * The writer omits to say that this " addition " is a fieur-de-lis, or other 
 sacred emblem. 
 
 t Herring, p. 104—106. 
 
 X The illustration given is copied from Sotheby's Principia. 
 
 § Quarles' Emblems, Book III. 2. 
 
312 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 In the modern edition, a child with a fool's cap and bauble 
 rides astride upon the world, which wears an ass's head. 
 
 Little as we have reason to trust any printed statements on 
 these subjects, yet there seems to be no cause for disbelieving 
 the uncalled-for assertion that the Fool's cap gave place to the 
 figure of Britannia, or that of a lion rampant. There are 
 apparently no modern Fool's caps, but " Britannias " are common 
 in English, and lions in foreign foolscap paper. So there can 
 be no harm, for the present at least, in registering this item of 
 knowledge. Yet we will, a little curiously, inspect our much- 
 esteemed ruled foolscap. Holding towards the light the sheet 
 on which we are about to write, we see that on one half it bears 
 the inscription, " Toogood's Superfine." This is truly its trade- 
 mark. According to our authority, on the other half we have 
 Britannia portrayed as on our national penny, seated, and occu- 
 pied as usual in ruling the waves. 
 
 This is the first impression. But Britannia should wear a 
 helmet, should bear in her hand a trident, and beside her a 
 round target or wheel, with the mixed crosses of St. George, 
 St. Patrick, and St. Andrew, in the Union Jack. 
 
 The lady of our paper-mark seems to be crowned with five 
 pearls. In her right hand she holds a Trefoil or fleur-de-lis, 
 in her left a Spear tipped with a diamond. By her side rests a 
 shield of elliptical form, and on it a plain cross. Beneath her 
 feet are the ancient marks of waters, and her image is framed by 
 three elliptical lines surmounted with a crown of pearls,'and the 
 Maltese cross and orb. Pearls, fleur-de-lis, diamond, crosses, 
 ellipses — surely again we see in the very texture of our paper 
 a reminder of the " Sovereign Lady," Truth ; the heavenly jewel 
 of knowledge tipping the spear which " pierces to the heart of 
 things ; " the pearls, the dew of heaven, the celestial manna, 
 which Truth affords. Then the threefold ellipse, the cross, 
 trefoil, and waters, are they not reminders of the fact that 
 knowledge without Faith is but vain, that of ourselves we can 
 do nothing, but that " all things are possible through the Holy 
 Spirit that strengthened us." * The trefoil which Truth holds 
 in her extended right hand is a silent emblem of the great 
 
 * Philippians iv. 13, Vulgate, noted in Bacon's Promus, as " against con- 
 ceyt of impossibilities." Fol. 114, 1242. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 313 
 
 doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, to which heaven and earth alike 
 bear witness. 
 
 Would anyone endeavour to explain away such an interpreta- 
 tion, and to say that this paper-mark either represents Britannia, 
 or that it represents nobody in particular; that the symbols 
 are imaginary, or that tkey have come together by chance ; 
 in short, that this is nothing but a manufacturer's work, 
 adopted by a certain firm, from whim or fancy, but with no 
 especial aim ? 
 
 Such conjectures cannot be accepted. For trade-marks are, as 
 it were, private property ; it is even actionable to appropriate 
 a name or device previously adopted for commercial pur- 
 poses. How, then, can we pronounce this paper-mark to be a 
 trade-mark, when, taking up a sheet from another parcel 
 marked " Joynson's Superfine," we find in it the same image of 
 " Britannia," or Truth, as that in Toogood's ? * The same, that 
 is, in all essential particulars — ellipses, pearls, diamond, cross, 
 crown, trefoil, water — yet with differences in small details such 
 as we hope to show in similar wood-cuts in the " Baconian '' 
 books, and such as are perceptible in paper-marks of the same 
 design, three hundred years old. 
 
 Joynson's mark is one-tenth of an inch smaller in all direc- 
 tions than Toogood's. The waves are fewer, the cross on the 
 shield of thinner proportions ; the garment of Truth, which in 
 Toogood's pattern is loose, fits tightly in Joynson's similar 
 design. We say, then, that this is no mere trade-mark. It is 
 an emblematic or hieroglyphic design, deliberately adopted and 
 reproduced by two distinct firms of paper-makers. It bears 
 witness to a mutual understanding, and to a traditional method 
 amongst them of transmitting secret information, and, as we 
 think, cardinal points of religious doctrine. 
 
 For, examine, trace, catalogue as we may, we never get away 
 from these chief and dominant ideas and meditations of Bacon 
 upon the unity and diversity and universality of God, in religion 
 as in nature — of the beauty, love, and order in creation — that 
 love and truth are inseparable — that the Bible and nature are 
 God's two great lights, the greater light to rule the day of 
 
 * Since writing this we have seen another mark where a man's figure, 
 Time, we think, takes the place of Truth. Bacon says that Truth is the 
 daughter of Time, not of Authority. 
 
 W 
 
314 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 spiritual life, the lesser light to rule the night of intellectual 
 darkness — and that man himself is the little world in which 
 the whole great world, the universe, is reflected and mirrored. 
 
 Never for an instant are we allowed to forget that every good 
 gift, every power or faculty of soul or intellect, the reason and 
 speech which raise man above the level of the brute, are " God's 
 gifts," to be used to His glory, and for the benefit of His 
 creatures, and that all mankind is bound together by chains 
 and links of sympathy and brotherhood, as every part of know- 
 ledge is linked in a never-ending circle. 
 
 One more mark should be especially noted, for, although it is 
 amongst the oldest, it was used all through the life of Bacon, 
 not only in England, but in books and letters from abroad. 
 "The open hand" is variously interpreted of faith and trust, 
 or of generosity and open-handed liberality ; usually these 
 qualities in their best examples all go together. To the open 
 hand is sometimes added the trefoil, or the key, symbol of 
 secrecy, or the figure 3, perhaps again an allusion to the Trinity. 
 Every variety of size, proportion or disproportion, is to be seen 
 in these hands, which diverge into other forms, puzzling to the 
 copyist. Sometimes the five fingers spread out into rays, or a 
 crown, at other times contract, so as to suggest a vase. The 
 most notable alteration (the addition of a star) seems to have 
 taken place in the time of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and it was 
 retained long afterwards. 
 
 Mr. Sotheby says that an open hand with a star at the top 
 was in use as early as 1530, and probably gave the name to the 
 "hand" paper. 
 
 This remark again encourages the erroneous idea that these 
 are trade-marks, rather than the secret signs of a religious, 
 literary society, which they surely were. The addition of " the 
 star on the top " (sometimes not a star, but a rose or a fleur- 
 de-lis) was made just about the time when the other "Baconian" 
 marks began to appear, in the time, that is, of Sir Nicholas 
 Bacon.* 
 
 * Joel Munsell specifies 1539 as the " era" of the "ancient water-mark 
 of the hand with a star at the fingers' ends." He does not mention that 
 the star was then a new addition. By 1559 this sign must have become 
 sufficiently familiar to excite no inquiry, for in that year Richard Tottel 
 printed " in Flete Strete, at the signe of the Hand and Starre," a trans- 
 lation of Seneca's Troas, made by Jasper Haywood. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 315 
 
 The few specimens given in Plate III. are chiefly selected 
 from a very large number which are found in the paper of one 
 of Anthony Bacon's chief correspondents — Anthony Standen. 
 These letters were written from various parts of the continent, 
 and under various names. Sometimes they are signed La Faye, 
 at other times Andrieu Saadal. Under the latter name Standen 
 was cast into prison in Spain, upon suspicion of being a political 
 spy. The charge was disproved, and his release effected, 
 apparently by the Bacons' influence, but Standen's history has 
 yet to be written. Other specimens given from the Harleian, 
 Cottonian, Lansdowne, and Hatton Finch MSS., at the British 
 Museum, are in documents concerning the Bacons and their 
 friends. They are chiefly in letters or documents sent from 
 abroad, or in copies. 
 
 The secrecy attaching to all these matters is the strongest 
 proof that at some time or other there was danger involved in 
 the writing, printing, and disseminating of books. Now, when 
 there is no such danger, in free England and America at least, 
 the secrets would certainly be made public, were it not that the 
 vows of a secret society, vows perhaps heedlessly and ignorantly 
 taken by the large proportion of members, prevent the better 
 educated and more fully initiated amongst them from revealing 
 things which must, one would think, be, at the present hour, 
 matters chiefly of history or of antiquarian curiosity — immense 
 aids to the study of " Elizabethan " and " Jacobean " literature, 
 but hurtful to no one. 
 
 " It is much to be regretted that in tracing so curious an art 
 as that of the manufacture of modern paper, any definite con- 
 clusion as to the precise time or period of its adoption should 
 hitherto have proved altogether unattainable. The Royal Society 
 of Sciences at Gottingen, in 1735 and 1763, offered considerable 
 premiums for that especial object, but, unfortunately, all re- 
 searches, however directed, were utterly fruitless." * 
 
 So says our guide. But is it credible that in the history 
 of mechanical arts paper-making and printing are the only such 
 mechanical arts which have no record of their own origin ? 
 
 We cannot believe it. Some day, when the secret brother- 
 hoods, especially the higher grades, shall have persuaded them- 
 
 * Herring, Paper and Paper-making, 34. 
 
316 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 selves that " the time is ripe," or when narrow protectionist 
 systems shall, liberally and pro bono publico, give way to free 
 trade in knowledge (as they have given way to Francis Bacon's 
 other great desiderata — freedom of thought and freedom of the 
 press) — then it will, we are convinced, be easy for those who 
 hold the keys to unlock this closed door in the palace of Truth, 
 and to let us know the rights about these precious and in- 
 offensive arts and crafts. 
 
 The following is a list of the water-marks which we have 
 found in books previous to the Baconian period, or in MSS. or 
 other documents. The paper seems to be all foreign, from mills 
 chiefly in Holland or Germany. Some of these figures were 
 retained in the end of the sixteenth century and developed 
 into other forms. Each figure seems to have been varied 
 almost indefinitely. In our limited research we have seldom 
 found two precisely alike, and there seem to be about sixty 
 figures, not reckoning " nondescripts " and doubtful forms or 
 variations : — 
 
 1. Animals. Quadrupeds. — Ape or Monkey, Bull, Cat (or 
 Panther?), Dog (Hound or Talbot), Goat, Horse, Lamb (some- 
 times with flag), Lion (rampant or passant), Panther, Pig, Hog, 
 Swine, Stag (head or passant), Wolf. Birds. — Cock, Duck (or 
 Goose ?), Eagle (sometimes spread, or with two heads or four 
 legs), Goose, Pelican, Swan. Fish. — Carp, Dolphin, Porpoise 
 or Dolphin. Reptiles. — Lizard, Newt, Serpent. Mythical. — 
 Dragon or Griffin, Mermaid, Phoenix, Unicorn. 
 
 2. Flowers. — Bell-flower, Fleur-de-lis or Trefoil, Lily, Rose 
 (five-petaled, or nondescript, four-petaled). Fruits. — Cherries, 
 Fig, Grapes, Pear, Pomegranate. 
 
 3. Miscellaneous. — Anchor (sometimes in a circle), Angel or 
 Acolyte, Anvil, Ark, Bars with names, letters, etc., Battle-axe, 
 Bell, Bow and Arrows, Cross Bow, Bugle or Trumpet or Horn, 
 Cap (see Fool's Cap), Cardinal's Hat, Cask or Water-butt, Castle 
 or Tower,* Chalice, Circle (sometimes with cabalistic figures), 
 Compasses, Cords or Knot, Cornucopias (or Horns), Crescent, 
 
 * N.B.— This seems to be a modification of the Mounts and to end in 
 becoming candlesticks. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 317 
 
 Cross ^(Greek or Maltese), Crown, Fool's Cap, Globe, Golden 
 Fleece, Hammer, Hand, Heart, Horn, Bugle, Trumpet, Cornu- 
 copia, Key, Crossed Keys, etc., Ladder, Lamp, Lance or Spear, 
 Letters (chiefly when alone, P and Y), Lotus (?), Mitre, Moon, 
 Moore's Head, Mounts (3 or 7), Orb, Reliquary (for Pot ?) Scales 
 on Balance, Shears or Scissors, Shell (or bivalve?), Shield, 
 Ship, Spear, Spiral line or Mercury's Rod, Star, Sun or 
 flaming disk, Sword, Triangle with cross, etc., Trumpet (see 
 Horn), Vine (see Grapes), Water-butt (see Cask), Waves or 
 Water, Wheel (sometimes toothed). 
 
 Interpretation of these marks seems to be tolerably complete, 
 but the matter grows as we look at it, and is too large for these 
 pages. We hope to include parts of it with Francis Bacon's 
 " Figures in All Things." 
 
318 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PAPER-MARKS IN AND AFTER THE TIME OF FRANCIS BACON. 
 
 THE paper-marks which have hitherto been noticed were all 
 used in manuscripts or printed books before Bacon began 
 to publish, and chiefly on the continent. Many of them 
 were retained or adopted by the members of his society. But 
 their use became immensely expanded and diversified, and it 
 will be seen that the Baconian literature contains these paper- 
 marks so mixed (even within the covers of one volume) as to 
 dispose of the idea that a certain quantity of paper of one kind, 
 or with the mark of one maker, was apportioned for the printing 
 of a particular book. On the contrary, it seems to have been 
 almost the rule to use in one volume paper with three different 
 marks, and each of these marks varied three or iive times. 
 This system of mixture, or of ringing the changes upon a 
 certain set of patterns, makes it easy to establish a complete 
 chain of connection between the books belonging to the society. 
 Several of the marks are used as well by foreign as by English 
 printers. 
 
 There are three paper-marks which we have learnt especially 
 to associate with Francis Bacon and his brother Anthony. They 
 are to be seen throughout the printed books which we ascribe to 
 Francis, and one in particular is in the paper in which he and 
 Anthony, and their most confidential friends, corresponded, 
 whether in England or abroad. These marks are : 
 
 1. The bunch of grapes. 
 
 2. The pot, or jug. 
 
 3. The double candlesticks. 
 
 The grapes and the pots appear, in somewhat rude forms, as 
 early as the fourteenth century. The candlesticks seem in their 
 earlier stages to have been towers or pillars. As candlesticks, 
 even single, we have failed to find one earlier than 1580, and 
 then in a MS. document. (Plate VIII. 1.) Even this example 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 319 
 
 is rather suggestive of a castle than of a candlestick, and as 
 castles and towers of unmistakable forms (and sometimes show- 
 ing an affinity to the mounts spoken of in the last chapter) 
 appear in books published in Italy as early as the fourteenth 
 century, it is possible that here we have some of the many 
 scattered links in the chain of continuity in designs as well as 
 ideas. * 
 
 These three marks we associate with Francis Bacon : (1) 
 Because few of his letters are without the pot, and none of his 
 acknowledged books without one or more in the paper-marked 
 editions. (2) Because in works whose matter, language, and 
 other signs, internal and external, point to him as their author, 
 one or more of these marks runs through the book. (3) Because 
 when the book is of the kind which Bacon " collected," by the 
 aid of others, or revised and improved upon for other writers, 
 one at least of these three patterns (used, perhaps, once or twice 
 only in the whole book, or in the fly-leaves) ackowledges the 
 touch of his hand. In such cases, the paper-marks in the body 
 of the book are quite different, or there are none. To begin 
 with the candlesticks, of which patterns may be seen on Plate 
 VIII. These, we believe, were the latest and least frequent of 
 the three, being used in the double form only in editions of 
 Bacon's works published after his death. They are placed first 
 because their meaning is, perhaps, the deepest of any, and the 
 most far-reaching, being intimately connected with many of 
 Bacon's greatest thoughts and " fixed ideas " ; consequently, 
 with a large section of his philosophy, to which the opening 
 verses of the Bible are the text and the key-note : 
 
 " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 
 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was 
 upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon 
 the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light : and 
 there teas light." 
 
 These words are also the key-note to Rosicrucianism. In the 
 Fama Fraternitatis we read : 
 
 " Our axiomata shall immovably remain unto the world's end, 
 
 * Sotheby says that grapes occur in books printed at Mentz, Strasburg, 
 Nuremberg, Basle, and Cologne, and that they were produced by Caxton, 
 but are not in any book printed in the Netherlands. 
 
320 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 and also the world in her highest and last age shall not attain to 
 see anything else ; for our ROTA takes her beginning from that 
 day when God spake FIAT, and shall end when He shall speak 
 PEREAT." 
 
 Another Rosicrucian work thus expresses the same ideas : 
 " In respect that God Almighty is the only immediate agent 
 which actuates the matter (of the world), it will not be amiss to 
 speak something of Him, that we may know the cause by His 
 creatures, and the creatures by their cause.'' Then follow some 
 verses in which the poet compares his soul to a mole, " im- 
 prisoned in black entrenchments, . . . heaving the earth to take 
 in air, 1 ' and " mewed from the light of day." He prays : 
 
 " Lord, guide her out of this sad night, 
 And say once more, Let there be light." 
 
 The same writer says, in another place : 
 
 " We read that darknesse was upon the face of the deep, and 
 the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Here you 
 are to observe that, notwithstanding this processe of the Third 
 Person, yet there was no light, but darknesse on the face of the 
 deepe, illumination being the office of the Second (Person). 
 Wherefore God also, when the matter was prepared by love for 
 light, gives out his FIAT LUX, which was no creation, as most 
 think, but an Emanation of the Word, in whom was life, and that 
 life is the light of men. This is the light whereof St. John 
 speaks, that it shines in the darknesse, and the darknesse 
 comprehendeth it not." * 
 
 That he "may not be singular on this point," the author 
 quotes Pimandrus, who, in the Book of the Creation, informs 
 Trismegistus : "I am that Light, the Pure Intelligence, thy 
 God." In another work the same Eugenius argues that, "to 
 come to the point, these invisible, central artists are lights, 
 seeded by the First Light in that primitive emanation, or SIT 
 LUX — Let there be light — which some falsely render FIAT 
 LUX — Let light be made. For nature is the voice of God, not 
 a mere sound or command, but a substantial, active breath, 
 
 * Anthroposophia Theomagica. "Eugenius Philalethes." Published 
 later as the work of Thomas Vaughan. See " Vaughan's Magical Writings," 
 reprinted and edited by E. A. Waite, 1888. Redway (Kegan, Paul, 
 Trubner & Co.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 321 
 
 proceeding from the Creator, and penetrating all things." * 
 In the Lumen di Lumine the same author describes " The New 
 Magical f Light Discovered and Communicated to the World." 
 Here we read of " a phantastic circle, within which stands a lamp 
 typifying the light of nature, the secret candle of God, which he 
 hath tinned in the elementsr It burns but is not seen, shining 
 in a dark place. Every naturall body is a kind of black 
 lanthorne ; it carries this candle within it : but the light 
 appears not ; it is eclipsed by the grossness of the matter. The 
 effect of this light is apparent in all things, but the light itself 
 is denied, or else not followed. The great world hath the sun 
 for his life and candle. According to the absence or presence 
 of this fire, all things in the world flourish or wither." 
 
 In the " Fasciculus Chemicus, or Chymical Collections made 
 English by James Hasolle," $ there is a prayer for the Intellectual 
 Light strongly resembling well-known prayers of Bacon, and on 
 the hieroglyphical frontispiece to this curious book is another 
 allusion to the mole as a type of the soul struggling towards 
 Light and Freedom. § Amongst many other emblems there is an 
 
 * Anima Magica Abscondita. " Eugenius Philalethes." Ed. A. E. Waite. 
 Redway. 
 
 | We must not allow ourselves to be puzzled or misled by the use of 
 language purposely adopted by the professors of the New Philosophy in 
 order outwardly to accord in some degree with the jargon of the alchemists. 
 Bacon explains very clearly his view of magic in the true sense. " The 
 chief business of the Persian magic (so much celebrated) was to watch the 
 correspondences between the architectures and fabrics of things natural 
 and things civil. , . . Neither are these all similitudes, but plainly the 
 footsteps of nature treading or printing upon different subjects and 
 matters. ... A thing of excellent use for displaying the unity of 
 nature, which is supposed to be the office of Primitive Philosophy." — (De 
 Aug. III. 1.) 
 
 " I must stipulate that magic, which has long been used in a bad sense, 
 be again restored to its ancient and honourable meaning. For among the 
 Persians magic was taken for a sublime wisdom, and the knowledge of the 
 universal consents of things, and so the three kings who came from the 
 East to worship Christ were called by the names of the Magi. I, however, 
 understand it as the science of hidden forms (inherent natures) to the 
 production of wonderful operations ; and by uniting (as they say) actives 
 with passives, displays the wonderful works of nature." — (lb. III. 5). 
 Natural magic, in short, displays not only the unity of nature, but also 
 the universal harmony of things; the mingling of heaven and earth — 
 Bacon's prime object. 
 
 X An anagram for the name of Elias Ashmole, the celebrated Freemason 
 and Rosicrucian antiquarian and historian, born, Lichfield, 1617. 
 
 § Frequent allusions of this sort remind us of Hamlet comparing the 
 Ghost (or Soul) of his father to " an old mole " working in the ground 
 
322 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 ash-tree, from which rises a scroll, surmounted by a square (or 
 " Templar ") cross, a sun and a moon. On the scroll is written : 
 " Quod est superior est sicut inferius." Beneath the tree is seen 
 a mole digging, and the motto : " Praximus in Sihis pulcherima, 
 Talpa in Terns operissima."" 
 
 In the lower margin of the picture the device is thus ex- 
 pounded : 
 
 " These Hieroglyphics vaile the vigorous Beames 
 Of an unbounded Soul : The Scrowle and Schemes 
 The full interpreter : But now's concealed, 
 Who through (Enigmas lookes, is so reveald." 
 
 In the New Atlantis (which so-called fragment of Bacon's is 
 the same as the Journey to the Land of the Rosicrucians), * we 
 read of a great pillar of light rising from the sea a great way 
 towards heaven ; and on the top of it, a large cross of light, 
 which was regarded as a heavenly sign. " One of the wise men 
 (of the society of the Rosier ucians), after offering up prayer to 
 God for his grace in showing him this miracle, causes his boat 
 to be softly rowed towards the pillar, but ere he came near, the 
 pillar and cross of light brake up, and cast itself abroad into a 
 firmament of many stars, which also soon vanished. 1 ' The wise 
 man presently informs the travellers to his land : " You see we 
 maintain a trade, not for gold, silver or jewels, nor for any com- 
 modity of matter, but only for God's first creature, which was 
 light, to have light, I say, of the growth of all parts of the 
 world." 
 
 The merchants whom the Atlanteans or Rosicrucians send 
 forth they call " Merchants of Light," and in " certain hymns 
 and services of laud and thanks to God for his marvellous 
 works," there are, they say, forms of prayers invoking His aid 
 and blessing, " for the illumination of our labours, and the 
 turning them into good and holy uses." 
 
 Can we read these words without recalling one of Bacon's 
 
 (Hamlet, 1. 5), and of the " blind mole casting copped hills to heaven " in his 
 efforts toward air and light (See Pericles I. 1, 98 — 102). 
 
 * This last, though published twenty years later than the New Atlantis, 
 appears from its language to be the first edition. The Atlantis was, by 
 Bacon's order, published after his death by his secretary, Dr. Rawley. It 
 is inserted without date, though with separate title-page, between the 
 Sylva Sylvarvm, 1640, and the Hist, Life and Death. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 323 
 
 most beautiful prayers, part of which concludes the " Plan " of 
 the Novum Organum ? * 
 
 " Thou, Father ! who gavest the visible light as the first- 
 born of Thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual 
 light as the top and consummation of Thy workmanship, be 
 pleased to protect and gove"rn this work, which, coming from 
 Thy goodness, returneth to Thy glory." 
 
 In another prayer, we find the great student earnestly entreat- 
 ing that 
 
 " Human things may not prejudice such as are divine ; neither 
 that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling 
 of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity or intellectual 
 night may arise in our minds towards the divine mysteries." " 
 
 Bacon is never weary of finding analogies between the bright- 
 ness of heaven and the light of truth, knowledge, heavenly 
 thoughts, " heaven-born poesy." In the dullest minds some 
 spark, some glimmer of intelligence may, he thinks, be kindled, 
 and the faintest rays will penetrate into darkest places. 
 
 " How far that little candle sheds its beams ! 
 So shines a good deed in a naughty world." 
 
 It would be a grand thing, he said, " if a man could succeed 
 in kindling a light in nature— a light that should, by its very 
 rising, touch and illuminate knowledge ; " and he describes the 
 ancient churches as " torches in the dark." In the Wisdom of 
 the Ancients, suggestive metaphors are used, or fables expounded 
 of Vulcan and the efficacy of fire, and of the games of the torch 
 instituted to Prometheus, in which the object is to keep the torch 
 alight and in motion. The torch is like the candlestick, the 
 means by which the light is maintained and transmitted ; it 
 usually symbolises the mind of man, his " pure intelligence." 
 " Solomon," Bacon says, " was one of the clearest burning lamps 
 whereof he himself speaketh . . . when he saith, the spirit of 
 man is the lamp of God wherewith He searcheth all inwardness.'* 
 
 There are men whom fortune has " set on a hill " ; they have 
 
 * Published after his death in Baconiana, by his friend, Dr. Tenison.and 
 by him entitled "The Writers Prayer." See Spedding, Works, VII., p. 
 259. 
 
 t " The Student's Prayer/' lb. 
 
324 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 position, perhaps, as well as powers of mind ; wealth as well as 
 ability. These must act as beacons, * to guide the traveller from 
 afar ; others may perform the humbler but still useful offices of 
 lamps, lanterns, tapers, candles. The slightest efforts, well 
 directed, should not be despised, and we cannot dispense with 
 even the soft radiance of the " watch candle, 1 ' or the shy, retiring 
 helper, who never will assert himself, and prefers to work un- 
 recognised — 
 
 " Like the glowworm in the night, 
 The which hath fire in darkness, none in light. 11 1 
 
 There are those who, though incapable of emitting the light 
 of original thought from themselves, can yet afford mechanical 
 help to others. Such lowly but willing spirits are compared to 
 " candle-holders," or torch-bearers, who do not merely look on 
 whilst others labour, but who shed light from the torch which 
 has been put into their hand. There were and are a multitude 
 of such candle-holders in the society of which we speak. 
 
 In collating the Baconian and Rosicrucian works, no one can 
 fail to observe the noble spirit of self-sacrifice, and disregard of 
 personal interest, which pervades them. 
 
 " Be not as a lamp that shineth to others, and yet seeth not 
 itself, but as the Eye of the World, that both carrieth and useth 
 light." J " For," says Bacon, in another place, " the sense is 
 God's lamp," § and he gives the King credit for being that which 
 he desired him to be, " a clear-burning lamp." 
 
 In the Novum Organum, unwise experiments are compared 
 to a " mere groping in the dark," but the true method of 
 experience first lights a candle, and then, by means of the 
 candle, shows the way. fl The communication of knowledge is 
 described as that " of one candle with another, which lights up 
 
 * It is worthy of notice that the Bacon family in early times spelt their 
 name Becon or Beacon. Some of them seem to have written under this name, 
 and there is a work by Thomas Becon, 1563-4, in which, on the title-page 
 of the second volume, his name changes from Becon to Beacon. Francis 
 Bacon, " who could not pass by a jest," cannot have failed to see this oppor- 
 tunity for a quibble. 
 
 f Pericles, II. 3. 
 
 X Gesta Grayorum. Comp. Part II. Tamburlaine the Great IV. 3 ; 
 L. 88 ; V. 3 ; L. 3, 158. 
 
 § Nat. Hist. X. Pref. || Speech. «[ Nov. Org. I. 82. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 325 
 
 at once/' * This is somewhat the same as Bacon's other figure 
 of "handing down the lamp of tradition." He urges men to 
 unite in one great effort, rather than to fritter away their powers 
 in small detached experiments and weak works. " Were it not 
 better for a man in a fair room to set up one great light or 
 branching candlestick of lights, than to go about with a small 
 watch-candle in every corner ? " | 
 
 " For mere contemplation, which should be finished in itself 
 without casting beams of light and heat upon society, assuredly 
 divinity knows it not." $ 
 
 " Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, 
 Not light them for ourselves : for if our virtues 
 Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike 
 As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched 
 But to fine issues." § 
 
 The first twenty-six Shakespeare sonnets repeat these senti- 
 ments. The poet reproaches his friend, 
 
 11 That thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, 
 Feed'st thy life's flame with self-substantial fire ; " || 
 
 and, although he continually changes the figure, the same idea 
 is worked out in many different ways. He speaks of the 
 enthusiasm which gives fire to our nation, fl and which set men's 
 hearts on fire ; of the fires of love, hatred, zeal, or sedition, 
 which glow, burn, smoulder, are blown up into flame, or 
 smothered and extinguished ; ** sparks which fly abroad lighting 
 upon free and noble minds and spirits apt to be kindled ; 
 sparks of affection, of grace, "liberty, spirit, and edge." "ft "My 
 heart," he says in one of his prayers, "hath been an un quenched 
 coal on thine altar." 
 
 " Have a care," says one of the councillors in Bacon's device, 
 " The Order of the Helmet," " that the light of your state do 
 not go out, or burn dim or obscure." Bacon was continually 
 trying to urge upon the sovereign for the time being, her or his 
 duties and responsibilities in regard to the handing on of the 
 lamp. He received little encouragement from Elizabeth, but by 
 
 * Ess. of Sphinx. t Advt. of L. I. 1. Comp. with the above. 
 
 X Be Aug. VII. 1. § See M. M. I. 1, 29—40. || Son. I. 
 
 f Of Calling Pari. 1615. ** Hist. Hen. VII. 
 
 tt Advt. II., De Aug. VIII. 2, etc. 
 
326 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 dint of impressing upon the mind of the King, not only that he 
 ought to assist learning, but that he was learned, and capable of 
 doing what he pleased in the fields of literature and science, he 
 seems to have succeeded in making that dull monarch appear, 
 and believe himself to be, something like the bright creature 
 which Bacon so earnestly desires that he should become. 
 There " are joined in your Majesty the light of nature, the 
 light of learning, and the light of God's holy spirit (and that) 
 fourth light, the light of a most wise and well-compounded 
 counsel. 1 ' * 
 
 A icatch-candle is the emblem of " care and obsemation." In 
 a letter to King James (May 31, 1612) Bacon says, " My good 
 old mistress was pleased to call me her watch-candle, because it 
 pleased her to say I did continually burn (and yet she suffered 
 me to waste almost to nothing). 1 ' Elsewhere he says : " There 
 should be a sort of night-watch set over nature, as showing 
 herself rather by night than by day. For these may be 
 regarded as night studies, by reason of the smallness of the 
 candle and its continual burning." f 
 
 Amongst our candlesticks is one (Plate VIII.) from the 
 Observations on Ccesar's Commentaries of 1609. This volume 
 has on its title-page a medallion portrait of a young man, six- 
 teen or seventeen years of age, who bears a striking likeness 
 to the juvenile portraits of Francis Bacon. These Observations 
 on " those most excellent Commentaries that Caesar writ " J are 
 published with the name of " Clement Edmundes, Remem- 
 brancer of the Cittie of London." To occupy such a position 
 Edmundes must have been a man of some standing ; his, there- 
 fore, cannot be the boyish portrait which figures at the top of 
 this title-page. May we not rather believe it to be that of the 
 youth who for seven years devoted himself, heart and soul, to 
 the study of the ancient authors, and who thus speaks of these 
 very Commentaries, with which we see that he was more than 
 ordinarily acquainted ? § 
 
 " As for Julius Caesar, the excellency of his learning needeth 
 
 * Pacification of the Church. f Nov. Org. II. 4. $ 2 Hen. VI. IV. 7. 
 
 § Again we insert a saving clause in regard to " Anthonie," the " deare 
 brother," fellow-student in youth, twin in mind and face, who may prove 
 to have been the translator or inditer of these " Commentaries." 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 327 
 
 not to be argued from his education, or his company, or his 
 speeches ; but in a farther degree doth declare itself in his 
 writings and works ; whereof some are extant and permanent, 
 and some have unfortunately perished. For first . . . there 
 is left unto us that excellent history of his oicn wars, which 
 he entitled only a Commentary, . . . wherein all succeeding 
 times have admired the solid weight of matter, and the real 
 passages and lively images of actions and persons, expressed 
 in the greatest propriety of words and perspicacity of narration 
 that ever was." * 
 
 The one little candlestick referred to is the only one of the 
 kind which as yet we have met with ; it may, however, be 
 expected that other examples will be found in early editions 
 of some of the boyish works published by his friends ; for we 
 suppose this figure to represent some utterance or aspiration 
 of the youthful student, that he might himself be a humble 
 light, or candle-holder, for others. This conjecture is not un- 
 reasonable, seeing that immediately after his death, and for 
 fifty years subsequently, his immediate friends and followers 
 developed and made conspicuous use of this symbol in editions 
 of his acknowledged works, and in others which we ascribe 
 to him. 
 
 And would anyone find it easy to devise an emblematic 
 water-mark more suitable for works such as Francis Bacon 
 engaged in than this of the double candlesticks, with their 
 varied, " bifold " meanings ? Once, perhaps, the mounts of 
 knowledge, then rocks, castles, towers difficult to scale or sur- 
 mount — pillars of Hercules, bounding and obstructing human 
 knowledge and aspiration — they are now converted into pillars 
 of light, beacons for guidance and encouragement to distressed 
 and weary travellers. They are lights of truth and beauty. 
 The divine light of the Holy Spirit and the light of the human 
 intellect. The light of God's Word and the light of nature. 
 God's " two witnesses, . . . the two candlesticks standing 
 before the God of the Earth." f 
 
 In combination with the candlesticks are fleur-de-lis, trefoil, 
 pearls, and other symbols of the Holy Spirit ; sometimes an 
 
 * See a long criticism, from which the above is condensed. — Advance- 
 ment of Learning, I. 1. 
 t Revelations xi. 3, 4. 
 
328 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 E C or C R ; almost invariably grapes piled in a pyramid or 
 diamond. The bunch of grapes, alone, or in combination with 
 other figures, is the second great mark in Bacon's books ; he 
 has explained their symbolism : 
 
 "As wines which flow gently from the first treading of the 
 grape are sweeter than those that are squeezed out by the wine- 
 press, because these last have some taste of the stones and skin 
 of the grape ; so those doctrines are very sweet and healthy 
 which flow from a gentle pressure of the Scripture, and are not 
 wrested to controversies and commonplaces." * 
 
 Again : "I find the wisdom of the ancients to be like grapes 
 ill-trodden : something is squeezed out ; but the best parts are 
 left behind ; " f and he likens the laws to " the grapes that, 
 being too much pressed, yield an hard and unwholesome wine." 
 His own " method, as wholesome as sweet," J tolerant of other 
 men's opinions, whilst firm in his own, appears in these words : 
 
 " I may say, then, of myself (since it marks the distinction so 
 truly), it cannot be that we should think alike, when one drinks 
 water and the other wine. . . . Now, other men have, in the 
 matter of sciences, drunk a crude liquor like water, either flow- 
 ing spontaneously from the understanding, or drawn up by 
 logic, as by wheels from a well. Whereas I pledge mankind in 
 a liquor pressed from countless grapes — from grapes ripe and 
 fully seasoned, collected in clusters, and gathered, and then 
 squeezed in the press, and then, finally, purified and clarified 
 in the vat." § 
 
 And here, in his books, are the grapes in clusters or " collec- 
 tions " 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. He 
 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." 
 
 De Aug. IX. 1. f" Controversies of the Church, 
 t Ham. II. 2. § Nov. Org. 1. 123. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 329 
 
 " 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. 11 Then 
 he proceeds to press, out of {he 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 fleur- 
 de-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." * 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 Plate XL 7, Plate XII. 46, 
 52. It is well known how Ben Jonson laboured in the pro- 
 duction of that famous folio. But, with regard to the oft- 
 repeated fleur-de-lis, again we are reminded that the truth 
 which we express is itself divine ; that it is of the nature of the 
 Holy Spirit, who Himself guides us unto all truth. " To one is 
 given by the Spirit the word of wisdom ; to another, the word of 
 knowledge, by the same Spirit; to another, faith; ... to 
 another, the gifts of healing ; ... to another, prophecy ; to 
 another, divers kinds of tongues ; to another, the interpretation 
 of tongues, but all these worketh that self-same Spirit, dividing 
 to every man severally as he will." \ 
 
 The grape, more than any other fruit, furnished Bacon's 
 bright imagination with images by which to explain his ideas of 
 
 * Often the letters are very confused or inverted, or written so that 
 they can only be read in a mirror. This complicates matters. We do 
 not pretend to give positive opinions about these things. 
 
 t Cor. xii. 8—11. 
 
 X 
 
330 FKANOIS BACON 
 
 the cheering and stimulating effects of true knowledge ; its ten- 
 dency as a vine to spread and ramify, and in its fruits to cluster. 
 As in many places he shows that all sciences hang together 
 like links in one great chain, so here he finds that though 
 " chance disco vereth new inventions by one and one, science 
 finds them by clusters" * and " axioms rightly discovered . . . 
 produce works, not here or there one, but in clusters." | True 
 to himself in his longing after truth, and his aversion to con- 
 troversy, he exclaims : " God grant that we may contend with 
 other Churches, as the vine with the olive, which of us shall bear 
 best fruit ; and not as the briar with the thistle, which of us is 
 most unprofitable." J 
 
 When we come to a consideration of title-pages and their 
 hieroglyphic illustrations, we shall again see the vine in full 
 bearing, supported by pillars or props, the powerful or wealthy 
 authorities in Church or State, and the munificent " benefactors " 
 of private life, who, though they could, perhaps, not contribute 
 to the clusters or the growth of the vine, could help to protect 
 and maintain it. For, Bacon again explains, " the sympathy of 
 preservation is as . . . the vine which will creep towards a stake 
 or prop that stands near it/' § 
 
 Like almost all of Bacon's chosen or adopted symbols, the 
 vine, as the emblem of truth, is very ancient. Indian mythology 
 represents Osiris (the Grecian Bacchus) as a wonderful con- 
 queror who travelled over the face of the whole earth, winning 
 territories wherever he came, yet to the advantage of those whom 
 he subdued. Here is Bacon's figure of " taking all knowledge to 
 be his province" for the benefit of humanity. 
 
 Osiris is said to be the son of Ehea (the Holy Spirit), and his 
 chief attendants were Pan, Nature ; a dog, Experience ; Maro, a 
 great planter of the vine (of knowledge) ; and Triptolemus, much 
 skilled in husbandry. He is described with the Nine Muses and 
 the Sciences in his train. It is needless to follow the mythical 
 Osiris into his various connections with Apollo, music, songs, 
 dancing, and with the arts of speech and healing. All these 
 spring from truth, nature, and cultivation of the mind and soul 
 {husbandry) ; and that the vine was from the earliest times the 
 
 * Instn. Nat. 11. f Gt. Instn. Plan, rep. Nov. Org. I. 70. 
 J Controversies of the Church. § Apologia, 1603. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 331 
 
 symbol of truth, is certain from many passages of the Holy 
 Scripture, where Jesus Christ even speaks of Himself under this 
 figure. " I am the true Vine, and My Father is the Husband- 
 man. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He purgeth it, 
 that it may bring forth more fruit." * 
 
 The poet-philosopher has^ollected his clusters, and it remains 
 to express them, and to store up the precious juice so that in 
 due season it may be poured into other men's vessels. 
 
 In the Promus he condenses into two words an adage of 
 Erasmus, " Vasis — Fons." f The man who can originate nothing, 
 but who draws all from others is the vase ; the source whence 
 he draws is the fountain. Bacon adopts this notion, and 
 expands it in all directions, humbly appropriating to himself the 
 functions of the cistern, bucket, vase, pot, or pitcher. " I am, 
 as I formerly said, but a bucket and cistern to that fountain, 
 and so he wrote in a Latin letter to Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge : 
 
 " All things, and all the growths thereof, are due to their 
 beginnings. And, therefore, seeing that I drew my beginnings 
 of knowledge from your fountains, I have thought it right to 
 return to you the increase of the same." 
 
 Elsewhere he says that " the mind of man is not a vessel 
 sufficiently capacious to comprehend knowledge without helps," 
 and that the " Divine water of knowledge is first forced up into 
 a cistern and thence fetched and drawn for use, or else it is re- 
 ceived in buckets and vessels immediately where it springeth." 
 " Divinity," he adds, " hath been reduced to an art, as into a 
 cistern, and the streams of doctrine fetched and derived from 
 thence." J 
 
 The means for the advancement of learning, he says, include 
 three things : 
 
 * John xv. 1. And see Ezekiel xvii. 5 — 10. Psa. lxxx. 14, 15. Canticles 
 i. 16 ; vi. 11 ; vii. 12 ; viii. 11, 12. Jer. ii. 21. Rev. xiv. 18. Matt. xx. 
 1—7, etc. 
 
 | Promus, 698, f rom Eras : Adagia, 292. 
 
 X Observe the frequency of the vase as a decoration in the architecture 
 •of our great buildings dedicated to art, science, or literature. Although 
 often, in modern edifices, private houses, etc., this symbol is used ignor- 
 antly and as a mere ornament, it was not so two or three hundred years 
 ago, nor is it always so at the present day. 
 
332 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 " The places of learning, the books of learning, and the persons 
 of the learned. For as water, whether it be the dew of heaven, 
 or the springs of the earth, easily scatters and loses itself in the 
 ground, except it be collected into some receptacle, where it may, 
 by union, consort, comfort, and sustain itself (and for that cause 
 the industry of man has devised aqueducts, cisterns, and pools), 
 ... so this excellent liquor of knowledge, whether it descend 
 from divine inspiration, or spring from human sense, would 
 soon perish and vanish into oblivion, if it were not preserved in 
 books, traditions, and conferences, and specially in places 
 appointed for such matters." 
 
 These passages are sufficient to show the drift of Bacon's ideas 
 with regard to the vase or pitcher symbol. It is to remind us 
 that the heavenly liquor of knowledge must not be wasted, but 
 stored up and poured forth for the use and delight of others. 
 This pitcher or pot is impressed not only on the private letters of 
 Francis and Anthony Bacon — or perhaps it is safer to say, of the 
 Bacon family — and their confidential correspondents, but on the 
 pages of nearly every English edition of works acknowledged as 
 " Bacon's," published before the eighteenth century. 
 
 There are certain accessories to the Baconian pitchers, one 
 at least being always present : (1) A rising sun, formed by 
 the cover or round top of the pot ; (2) five rays ; (3) pearls ; 
 (4) fleur-de-lis ; (5) a four-petaled flower, or a Maltese cross ; 
 (6) a moon or crescent ; (7) the bull's horns in a crown ; 
 (8) grapes ; (9) a diamond, triangle, ellipse, or heart. Some- 
 times there are two handles distinctly formed, as SS ; often on 
 the body of the pot are letters — they may be initials, as A B, 
 and F B, often found in the correspondence of the brothers ; or 
 S S, Sanctum Sanctorum, etc. ; R C, Rosy Cross ; F or F F, 
 Frater or Fratres ; G G, Grand Geometrician — God, according 
 to Freemason books. 
 
 Resp. In the midst of Solomon's Temple there stands a G, 
 
 A letter for all to read and see ; 
 
 But few there be that understand 
 
 What means the letter G. 
 Ex. My friend, if you pretend to be of this Fraternity 
 
 You can forthwith and rightly tell what means that letter G. 
 
 This letter was associated with the third sacred name of 
 God in Hebrew — Ghadol, Magnus ; but also the Masonic Cyclo- 
 pcedia refers it to the Syriac Gad, the German Gott, the English 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 333 
 
 God, all derived from the Persian Goda, signifying Himself. 
 The reference to Geometry is to be seen in the concluding lines 
 of the above doggerel, which, says the encyclopaedist, may go 
 for what it is worth : 
 
 " By letters four and science five, 
 This G aright doth stand, 
 In a due art and proportion : 
 You have your answer, friend." 
 
 The Pot was one of the earliest paper-marks ; in examples as 
 old as 1352 we find it extremely rude in outline, like an ill- 
 drawn pint-pot of the present day, or of the same proportions, 
 round-bodied.* Perhaps the original mark alluded to the pot 
 of manna said to have been laid up in the Ark of the Covenant 
 by Aaron. This pot of manna is mentioned in the " Royal Arch 
 Degree " in Masonry, but the author of the Royal Masonic Cyclo- 
 pazdia rejects it, saying that it has no significance. In later 
 specimens than Caxton's the pot becomes usually more graceful, 
 and more like the sacramental chalice, yet without having any 
 of the accessories enumerated above. 
 
 If Francis Bacon or his father, Sir Nicholas, helped to devise 
 new or to develop old symbolic water-marks, this idea of a pot of 
 manna would commend itself to them, lending itself easily to 
 the further development of pots and jugs whence issue bunches 
 of grapes— the fruits of knowledge ; pearls, the dew of heaven — 
 Wisdom ; manna, the spiritual food, all symbols of the Holy 
 Spirit, Truth, the gifts of reason and sweet speech, which link 
 themselves together in such passages as the following from the 
 Natural History, or Sylva Sylmrum : "f 
 
 " There be three things for sweetness : sugar, honey, manna. 
 ... I have heard from one that was industrious in husbandry 
 that the labour of the bee is about the wax, and that he hath 
 known in the beginning of May honeycombs empty of honey, and 
 within a fortnight, when the sweet dews fall, filled like a cellar. 
 
 A note in Spedding's edition of the Works says here : " Bacon's 
 
 * See " Etudes sur les Filigraves des Papiers" E. Midioux et A. Matton, 
 1868. 
 
 t This work, as has been said, is considered by the present writer to be 
 a masterpiece of ambiguous writing— a study in metaphor and simile from 
 beginning to end. These extracts concerning manna are thus interpreted 
 See Emblems, etc. 
 
334 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 informant took the same view of the matter as Aristotle, and 
 probably was directly or indirectly influenced by his opinion. 
 According to Aristotle, the bees manufacture the viax from 
 flowers, but simply collect the honey which falls from the sky" 
 The "informant," we think, was probably Aristotle himself, 
 and Bacon was here thinking of his own husbandry and of the 
 hive in which he made the frame or comb, wherein the labour 
 consisted, whilst his busy working bees merely collected the dew of 
 knowledge without any great exertion to themselves, but thus 
 enabling him rapidly to store up and methodise it for the 
 advancement of learning. 
 
 " It is reported by some of the ancients that there is a tree 
 called Occhus in the valleys of Hyrcania that distilleth honey in 
 the mornings. It is not unlike that the saps and tears of some 
 trees may be sweet. It may also be that some sweet juices may 
 be concocted out of fruits to the thickness of sugar. The like- 
 liest are the raisins of the sun [i.e., grapes]. The manna of 
 Calabria ... is gathered from the leaf of the mulberry tree, but 
 not upon such mulberry trees as grow in the valleys. Manna 
 falleth upon the leaves by night, as other dews do. . . . Cer- 
 tainly it were not amiss to observe a little the dews that fall 
 upon trees or herbs growing upon mountains ; for it may be 
 many dews fall that spend before they come to the valleys ; and 
 I suppose that he that would gather the best May-dew for medi- 
 cine should gather it from the hills. " * 
 
 Here, as in the preceding passage, Bacon had in his mind the 
 collecting of manna and other of the sweetest things which fall 
 chiefly from heaven, and the " distilling " and " concocting " 
 them into poetry — " sugared sonnets," " honeyed words," with 
 the dew of heaven, filled with thoughts and words sweeter than 
 manna. 
 
 What is the idea connected with all those crescent moons? 
 It is, we think, a very deep and comprehensive thought, and to 
 illustrate it we must turn to books of Hindu mythology, to the 
 Rabbinical writings, and to the Masonic symbolism drawn, it 
 would seem, from those ancient springs of mysticism, f 
 
 In the second Book of Kings xxiii. 5, it is said that Josiah 
 
 * Sylva Sylvarum, 612, 781. 
 
 t See for detailed particulars ;< The Book of God," Vol. I. 9—68 ; II. 102, 
 260 ; III. 31, 35, 205, 316, 324, 559.) 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 335 
 
 put down them that burnt incense unto Baal (the Sun) and to 
 the Moon, and Mazaloth. This word signifies, literally, the 
 flowing or distillations which emanated from the Spirit of waters. 
 And again, in Isaiah lxv. 11, we read, " Ye are they that prepare 
 a table for God, and that furnish an offering for Meni," that is, 
 for the Holy Spirit, called plurally the dispensers or distributers 
 of the manna or bread from Heaven. * 
 
 Here, then, the moon and the dew, pearls, or heavenly food, 
 are associated. " Meni," the Holy Spirit, was adored by the 
 Arabians under the name of Ma Nah ; and this adds great 
 interest to the symbolic miracle of the supernatural feeding of 
 the Israelites during their stay in the wilderness. The manna 
 with which they were supported was symbolic of the Ma Nah — 
 the nourisher, the comforter, the Holy Spirit of God. Surely, 
 living as they were in Arabia (the very country where Ma Nah 
 was adored) the Israelites must have been well aware of the 
 symbolic or mystical meaning of the heavenly food which was 
 for many months their daily bread. 
 
 Then again we read in the Bible that the Ark of the Covenant 
 (the sacred Chest or Coffer which was deposited in the most holy 
 place of the Tabernacle and the Temple) was made the receptacle 
 of the original tables of the law, of a quantity of manna in a 
 golden pot, and of Aaron's rod that had budded. Here is, there- 
 fore, a connection between manna and a pot. The manna was 
 found by the Israelites in the early morning, after the dew had 
 evaporated, and before the sun had sufficiently risen to melt it. 
 Manna, the dew, and the rise of the sun are thus connected. An 
 omer of the manna was preserved as a memorial in the sanctuary, 
 testifying to God's power and willingness to give food for the 
 subsistence of His people, in the most apparently destitute 
 circumstances. 
 
 The names Meni and Mazaloth, used by Isaiah, f both mean 
 the " Holy Spirit of God," the " Bread Dispensers." Meni was 
 also Mona, and Mon (Welsh), the Sacred Mountain of Paradise ; 
 she was Mens, the Everlasting Mind, the Logos of the Gentiles. 
 
 Now observe the highly-figurative nature of the passage lately 
 
 * This is the reading in the margin. Old editions print troop for " God," 
 and " that number " for " Meni," thus obscuring the sense. The marginal 
 readings of modern Bibles give the version of our text above. 
 
 t Isaiah lxv. 
 
336 
 
 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 quoted from the Sylva Sylvarum. The manna, the sweet dews 
 which fall in the stillness of the night, are not found upon such 
 mulberry trees as grow in the valleys, but upon trees and herbs 
 growing upon the mountains, the sacred hills and mounts of 
 knowledge, the Mountain of Paradise, the Everlasting Mind. 
 Here, indeed, we see the apparently dry notes of a commonplace 
 book gilded by the beams of heaven-born poesy, and converted 
 into "gold potable," a parable "deep and rich," truly "drawn 
 from the centre of the sciences." 
 
 Observe, further, how often the pearls and rays of our pots 
 arrange themselves in fives. 
 
 Five is the central figure in the mystical square of the Hindus, 
 used by them as an amulet, designed to represent the whole 
 world. 
 
 The even numbers (by a mystic symbolism which cannot here 
 be explained) designate the earthly, and the uneven numbers the 
 heavenly bodies. The numbers, as arranged in this cube, form 
 in every direction the sum of fifteen, this number consisting of 
 the sacred 3, emblem of the Supreme Being, and of 12, the 
 number of the " Messengers " in Hindu theology. 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 9 
 
 8 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 The number 5 thus occupies the middle station, and designates 
 the Sold of the World. This anima mundi, soul of the world, is a 
 central idea in the doctrine of the microcosm — man, a little world 
 himself. Upon this a large portion of Bacon's philosophy 
 
 in 
 
 hinges. It is also of fundamental importance in the philosophy 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 337 
 
 and mysticism of the Rosicrucians, which cannot be properly 
 understood without some knowledge of its meaning. The 
 Hermetic books are, as has been shown, full of allusions to it, 
 as the Holy Light, the Holy Spirit — " air shining with ethereal 
 light." Just so Bacon describes the soul, as " of an airy and 
 flamy nature" and thus fiiis goddess of the Hindus and the 
 Egyptians * is described as " The Soul of the World." 
 
 In the mystical square of 15, the Hindus draw a figure of a 
 man with his hands and feet extended to the four corners. He 
 is the image of the world, a real microcosm; as Bacon says, 
 " an ancient emblem that man was a microcosm or epitome of the 
 world." | In a work which the present writer believes to be 
 Bacon's — written or dictated by him about the year 1600 — we 
 read : 
 
 " Man in the beginning (I mean the substantiall inward man), 
 both in and after his creation for some short time, was a pure 
 Intellectual Essence, free from all fleshly, sensuall affections. 
 In this state the Anima, or Sensitive Nature, did not prevail 
 over the spirituall as it doth now in us. For the superior 
 mentall part of man was united to God by an essentiall contact, 
 and the Divine Light, being received in and conveyed to the 
 inferiour parts of the Soul, did mortifie all carnal desires. . . . 
 The sensuall, ccelestial, aetheral part of a man is that whereby 
 we move, see, feel, taste, and smell, and have commerce with all 
 material objects whatsoever. ... In plain terms, it is part 
 of the Soul of the World." 
 
 The writer explains at some length the nature of " this medial 
 soul or ethereal nature," and how by its means man's mind is 
 tuned to the coelestial harmonies. He repeats, though in different 
 words, many Baconian ideas of the vital spirits which are in 
 all nature — "in man, in beasts, in vegetables, in minerals, and 
 in everything this spirit is the mediate cause of composition 
 and multiplication ; " adding remarks which echo precisely the 
 ideas in the De Augmentis of the biform figure of nature — the 
 sensual nature of man as contrasted or allied with the rational 
 spirit, — the Mens, or concealed intelligence. (Here we have 
 
 * The Egyptians, though describing her as a Mother, yet use the 
 masculine pronoun in speaking of her. See The Book of God, I. i. 147. 
 
 t The Microcosm will be fully explained when we come to speak of the 
 Symbolic Language of Bacon's Secret Society. 
 
338 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 the Meni, the Moon, explained before.) " Now, as the divine 
 light flowing into the Mens (or intellect) did assimilate and con- 
 vert the inferior portions of the soul to God, so, on the contrary, 
 the tree of knowledge did darken and obscure the superior 
 portions, but awaked and stirred up the sinful nature. The sum 
 of this is — man." * 
 
 The writer winds up his treatise by " saluting the memory of 
 Cornelius Agrippa." "He is indeed my author, and next to 
 God I owe all that I have to Him." The Poet-philosopher then 
 concludes with some verses to this " great, glorious penman ! " 
 
 " The spirits of his lines infuse a fire 
 Like the World's Soul, which makes me thus aspire." 
 
 In another Eosicrucian document, or treatise (which we also 
 attribute directly to Bacon), the same thoughts are returned to, 
 in different language. It is not enough, says the writer, to call 
 the inward principle of life " a form, and so bury up the riches 
 of nature in this narrow and most absurd formality. ... To 
 be plain, then, this principle (of rational intelligence) is the soul 
 of the world, or the universall spirit of nature." | 
 
 In Timon of Athens there is a satirical allusion to the sad fall 
 of man from the first " pure intellectual essence in which he was 
 created," free from all fleshly and sensual affections. Noting 
 the ingratitude, the " monstrousness of man," in days " when 
 men must learn to dispense with pity, for policy sits above 
 conscience," the First Stranger exclaims : 
 
 " Why, this is the World's Soul ; and just of the same piece 
 Is every flatterers sport." 
 
 The pitcher, destined to receive and then pour forth the 
 heavenly liquor, must be of rare and precious materials, finely 
 wrought, and made in just proportions. 
 
 The dew or manna must be gathered before the full rising of 
 the sun, lest it should be melted and dissipated by too great 
 
 * See Anthroposophia Theomagica. " Magical writings of Thos. 
 Vaughan," edited in English by Arthur B. Waite, p. 26—33 (Redway), 
 Kegan, Paul, Trubner & Co., 1688. It is not a difficult work, as the 
 alarming title might lead us to suppose ; on the contrary, highly 
 interesting with a view to the present subject. 
 
 t See Anima Magica Abscondita, also edited by A. E. Waite — in the 
 same vol. as Anthroposophia. Published under the title of " The Magical 
 Writings of Thos. Vaughan." 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 339 
 
 heat. The revival of learning was indeed the rising of the sun, 
 the dawn of a new day to the world lying in darkness ; yet the 
 dew should be collected quietly, almost secretly, and safely 
 stored, before the blaze of a fiery zeal should injure and perhaps 
 destroy it. 
 
 The five rays, with their five pearls (or groups of pearls), 
 typify the soul of the world, the " divine intellectual spirit," 
 "awakened, 1 ' "uproused" by the sunrise. This soul of the 
 world has been with the spirits that are in prison — " cabinned, 
 cribbed, confined," like the soul of Hamlet or of the poet of the 
 Anthroposophia, who concludes one chapter with verses in 
 which are these lines : 
 
 " My sweetest Jesus ! 'twas Thy voice : ' If I 
 Be lifted up, I'll draw all to the sky.' 
 Yet I am here ! Fm stifled in this clay, 
 Shut up from Thee and the fresh east of day" 
 
 The ejaculation in the third line suggests a further allusion 
 to clay in the hands of the potter, which must surely have 
 presented itself to poetic Bible-students such as the Bacon 
 family certainly were. They must have thought of the pot of 
 clay as an image of human life, a very " compounded " but a 
 most brittle and perishable thing. 
 
 " Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, 
 or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the 
 cistern, then shall the dust return to the earth as it teas ; and the 
 spirit shall return unto God that gave it. 1 ' • 
 
 The clay is but the poor earthy material into which all the 
 vital spirits of nature are " infused and mixed up with the clay, 
 for it is most true that of all things in the universe, man is the 
 most composite." | 
 
 Falstaff is made to use almost identical words where he speaks 
 of " This foolish compounded clay — man. 1 '' { 
 
 * Ecclesiastes xii. Bacon was very partial to these twelve chapters and 
 brings in allusions to their teaching throughout his works and notes. 
 Compare his essay or treatise of Youth and Age with As You Like It, II. 7 , 
 and then with Eccles. xii. 3—5. The first word, Remember, seems to be a 
 pass-word in the old Rosicrucian books. 
 
 t Essay of Prometheus. 
 
 j 2 Henry IV. I. 2. " Men are but gilded loam and painted clay 
 Rich. II. I. 1. 
 
UO FRANCIS BACON 
 
 " Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher ; all is vanity ; but, 
 because the Preacher was wise, he still taught the people know- 
 ledge ; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out and set in order 
 many proverbs.* The Preacher sought to find out many accept- 
 able words,! and that which was written was upright, words of 
 truth. The words of the wise are as goads,! and as nails 
 fastened by the Masters of Assemblies, which are given from one 
 shepherd. And further by these, my son, be admonished ; of 
 making many books there is no end, and much study is a weari- 
 ness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole 
 matter. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the 
 whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into 
 judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether 
 it be evil." 
 
 Here is the model of a charge from a " Master of Assemblies " 
 to his " Sons," the Sons of Science, the Brethren in love and 
 religious union. In their youth they must Remember their 
 Creator, in mature years labour in the cause of truth, till the 
 time comes when the frail pitcher is broken, even in the act of 
 drawing fresh supplies from the heavenly fountain ; its contents 
 or its emptiness will be seen, and every secret thing made known 
 and judged in the broad light of day. 
 
 This digression is intended to illustrate the manner in which 
 these Baconian ideas are linked together in one great chain, 
 each symbol or image merging into or mixing itself up with 
 another. 
 
 To return once more to the pitcher or pot — Bacon's special 
 mark, the humble vessels which his friends raised to honour. 
 
 Who is so dull and unimaginative as to be incapable of fitting 
 together the scraps of erudition here disjointedly scattered 
 before him ? Who will check and refuse to see in this water- 
 mark Bacon's well-conceived emblem of himself and his dis- 
 ciples as mere " vases," " receptacles " for the heavenly manna, 
 
 * See the De Aug. VIII. 2 in which, when discoursing of The Doctrine 
 Concerning Scattered Occasions, Bacon extols the use of proverbs like the 
 aphorisms of Solomon, " to which there is nothing comparable," and which 
 he expounds and comments upon through twenty octavo pages. 
 
 "1 See Bacon's record of the necessity for doing this (De Aug. VI. 1) and 
 a few of his immense contributions to language in jottings amongst his 
 private notes (Promus, 116—159, 272—326, 1,370—1,439, etc.). 
 
 X Quoted in the Promus, fol. 88, 239, and again in Advt. of L. I and the 
 Wisd. of the Ancients, XXVIII., from the Vulgate Eccl. xii. 11. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 341 
 
 the dew, " the flowing and distillations which emanated from the 
 Spirit of the Waters " ? 
 
 The pot has never the appearance of being made of earthen- 
 ware, for it was a golden pot in which Aaron preserved the 
 manna. " We read in Genesis that God made man out of the 
 earth. This is a great mastery. For it was not the common 
 pot-clay, but another, and that of a far better nature." * " As 
 the potter hath his clay, or the limner his colours, so the Spirit 
 that worketh in Nature, in the outward lineaments or symmetry 
 of that which he forms, proves himself nothing but a divine, 
 intellectual spirit." f 
 
 Those who would aid in following up these researches into 
 the history of Bacon and his Secret Society will render efficient 
 service if in the course of their reading (in books more particu- 
 larly of dates between 1580 and 1680) they will give attention 
 to the paper-marks of the volumes which they study, noting 
 accurately the title, date, and edition of the book, and even the 
 number of the page on which marks are found. Copies or 
 tracings of these should be made and duly registered. Such an 
 examination, undertaken by some dozens of pairs of observant 
 eyes, would be extremely useful in solving doubtful questions. 
 For many points are still very doubtful, and probably some 
 remain altogether undisclosed, so that hitherto only these few 
 general statements can be considered as definitely proved : 
 
 1. That in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries paper- 
 marks were used throughout the works which were the products 
 of the " Renaissance." 
 
 2. That these paper-marks are not mere manufacturers' signs, 
 but that they have a mutual relation and connection, and that 
 they were and are means of conveying secret information to the 
 members of some widely-spread society. 
 
 3. That the society was not a mere trade-guild, but that it 
 was moved by motives of religion, and, in its highest branches 
 at least, was a Christian philosophical society, or a society for 
 promoting Christian knowledge. 
 
 4. That the subject matter of the books does not necessarily 
 affect the paper-marks. 
 
 * Anthroposophia, 22. f Anima Magica, 54. 
 
342 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 5. That the three marks, the double candlesticks, the grapes, 
 and the pitcher or pot, are notably "Baconian," the pot 
 especially being found in all Bacon's acknowledged works, 
 and throughout the correspondence of Anthony and Francis, 
 especially when their correspondent was of the Reformed 
 Church. 
 
 6. That, where any one pattern is varied many times in the 
 same book, there is usually no other mark except in the fly- 
 leaves. 
 
 7. The extraordinary but not unaccountable habit of tearing- 
 out the fly-leaves at the beginning and end of valuable books of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often makes it impossible 
 to declare that the book in hand possessed no other mark 
 besides those which we see. 
 
 8. The fly-leaves were wont, in many of our " Baconian " 
 books, to be very numerous : five or eight are common numbers 
 for the sheets. They were probably intended for the making 
 of notes, a practice which Bacon enjoins and so highly com- 
 mends. In old, untouched libraries there are usually some 
 books where the fly-leaves have been thus utilised. Perhaps, 
 when filled with notes, they were to be taken out, and forwarded 
 to some central point of study, either to an individual or to a 
 committee, who should by their means add to the value of any 
 subsequent edition or " collection " which might be published. 
 It is certain that fly-leaves have been stolen for the sake of the 
 old paper, for etching or for forged reprints ; but this does not 
 account for the fact that certain books, when sent, without any 
 special orders, to be repaired by a Freemason binder, have 
 returned with this large number of fly-leaves restored ; in many 
 of our public libraries such extra leaves in books re-bound have 
 paper-marks. 
 
 9. In Bacon's acknowledged works the changes are rung upon 
 the three paper-marks, the pot, the grapes, and the candlesticks, 
 the latter being apparently the rarest of the three. Usually 
 one or two of these patterns are combined with one extra mark. 
 With time enough and help to examine every edition of every 
 book concerned in this inquiry, it is hardly to be doubted that 
 a real scheme could be drawn up to demonstrate the precise 
 method of the use of paper-marks. The following table may be 
 sufficient to illustrate our meaning. The " moons " to which 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 343 
 
 allusion will be made are not made, like the other paper-marks, 
 by wires. They give the idea of having been produced by the 
 impression of a thumb on the soft pulp in the process of 
 paper-making. These moon-marks are of too frequent occur- 
 rence, in certain books and during a certain period, for any 
 doubt to remain as to their being the result of intention and 
 not of accident or chande. They are, therefore, included 
 amongst the extras in our list. The chronological arrangement 
 enables us to observe several particulars. First, that the pots 
 seem to be in one edition at least of every work produced by 
 Francis or Anthony Bacon, or published under their auspices. 
 Two handles to the pot seem to mean that two persons helped 
 in the construction of the book. Next, we notice that, in 
 republications, compilations, or "collections" of any kind, 
 grapes prevail, and that the candlesticks only appear when the 
 volume which includes them is to be considered complete. Then, 
 as to dates. The Baconian pots have been found first in a book 
 1579-80, and not later than 1680 — a period of one hundred 
 years. They, like the rest of the marks, increase in size from 
 about one inch to seven inches. The use of the Baconian grapes 
 seems to have begun about 1600, and to have continued only in 
 France after 1680. The double candlesticks appeared later still, 
 after the death of Francis Bacon, and remained in use for about 
 fifty years. The three marks all disappeared in England 
 about 1680. 
 
 The following Table shows the proportion in which marks of 
 the Pot, Grapes and Candlesticks are traced in 39 volumes taken 
 at random for examination. They date from 1579 when, pre- 
 sumably, Francis (then 18) published his translation of Plutarch's 
 lives under the name of Sir T. North, a kinsman. The marks 
 are continued until 1674, when the De Augmentis was repub- 
 lished. Every one of the 39 books contains the Pot, whilst 
 of the Grapes there are but 19, Candlesticks 12, and of the 
 almost ubiquitous Shields 16. 
 
 Let us inquire and try to assure ourselves as to whether this 
 Pot mark be not a figure of the " Holy Grail," that " Gift of 
 God," that Holy, inspiring Spirit for whose help and support 
 Francis St. Alban continually prayed. 
 
344 
 
 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 DATE 
 
 TITLE 
 
 POT 
 
 GRAPES 
 
 CANDLESTICKS 
 
 EXTRAS 
 
 1579 
 
 North s Plutarke 
 
 Pot (on fly-leaves) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1590 
 
 Book of Com. Prayer 
 
 Pots, various 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1596 
 
 The Faerie Queene 
 
 „ „ some 
 two-handled with 
 letters A B, F B, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 B I, R, R C 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1598 
 
 Chapman's Works 
 
 Pots, various 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1603 
 
 North's Plurtarke 
 
 „ „ 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1603 
 
 Montaigne's Essays 
 
 „ „ some 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 two-handled 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1605 
 
 Advt. of Learning 
 
 Pots, various 
 
 Crapes 
 
 — 
 
 Twisted horns 
 
 1609 
 
 Rook of Com. Prayer 
 
 „ „ 
 
 „ 
 
 — 
 
 Crowns, shields 
 
 1609 
 
 Observns. on Cresar's 
 
 
 
 Candlestick, 
 
 
 
 Commentaries 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 single 
 
 (Fly-leaves gone) 
 
 1611 
 
 Bible 
 
 Pots, various 
 
 Grapes 
 
 — 
 
 Twisted horns 
 
 1611 
 
 Florio's Dictionary 
 
 „ „ 
 
 „ 
 
 — 
 
 Bugle 
 
 1616 
 
 Ben Jonson's Works 
 
 „ „ 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 Moons 
 
 1618 
 
 Selden's History of 
 
 „ „ some 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tithes 
 
 two-handled 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 Shields 
 
 1622 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 — 
 
 Grapes 
 
 — 
 
 Crowns 
 
 1631 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost 
 
 Pots, various 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1633 
 
 "Fulke's' Bible 
 
 „ „ 
 
 Grapes 
 
 — 
 
 Shields 
 
 1631 
 
 Jeremy Taylor's 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 "Holy State" 
 
 „ „ 
 
 „ 
 
 — 
 
 ?> 
 
 1638 
 
 Bacon Opera 
 
 » » 
 
 „ 
 
 Candlesticks 
 
 „ bugles 
 
 1639 
 
 Quarles' Emblems 
 
 „ „ 
 
 „ 
 
 „ 
 
 „ bugles 
 
 1640 
 
 De Augmentis; 
 
 „ „ 
 
 — 
 
 „ 
 
 „ 
 
 1640 
 
 Ben Jonson's Works 
 
 — 
 
 Grapes 
 
 „ 
 
 „ 
 
 1645 
 
 Comus & other poems 
 " The Art of Making 
 
 Pots, various 
 
 — 
 
 ,, 
 
 Fool's cap 
 
 1646 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Devises," Ciphers, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 &c. 
 
 „ „ 
 
 Grapes 
 
 „ 
 
 — 
 
 1647 
 
 Fuller's "Holy Warre" 
 
 ,, „ 
 
 „ 
 
 „ 
 
 — 
 
 1648 
 
 Hieroglyphics, Sym- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 bols, Ciphers, &c. 
 
 „ „ 
 
 Grapes 
 
 „ 
 
 — 
 
 1648 
 
 " Diodata " Bible 
 
 „ (enormous) 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 Shields 
 
 1651 
 
 Sylva Sylvarum 
 
 „ various 
 
 Grapes 
 
 Candlesticks 
 
 „ 
 
 1651 
 
 Comus, &c. 
 
 „ „ 
 
 -- 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1652 
 
 Comus, &c. 
 
 i> >> 
 
 — 
 
 Candlesticks 
 
 — 
 
 1653 
 
 Comus, &c. 
 
 „ „ and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 cut in half 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 Shields 
 
 1655 
 
 Fuller's Ch. History 
 
 Pots, various 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 & double- 
 headed eagle 
 
 1658 
 
 Sylva Sylvarum] 
 
 „ „ 
 
 Grapes 
 
 — 
 
 Shields, bugle 
 
 1664 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 » 
 
 " 
 
 — 
 
 „ hearts, 
 crowns, &c. 
 
 1668 
 
 Paradise Lost 
 
 » »> 
 
 „ 
 
 — 
 
 Shield 
 
 1669 
 
 Paradise Regained 
 
 » ». 
 
 >» 
 
 — 
 
 „ 
 
 1669 
 
 Sir K. Digby's Trea- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tises 
 
 >< »» 
 
 — 
 
 Candlesticks 
 
 Cresent & R C 
 
 1669 
 
 Cowley's Works 
 
 „ „ 
 
 Grapes 
 
 — 
 
 Fool's cap 
 
 1671 
 
 Resuscitatio. 3rd edn. 
 
 ,, » very 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ! large 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1674 
 
 De Augmentis 
 
 Pots, various, very 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 large 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 10. Not only is the nature of the paper-mark thus varied in 
 each book, but the forms of each figure are varied to a surprising 
 extent. No two volumes, often no two parts of the same volume, 
 treatise, poem, or play, contain marks which are identical. 
 For instance, in Ben Jonson, 1616, there are at least fifteen 
 different forms of the pot, two of which are sometimes in one 
 play. In Seidell's History of Tithes, 1618, the variations are as 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 345 
 
 frequent. In Burton s Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, there are 
 at least thirty half -pitchers, no two of which seem to be alike. 
 Again, we have not succeeded in finding any form of mark 
 precisely repeated in books of different titles, editions, or dates. 
 
 In the writing-paper of the Bacon family and their friends, 
 there is almost as striking a^variety in the representation of the 
 same figure or pattern. It is certain that these marks were not 
 of the same kind as the ornaments, etc., on letter-paper of the 
 present day, in which crests, monograms, etc., are adopted by 
 certain individuals and retained by them for some time at least. 
 Letters in Baconian correspondence, written in rapid succession, 
 are found with different marks ; on the other hand, different 
 persons writing, the one from England and the other from 
 abroad, occasionally used paper with precisely similar marks. 
 It would seem that, in such cases, paper had been furnished to 
 these correspondents from some private mill. 
 
 11. There are, in combination with some designs, or apart from 
 them, " bars " on which appear names, sometimes of paper- 
 makers, as " Ricard," " Rapin," " Conard," " Nicolas,'' etc. 
 These seem to be chiefly in the foreign paper, as nowadays we 
 have " Whatman," " Joynson," etc.* But often these bars are 
 as cabalistic as the rest of the designs, or they seem to contain 
 the initials of the " producer " of the book, not, we think, of its 
 true author. The pots have no bars in connection with them ; 
 perhaps the letters upon them render further additions unneces- 
 sary. Observe, in the plates of pots, the large number which 
 occur inscribed A B, F B, B, B I, R, R C, C R, the letters being 
 sometimes inverted, sometimes placed sideways, or otherwise 
 disguised.t 
 
 * The practice of inserting the full names of the makers is said to have 
 come into fashion in the sixteenth century. See The Manufacture of Paper, 
 C. T. Davis, 1886. 
 
 | We would draw especial attention to a bar taken from the first edition 
 of Ben Jonson's Works. At the first glance the markings on this bar 
 appear to be meaningless, or cabalistic, but if the reader will take a card 
 in each hand and cover up or screen each portion by turns, he may agree 
 with the present writer that the marks resolve themselves into a name, 
 and perhaps a double repetition of the letters R C. Thus, to the left 
 extremity C followed by R reversed. Then begins the name, A, of which 
 the right side forms part of the sloping letter N ; an upright with cross- 
 piece, T ; the same upright, connected half way down with a curved 
 
 Y 
 
346 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 12. The system of paper-marks still exists, though under modi- 
 fied conditions. Books are now printed too cheaply to admit of 
 the old use of " water-marked " paper. Where, however, these 
 marks are absent, we find a series of other marks, less beautiful, 
 and far less conspicuous, but equally significant and curious, 
 and which, in due season, we hope to explain by the aid of 
 photography and the microscope. 
 
 On the other hand, " deficiencies " in this department of 
 knowledge are unhappily numerous. Let it therefore be in- 
 quired : 
 
 1. Which were the very earliest paper-mills in England ? To 
 whom did they belong? What were the water-marks on the 
 paper produced there ? 
 
 2. Which was the first printed book for which the paper was 
 made in England ? 
 
 3. From what foreign mills did our English printers import 
 paper ? 
 
 4. At what date did the papers with the hand and the pot 
 receive the distinctive additions which, for want of a better 
 name, we have termed Baconian ? 
 
 5. In what books may we see the very latest examples of the 
 candlesticks, the grapes, and the pot in the paper ? 
 
 6. When and why was the use of paper-marks in printed 
 books discontinued ? Was the discontinuance simultaneous 
 and universal ? Was there truly a discontinuance of the system 
 of secret marks, or, rather, did a change or modification take 
 place, in order to adapt these secret marks to the exigencies of 
 modern requirements in printing and book-making ? 
 
 7. When Sir Nicholas Bacon, in his youth, resided for three or 
 four years in Holland, did he visit and study the manufactories 
 of paper ? Does any record show him mixed up in any business 
 relations with paper manufacturers ? 
 
 8. What part did the old printers and publishers play in the 
 secret society ? For instance, John Norton (Lady Anne Bacon's 
 
 stroke, H ; at the end of the curved stroke, a small but distinct O, 
 followed by an N, sloping greatly to the left, and from which proceeds, 
 to the right, a smaller Y — ANTHONY. In the H and its curved line there 
 is an irregularity suggestive of a monogram of R C. But these are 
 only suggestions; other eyes and imaginations may interpret them 
 differently. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 347 
 
 cousin) and the Spottisworths — both families in which these 
 trades have in an eminent degree flourished ever since. 
 
 9. Did the " Baconian " water-marks remain in use until 
 circa 1680, — in fact, for just one hundred years from the time 
 when the first document of the Rosicrucian society was pub- 
 lished ? 
 
 • 10. Was it intended that, by the end of the period of one 
 hundred years, all the posthumous works of Francis Bacon, 
 " My cabinet and presses full of payers" should have been pub- 
 lished by his followers ? and did the system of water-marks in 
 printed books cease at that period ? 
 
 11. Are printers and paper-makers, as a rule, Freemasons? 
 Do they mutually co-operate and understand each other's 
 marks ? 
 
 12. If not, what reasons do they adduce for the mystery 
 which is still cast over simple matters connected with their use- 
 ful and beneficent crafts, and for the unusual difficulties which 
 are met with in obtaining any good books or any trustworthy 
 information upon the subjects which we have been considering ? 
 S&13. Is there any period at which modern Freemasonry and 
 Rosier ucianism propose to clear up and reveal these apparently 
 useless and obstructive " secrets " ? 
 
 14. Or, what is supposed to be the advantage, either to the 
 public or to individuals, in keeping up these or other mystifica- 
 tions, historical or mechanical ? Once, doubtless, helpful and 
 protective, guides as well as guardians, they now seem to be 
 mere stumbling-blocks in the way of knowledge. 
 
 Further on we shall have to inquire, who are they who have 
 the right and the power so to manipulate the printed catalogues 
 of our public libraries as to enable them to convey hints to the 
 initiated of books specially to their purpose ; and to repress open 
 references to books or documents sought for by Non-masonic 
 students ? For the present we merely throw out these hints to 
 encourage observers to note very precisely every instance in 
 which such aberrations occur. In matters connected with these 
 subjects they are not infrequent, and the student need not 
 despair of getting an important book because it is not in the 
 printed catalogue of a great library. 
 
 Perhaps it may not be amiss to give a few hints to observers 
 
348 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 unaccustomed to the technical matters involved in making a 
 book. Let them take notice that in folio editions the paper- 
 marks are to be found about the centre of the page ; but in small 
 quartos, where the paper is folded so as to form four sheets, in 
 octavos, where another fold produced eight sheets, and in duo- 
 decimos, where the folds are again multiplied, the paper-marks 
 will often be found divided into two or four parts. Usually, the 
 sheet having been bent in the middle where the papar-mark is, 
 the halves of the marks will be seen at the binding, say, half 
 on pages 1 and 2, and the other half on pages 7 and 8. But in 
 smaller books, the water-marks are still more divided, and 
 sometimes appear in pieces in the outer margins. The eye soon 
 becomes accustomed to distinguish these arrangements, 
 although the division of the design makes the work more 
 troublesome. 
 
 Even in the large and undivided marks, the letter-press and 
 engravings often obscure the design. Many specimens must be 
 compared, and many drawings made, before the exact character 
 of the mark can be ascertained. 
 
 This is the excuse, pleaded beforehand, for any errors or mis- 
 conceptions in the drawings which accompany this book. It is 
 also the cause why these illustrations have been taken from such 
 a limited circle of books. Those in our own library, or belonging 
 to friends, can be traced against the light with red ink, and then 
 carefully re-traced. But this is impossible in books belonging 
 to public libraries, where the difficulty of measuring and copying 
 is much increased by the little aid which the all-cheering sun 
 deigns to bestow, and by the impracticability of holding up 
 large folios towards his veiled face. He seems to be in league 
 with the paper-makers and printers, and the electric light is 
 kinder in this respect. 
 
 For the present, to avoid fruitless controversy, and to enclose 
 the range of observation within a manageable area, we withhold 
 any notice of paper-marks in books produced by " authors " 
 living only after Bacon's time. Yet it is right to caution 
 observers that they should by no means discontinue their notes 
 and researches in books published, even for the first time, after 
 1626, the date of his pretended death. 
 
 Startling disclosures are made by collating these paper-marks, 
 and other technical particulars, in books which, from internal 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 349 
 
 evidence, are judged to have been written or aided by Francis 
 or Anthony Bacon, and which, by these external and demon- 
 strable signs, are " hall-marked " by the paper-maker and the 
 printer. To anyone sufficiently possessed by the spirit of 
 inquiry or love of truth, to labour after it, and personally to test 
 and follow up the statements and suggestions made above, it 
 will, we think, be difficult to resist the conclusions to which we 
 have been drawn. They will perceive that, if indeed Anthony 
 Bacon was not (as some think) a considerable author, poet, and 
 playwright, yet that, for more than twenty-five years, he ener- 
 getically collaborated with Francis, whom (some say) he equalled 
 in ivit, though not in profound learning. We confess to 
 strongly-increasing doubts as to Anthony having taken any part 
 in the writing, excepting as secretary or amanuensis. 
 
 It must also, we think, be ere long made manifest that the 
 works hitherto attributed to Francis Bacon are samples only, 
 tastes of his quality; giving, as they were intended to give, 
 excellent hints and indications of the manifold works of all kinds 
 and (as Ben Jonson declared) in "all numbers," actually written, 
 dictated, or directed by him ; constructed and published by his 
 "Method." 
 
 Which of Bacon's works is in the true sense complete? 
 Perfect in its kind it may be (as, for instance, any single 
 Essay). But can any of these works be considered finished and 
 exhaustive ? Does any one of them "fill up " its own subject ? 
 On the contrary, almost all are in some sort fragmentary ; * and 
 for our own part, in the acknowledged works of Francis Bacon 
 we see but a collection of masterly sketches — vast maps in out- 
 line, magnificent designs, whose every detail he had elsewhere 
 studied and attempted to trace out, so that the next ages should 
 have but to copy, fill in, enlarge, diminish, colour, or elaborate. 
 " Will you make this man a monster, with powers abnormal and 
 supernatural ? " The question has been asked more than once, 
 and the reply is as before. No man could have read, imagined, 
 cogitated, and devised as Francis Bacon did, if at the same time 
 he had to conduct the mechanical business requisite in the pro- 
 
 * Perhaps the History of Henry VII. should be excepted. Yet even 
 this begins as though it were the end or concluding portion of a History 
 of Richard III., and not as would be expected in a separate and complete 
 history. 
 
350 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 duction of great works on a vast variety of subjects. Though we 
 have it on the authority of Dr. Sprat, that the powers of mind of 
 Bacon were equal to those of twenty, if not (as some seem to 
 have said) of a thousand men ; yet neither his bodily strength 
 nor length of days would have sufficed for such a work. He 
 must have had help in the most tedious particulars, and the 
 method has already been explained by which, according to the 
 present view, the Freemasons and Rosicrucians became engines 
 or machines for the execution of all mechanical work. 
 
 And for a Monster in mind, who has ever matched Francis 
 Bacon ? Truly, like Caesar, he 
 
 " Did get the start of the majestic world, 
 And bear the palm alone." 
 
 Is it not true that still 
 
 " He doth bestride the narrow world 
 Like a Colossus ; and that petty men 
 Walk under his huge legs, and peep about 
 To find themselves dishonourable graves " ? 
 
 A monster ? — Yes, that is the very name which his friend Sir 
 Tobie Matthew claims for him. He challenges anyone " to 
 muster out of any age four men who, in many respects, should 
 excel four such as we are able to show — Cardinal Wolsey, Sir 
 Thomas More, Sir Philip Sydney, and Sir Francis Bacon, for 
 they were all a kind of monsters in their several ways." After 
 extolling the first three, he continues : 
 
 " The fourth was a creature of incomparable abilities of mind, 
 of sharp and catching apprehension, large and faithful memory, 
 plentiful and sprouting invention, deep and solid judgment; . . . 
 a man so rare in knowledge of so many several kinds, indeed 
 with the facility of expressing it in so elegant, significant, so 
 abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, of 
 metaphors, and allusions, as perhaps the world has not seen 
 since it was a world." 
 
 So, of all intellectual monsters who had appeared until the 
 time of Sir Tobie Matthew, incomparably the greatest was 
 Francis Bacon. Sir Tobie was well aw 7 are that detraction would 
 not suffer his eulogy to pass unchallenged, but he throws down 
 the gauntlet which no man has yet ventured to pick up : 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 351 
 
 " I know," he continues, " that this may seem a great hyper- 
 bole and strange kind of riotous excess of speech ; but the best 
 means of putting me to shame will be for you to place any man 
 of yours by this of mine. And in the meantime even this little 
 makes a shift to shew that the genius of England is still not 
 only eminent, but predominant, for the assembling great variety 
 of those rare parts, in somf& single man, which may be incom- 
 patible anywhere else." 
 
 Bacon's works are sometimes described or alluded to as being 
 of so stupendous a kind that it is impossible to conceive his 
 having time, even had he the ability or inclination, for other 
 compositions. But, in fact, the whole of his written composi- 
 tions, excluding letters but including the law tracts and charges, 
 would fill only four of the fourteen volumes which appear on 
 our shelves as Spedding's Life, Letters, and Works of Bacon. 
 The rest consist of letters, transactions, variorum editions, and 
 comments by the editors. 
 
 Compare with this the voluminous productions of some of his 
 contemporaries. Coke " wrote thirty-one volumes with his own 
 hand 1 ' (yet he was a busy public man like Bacon). Eichard 
 Baxter is " said to have produced " 145 distinct works, as he 
 himself says, "in the crowd of other employments." Thomas 
 Heywood, the actor, is " said to have written " 220 or 240 plays, 
 "A Life of Merlin," a " Life of Elizabeth," " The Lives of the 
 Nine Worthies, etc.," the last item admitting of many possi- 
 bilities. 
 
 Montaigne "feared to glut the world with his works" (a 
 surprising statement if nothing is claimed for him excepting 
 one volume of essays). As to Jaspar Barthius, though his 
 contemporaries do not bestow upon him any particular notice, 
 yet Bayle tells us that his works on many various subjects 
 " make so prodigious a mass that one has difficulty in conceiving 
 how a single man could suffice for such things." 
 
 When, at some future time, we are able to discuss at leisure 
 particulars which have been collected, and which link together 
 the friends, correspondents, and colleagues of Francis and 
 Anthony Bacon, we will endeavour to satisfy inquirers as to the 
 methods of these and other " voluminous writers " of the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries. For the present let it be 
 noted that Francis Bacon's acknowledged works were neither 
 
352 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 voluminous nor stupendous ; that, on the contrary, three or four 
 modest volumes are all that were published under his name. 
 Other authors, who are ranked amongst the giant minds of 
 Bacon's time by the critics, commentators, and biographers of 
 the nineteenth century, are not so much as named by their proto- 
 types of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Neither Sir 
 Tobie Matthew, Sir Henry Wotton, nor Ben Jonson include them 
 in their lists of great writers or thinkers. 
 
 There is indeed no weight or value in the argument that 
 Francis Bacon had not the time, even if he had the ability, to 
 write the works which we attribute to him ; he had time, know- 
 ledge, and genius enough for it all ; nor is there any great 
 difficulty in conceiving the method by which he achieved his 
 great enterprise. Neither does he leave it to our imagination, 
 but explains clearly that it is only by the combination of many 
 minds to one general end, and by the division of labour in 
 particulars, that any real advance can be made, and that it is by 
 examination and experiment, not by talk and argument, that the 
 work can be accomplished. 
 
 " This road [of practical experience and demonstration] has an 
 issue in the open ground not far off ; the other has no issue at 
 all, but endless entanglement. . . . Moreover, I think that 
 men may take some hope from my own example. And this I 
 say, not by way of boasting, but because it is useful to say it. 
 If there be any that despond, let them look at me, that, being of 
 all men of my time the most busied in affairs of state, and a man 
 of health not very strong (whereby much time is lost), and in 
 this course altogether a pioneer, . . . have, nevertheless, by 
 resolutely entering on the true road, and submitting my mind 
 to things, advanced these matters, as I suppose, some little way. 
 And then let them consider what may be expected (after the 
 way has been thus indicated) from men abounding in leisure, 
 and from association of labours in successive ages : the rather 
 because it is not a way over which only one man can pass at a 
 time (as is the case with the way of reasoning), but one in which 
 the labours and industries of men, especially as regards the 
 collecting of experience, may with the best effect be distributed, 
 and then combined. For then only will men begin to know their 
 strength, when, instead of great numbers doing all the same 
 things, one shall take charge of one thing, and another of 
 another.'' 1 * 
 
 * Nov. Org. I. cxiii. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 353 
 
 Observe that he puts distribution first. This assumes a 
 Distributer, a head or chief moving spirit, who shall apportion 
 to his subordinates the work which he considers them to be 
 capable of performing. Moreover, look at the phrase in brackets. 
 Here Bacon hints that he did the reasoning part of the work 
 himself. That could be deputed to none other. In days when 
 language was halt and lame, when men's powers of observation 
 were dimmed, and all other faculties for resolving high and 
 deep thoughts into beautiful language were ranked among the 
 Deficients, how was it possible that ordinary men combine in 
 their writings or their speeches the most extensive learning, the 
 finest reasoning, and the clearest, most cogent, or charming 
 method of delivery ? 
 
 Bacon warns * " those who take upon them to lay down the 
 law as to the bounds of knowledge — as to what is possible and 
 what impossible to know or achieve," that they "have done 
 great injury. For, whether they have spoken in simple assur- 
 ance or professional affectation, they have been equally successful 
 in quenching and stopping inquiry, and have done more harm 
 by stopping other men's efforts than good by their own." Was 
 there ever a time when these words were truer than now, and in 
 relation to his own works, and the investigations connected with 
 them ? Can we too strongly grapple to our hearts his advice 
 that we should "take up, with better judgment, a position 
 between these two extremes — between the presumption or 
 pronouncing on everything and the despair of comprehending 
 anything ; that, though frequently and bitterly complaining of 
 the difficulty of inquiry and the obscurity of things, yet, none 
 the less, we should follow up our own object, thinking that this 
 very question — whether or no anything can be known — is to be 
 settled, not by arguing, but by trying " f He " draws an argu- 
 ment of hope from this, that some of the inventions already 
 known are such as, before they were discovered, could hardly 
 have entered any man's head to think of ; for, in conjecturing 
 what may be, men set before them the example of ichat has been, 
 and divine of the New, with imagination preoccupied and 
 coloured by the Old." 
 
 Having illustrated his meaning by examples from the inven- 
 
 * Nov. Org. Pref . 
 
354 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 tions of gunpowder, silk, and the magnet, he continues : " We 
 have discoveries to show of another kind, which prove that 
 noble inventions may be lying at our very feet, and yet mankind 
 may step over without seeing them. For, however the dis- 
 covery of gunpowder, of silk, of the magnet, of sugar, of paper " 
 (which, observe, he did not mention before) " may seem to depend 
 on certain properties of things themselves and nature, there is, 
 at any rate, nothing in the art of printing which is not plain and 
 obvious. * . . . This most beautiful discovery, which is of 
 so much service in the propagation of knowledge," he attributes 
 to the observation of simple facts, arguing that such is the 
 infelicity and unhappy disposition of the human mind in this 
 course of discovery or invention that it first distrusts and then 
 despises itself ; first, will not believe that any such thing can be 
 found out, and, when it is found out, cannot understand how the 
 world should have missed it so long. Far from being dis- 
 couraged, he repeats that he takes all this as a ground for hope, 
 and there is yet another. " Let men but think of their infinite 
 expenditure of understanding, time, and means, or matters of 
 pursuit of much less value, whereof, if but a small part were 
 directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that 
 might not be overcome." 
 
 Does anyone suggest that the interpretations of the paper- 
 marks are " arbitrary " or " speculative," the attempted explana- 
 tions of doubtful matters erroneous or incomplete ? Let him 
 turn to the beginning of this book and see again that these 
 things are offered, not as perfect fruits, but as some of the best 
 which we have been able to reach or pick up. They are, for 
 the most part, a humble "collection," such as Francis Bacon 
 instructed his disciples to make for examination and considera- 
 tion ; though some are the products of real research and ex- 
 amination, and of a simple but effective process of " putting two 
 and two together." 
 
 Should more accurate information be forthcoming, better 
 suggestions be offered, we shall heartily greet them from what- 
 ever quarter they may come, rejoicing if we may in any degree 
 
 ♦Though so plain and obvious, the art of printing is amongst the 
 subjects, enumerated by Bacon, which required, and which still requires, 
 a separate "History." See the Catalogue of Histories, No. 110, at the end 
 of the Parasceve. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 355 
 
 have cleared the way for the advance of truth, or inspired others 
 to better work than we are capable of doing. All that is asked, 
 and this earnestly, is that these things may be fairly discussed, 
 pressed home, and thoroughly looked into. It is in vain "to 
 wave them courteously aside " in the prescribed Freemason 
 fashion, or to thrust them churlishly out of sight as trivialities, 
 matters of course, mere curiosities for the book-worm or the 
 crank." 
 
 It is surely wrong as well as vain to attempt to quench the 
 true spirit of inquiry by endeavouring to make the inquirer 
 appear contemptible, and his researches childish and silly. Such 
 devices must in the end return upon the heads of those who 
 practise them, and, although they may delay and harass the 
 advance of knowledge, they cannot stop it; for "Nothing is 
 subtle when it be conceived," and we know now that, though we 
 have not, as Bacon says, " found an issue into open ground," 
 yet we have got out of the " entanglement," and see daylight. 
 
 The questions asked, and the problems propounded, are 
 neither trivial nor absurd, nor matter for pedantic dogmatism 
 and argumentative controversy. Rather they are questions to 
 be weighed and considered — and more. If it be true that 
 " cogitation resides not in the man who does not think" so, 
 surely, it resides but as smoke and fumes in the man who does 
 not examine. 
 
 M Orpheus was torn to pieces by the Furies, and the River 
 Helicon, in sorrow, hid its waters underground, and rose again 
 in other places." So with the great religious, literary, and 
 scientific society which Francis Bacon did so much to glorify 
 and render permanent. It hid its waters in England during the 
 time of the civil wars and their attendant miseries. But those 
 waters rose again with renewed freshness. Can we not trace 
 them bubbling up in France, Spain, and Italy, but still more in 
 Germany and Holland, which seem for a while to have been 
 their largest reservoir ? The Rosicross Brethren never ceased 
 their beneficent efforts in England, but they worked like the 
 " old mole," underground, and in silence. Bacon and his won- 
 derful work are better known and understood in Germany than 
 in England. " His fame," says Dr. Rawley, " is greater, and 
 sounds louder in foreign parts abroad, than at home in his own 
 nation, thereby verifying that divine sentence, ' A prophet is not 
 
356 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 without honour, save in his own country and in his own house.' " 
 He concludes the short life of his beloved master with these 
 words : 
 
 " Howsoever his body was mortal, yet no doubt 
 his memory and works will live, and will in all 
 probability last as long as the world lasteth/' 
 
Plate I. from MSS. 
 
 * — 
 
 k (J> .u ,.w ,.A. 
 
Plate II. from MSS. 
 
Plate III 
 
 4^ a 
 
Plate IV 
 
 58 & ft 
 
Plate V. 
 
 U Q ID 
 
 r ^^ riKO 
 
Plate VI. 
 
 (AAA ESE 
 
 
Plate VII. 
 
Plate VIII. 
 
 ! : - ^ a ^ 
 
 - — 7 
 
 ^ 
 
 13 a 
 
 ^ 
 
 5- 
 
 q_yj3 
 
 S DO 
 
 y=«=y 
 
Plate IX. 
 
 a 
 
 *"$&" ffi£>^ 
 
 ff 
 
 d4-o 
 
 6 
 
 L2 
 
 c^ 
 
 52-B 
 
 SM 
 
 a 
 
 ^f>Y cfb 
 
 g 3 
 
 o 
 
 ft^v> .ffe 
 
 cii^ciS 
 
Plate X. 
 
 ^ 
 
 >«.. 
 
 & 
 
 & 
 
 
 L) 
 
 CL 
 
 y 
 
 3 
 
Plate XI. 
 
Plate XII. 
 
 "^$? "-$ 
 
 rccc Rccg ftic__- _j>P~) 
 
 (c\a 8p tzd m <#&> cr^^gsj 
 
 ^ 
 
Plate XIII. 
 
 c_ 
 
 ••• ' r> 
 
 «o» 
 
 C~ 
 
 KV. 
 
 
 " » " 
 
 ooocb * (•' 
 
 °-°c£o° cr; 
 
 crz_L) 
 
 OCOOO rt 
 
 .<IZE> 
 
 t/j 
 
 
 9 
 
Plate XIV. 
 
 Si 
 
 Cpod) 
 
 (P_JMj 
 
 1 
 
Plate XV. 
 
Plate XVI. 
 
Plate XVII. 
 
Plate XVIII. 
 
Plate XIX. 
 
Plate XX. 
 
Plate XXI. 
 
 "j, 
 
 "UH « 
 
 
 P 
 
Plate XXII. 
 
Plate XXIII. 
 
Plate XXIV. 
 
Plate XXV. 
 
Plate XXVI. 
 
 <^^> 
 
Plate XXVII. 
 
LIST Of PAPER-MARKS. 
 
 Plate I . 
 
 1. Sphere surmounted by star or crosses. Account books, 
 Hague. British Museum collection. 1301. 
 
 2, 3. „ Account books, Hague. British Museum col- 
 lection. 1356, 1430. 
 
 „ 5|- inches high, slightly different. Cotton MSS. 
 Nero 127. 
 4, „ Scarabeus. Jansen (in Sotheby). 1315. 
 
 5, 6. „ One with water line = Holy Spirit. Jansen 
 (in Sotheby). 1360. 
 7 — 21. „ with triangle = the Trinity ; ellipse = Holy Spirit. 
 The figure 4, sacred number in " Perfect Masonry,' ' 
 meaning the universe, four elements, four winds, 
 four seasons, four dimensions, as generally con- 
 ceived, length, breadth, depth, height. In 9a is a 
 figure 4, the Egyptian hierogram = Greek alpha and 
 omega. The T, which frequently appears in these 
 plates, signifies light. The double tau> a very 
 ancient symbol of the sacred sanctuary of light and 
 beauty, resembles H. Two I's, with a cross between, 
 as 96, conveys the same idea as Fig. 10. A cross iu 
 a sphere is the Druidical silver wheel, Arianrod — 
 emblem of the Bi-une God, the alpha and omega of 
 the Revelations. Chiefly from the collection, Britisli 
 Museum, 318c Vol. VII. No. 11. is five inches long. 
 Circa 1400. 
 12. D, a mystic word expressive of the power of expanding, 
 spreading, unfolding, laying open. * Di was a term 
 for the Deity, from which we have Day (Dai), the 
 Disposer, the Distributer. We ask God to " give us 
 
 * Celtic Researches, p. 446, Davies, quoted B. of God, II. 441. 
 
386 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 each day our daily bread." Biblia Pauperum; 
 Sotheby's Principia; Cotton, Nero vi. 218, 230. 
 1590. 
 
 13, 14. Spanish Letters. 
 
 15 — 17. The three mounts — probably Calvary or Golgotha, 
 Moriah, and Sinai, to which Masonic traditions are 
 attached. At Golgotha Adam was buried, who caused 
 the ruin of mankind. Here the Saviour suffered, 
 who came to redeem mankind. Here, too, Enoch is 
 said to have constructed his vine-arched vault, and 
 concealed from men the ineffable name of God. It 
 is said that the Masons discovered this vault and 
 brought it to Solomon. Mount Moriah was the seat 
 of Solomon's Temple, and a story too long for inser- 
 tion relates how this mount came to be consecrated 
 to brotherly love.* Mount Sinai is said to be 
 referred to in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth 
 degrees of the (Prince of the Tabernacle) Scottish 
 Ancient and Accepted Rite. But Scottish Masonry 
 is not traceable to a date earlier than 1758, and then 
 only in Paris. Perhaps it then adopted the modern 
 name of " Free Mason." British Museum, 318c, 
 Vol. VII. 
 
 18. Five mounts (or hills of knowledge ?) British Museum, 
 
 318c vii. 
 
 19. Some of many varieties of keys. Biblia Pauperum. 
 
 20. Anvil. True size, 3J inches, many patterns. Haarlem 
 
 account book. 1416 — 1421. 
 
 21. „ German MSS. Fifteenth century. 
 
 22. „ Cross. Double tau. Cotton MSS. Nero vi. 
 163. 1603. 
 
 23. Flaming sun. Cotton MSS. Caligula E 302. 1598. 
 
 24. St. Katherine's wheel, or disguised sun. Ars Moriendi 
 
 — Hibbert. 
 
 25. Scales. Biblia Pauperum. 
 
 26. „ Many patterns, some within a circle. British 
 Museum, 318c. Circa 1400. 
 
 27. „ British Museum, 318c. 
 
 * See Royal Masonic Cyclopozdia— Moriah. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 387 
 
 28, 29. Anchors. Eleven varieties in account books, etc. — 
 Holland. British Museum, 318c. 1416—1463 See, 
 also, Nos. 21, 22, Plate II. Some have roses, fleur- 
 de-lis, etc. 
 
 30. Serpent, with its tail in its mouth — emblem of eternity 
 
 3| inches diameter. British Museum, 15c ii. 
 
 31. Five-pointed star in circle. Five is a mystic number, 
 
 meaning the soul of the world. A star, the emblem 
 of a heavenly messenger, or teacher. The circle = 
 the world. 
 
 32. The ship or ark of the church. Cotton MSS. Nero vi. 
 
 108. 1529. British Museum, 318c vii. 1400. 
 
 Plate II. 
 
 1 — 3. Unicorns. Symbol of the Church. One marked as if 
 for cipher. There are four other varieties, 1430, and 
 more 1460— all German. Ar$ Moriendi. 1440. Also 
 in Apocalypse, and in the Speculum, first edition, 
 1430—1465. 
 
 4, 5. „ Drayton's Poems, three patterns. Brit. Mus., 
 11,573. (Sotheby.) 1620. 
 
 6. Talbot or hound, symbol of hunting or experience. The 
 
 Oxford Book St. Jerome. (Sotheby.) " Printed date," 
 1468. 
 
 7. „ from a Dutch Bible, copy of the Aretin. The 
 paper of the Bodleian copy of the Aretin, " dated " 
 Oxford, 1479, exhibits no fewer than twenty-two 
 different paper-marks, nearly all of which occur in 
 the Dutch Bible of 1477. Brit. Mus., 318c. 1477. 
 
 8. A dog-headed figure merging into a horn or spire. 
 
 Anthony Bacon's correspondence. Tenison MSS., 
 Lambeth Palace. 
 9—11. Bulls' heads. Brit. Mus., 318c. Circa 1470. 
 
 12. Bull's head. The original is seven inches high. Ars 
 Moriendi. 
 13 — 20. Bulls' heads. No. 20 is seven inches long. Brit. Mus., 
 
 318c. 1400. 
 21, 22. Anchors. See Plate I. Brit. Mus., 318c. 
 22—26. Letters G, M, P, Y. See Sotheby's Principia Xylo- 
 
388 FEANCIS BACON 
 
 graphic*, xi., leaf 8, chap. 25. In the " Barclay H 
 copy of the Apocalypse, the I H S are elaborately 
 introduced in the style of the early English letters, 
 and with crosses and flourishes. MSS. and the 
 Apocalypse, Spenser copy. 1440, 1460. 
 
 Plate III. 
 
 1. Open hand. Archives Haarlem, British Museum, 318c. 
 
 1432. 
 
 2. „ Letter written to the Archbishop of Bath. 
 Archives Haarlem, British Museum, 318c. 1433. 
 
 3—5. „ with heart. Cotton MSS. Caligula E vii. 205. 
 1573. 
 
 6. „ with 3. From Rome. Cotton MSS. Caligula E, 
 vii. 205. 1521. 
 
 7. „ with cross. Chapman's Works, British Museum, 
 
 C 34c 11. 1598. 
 
 8. Hand, with key. Archives Haarlem. 1427-8. 
 
 9. „ with bunch of grapes. 
 
 10. „ with star. Finch Hatton MSS. Dateless. 
 11, 12. „ with star. Cotton MSS. British Museum, Nero 
 vi. 35. Dateless. 
 
 13. „ with letter, signed A. Powlett. Cotton MSS. 
 Caligula E vii. 205. 1577. 
 
 14. „ horn or crescent and trefoil, and A B, in pedi- 
 
 grees of the Bacon family. Harleian MSS. 1393, 
 fol. 85. 
 
 15. „ with crescent in palm. Shepherd's Garland — 
 
 Drayton. British Museum, C 30e 21. 1593. 
 
 16. „ with 3. No star. Undated document, foreign. 
 Finch Hatton MSS. 1393. 
 
 17, 18. Bugle. Account book, Hague, and letter to the Bishop 
 of Durham. British Museum, 318c. 1421. 
 
 19. „ (in heart, trefoil). Paradise Lost; Andrew 
 Marvel's Verses. 1668. 
 
 20. „ in shield. Letter of Francis Allen, or Alleyne, to 
 Anthony Bacon. Tennison MSS., Lambeth. 1592 — 
 1641. 
 
 21. „ in mirror, hearts, trefoil, etc. Bacon's History of 
 
 Henry VII. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 389 
 
 22. Bugle on shield, imperfect ; and a bar on which is PAN. 
 
 Quarles' Emblems. 1639. 
 
 23. „ Paradise Lost. 1668. 
 
 24. „ A Learned Discourse of Justification by Faith 
 —Richard Hooker, D.D. 1631. 
 
 25. „ made by olive' wreath and crown, horns, trefoil. 
 Observe the S S, and that the same shield is a pot 
 in disguise. From Bacon's History Natural and 
 Experimental, title-page, and History of Life and 
 Death, preface. 1658. 
 
 26 — 30. Specimens of innumerable fleur-de-lis, some t\ inches 
 high, scattered about in the above works and MSS. 
 
 Plate IV. 
 
 1. Horns of a bull. MSS. Frankfort. British Museum. 
 
 318c. 1470. 
 
 2. „ Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy ; unique copy, 
 presented by Burton to the Nation. British Museum, 
 C 45c 30. 1621. 
 
 3—5. „ Moliere's Works. 1682. 
 
 6. „ or cornucopeia, crown indistinct. Cotton, Nero 
 vi. 132. 1632. Another in Shakespeare, 1632, and 
 Cotton, Nero vi. 48. 
 
 7. „ Cotton, Nero vi. 368. 
 
 8. „ etc. Bullock pedigree. Harl. 1393, fol. 96. 
 
 10 — 12. Fool's cap and fragments. Quarles' Emblems. Dyce 
 and Forster Library, S. Kensington Museum. 1676. 
 
 13. „ Bagford collection, fol. 29. 
 
 14. Moor's head, with bandage pushed up from the eyes. 
 
 (An allusion to the efforts being made to convert the 
 Mohammedans?) Circa 1420. 
 
 15. Twisted horns. 
 
 16. ,, Advancement of Learning. 1605. 
 
 17. Triangle, hearts. Harl. MSS., 1393, 88. 
 
 18. Shield. Account book, Zuid, Holland. British Museum, 
 
 318c. 1469-1470. 
 
 19. „ Document, Frankfort on the Main. British 
 Museum, 318c. 1470. 
 
 20, 21. „ other specimens. Dutch. 1460. 
 
390 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 22, 23. Shield. Apocalypse, Haarlem. Early 15tli century. 
 24. „ heart-shaped. Letter, H. Maynard to Anthony 
 Bacon. Tenison MSS, Lambeth. 1592. 
 25, 26. „ heart-shaped. Poems of Michael Drayton. 1619. 
 
 27. „ heart-shaped. Letters of Sir Francis Bacon. 
 Copies. Finch Hatton Collection. 
 
 28. „ heart-shaped. North's Plutarke. 1595. 
 
 29. ,, Letter from Theodore Beza to Anthony Bacon. 
 Tenison MSS., Lambeth. 1593. 
 
 30. „ heart-shaped. Letter unsigned. Cotton MSS. 
 Nero, 229. 1590. 
 
 31, 34. „ heart-shaped, with R C. Advancement of 
 Learning. 1640. 
 
 32. „ heart-shaped. Document. Cotton, Nero vi. 180. 
 
 33. „ heart-shaped. Be Augmentis. Holland. 1652. 
 
 Plate V. 
 
 1. Shield, with Greek Omega, and eight rays within. Cot- 
 
 ton MSS. Nero vi. 62. Dateless. 
 
 2. „ with B, and the name NICOLAS. Cotton MSS. 
 372. Dateless. 
 
 3. „ with C R. Advancement of Learning. 1640. 
 
 4. „ with B (almost like No. 2). Harl. MSS. 1393, 
 fol. 118. 
 
 5, 6. „ (note horns and eye). From the Comedy of 
 Errors, Shakespeare. 1632. 
 
 7. „ (note bull face). Shakespeare. 1632. 
 
 8. ,, (note bull face). The Works of Joseph Mede. 
 1677. 
 
 9. „ (note bull face). Modern mark, in L. Van 
 
 Gelders paper. 1890. 
 
 10. Mock shield, lions. George Herbert — The Temple. 
 
 1633. 
 
 11. History of Life and Death. 1638. 
 
 12. Advancement of Learning. 1640. 
 
 14. Fleur-de-lis. Coriolanus — Shakespeare. 1632. 
 
 15. Fleur-de-lis and crown. Apocalypse, Haarlem. Early 
 
 fifteenth century. Large oval shields, lions, harp, 
 fleur-de-lis, Harl. Bagford's Collection, 5892, fol. 5 ; 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 391 
 
 other patterns, Ms. 80, 96, 105, 122 ; others, with 
 lions rampant, one five inches high, Bagford, 5896, 6. 
 17, 18. Bar. IRC. Cynthia s Revels — Ben Jonson. (Per- 
 haps Jonson Rosy Cross ?) 
 
 Plate VI. 
 
 1. Shield, chains, cabalistic marks. Works of J. Mede. 
 
 1652. 
 
 2. ,, The Rule of Conscience — Jeremy Taylor, 1671. 
 
 3. „ Theophrastus Paracelsus — Opera Omnia, 
 Geneva. 1658. 
 
 „ and cross. Companion to the Temple — J. Comber, 
 D.D. 1684. 
 4 — 9. Mock shield and fleur-de-lis. " Diodati " Bible and 
 Commentary. 1648. 
 
 10. Bar. Shakespeare folio — Cymbeline, last page. CIRC. 
 
 (Jonson Rosy Cross ?) 1623. 
 
 11. ,, Ben Jonson's Works — title-page and catalogue. 
 1640. (Anthony ? This bar surmounted by large 
 bunch of grapes.) 
 
 12, 13. Fleur-de-lis and pearls. Vestal Virgin (epil.) — Sir R. 
 
 Howard. Circa 1450—1600. 
 14, 15. Spires rising from bulls' heads. Foreign paper. 
 16. Fleur-de-lis. Shakespeare — Cymbeline. 1632. 
 17, 18. „ The Merchant's Booh of Commerce — Thos. 
 
 Home Cornhill. 1700. 
 
 Plate VII. 
 
 1 — 4. Crowns. Shakespeare, Works. Brit. Mus. copy. 1623. 
 5 — 9. „ Shakespeare, Works. Kensing. Mus. Forster 
 copy. 1623. 
 
 10. „ Philomathes — Pleasure with Profit. 1694. 
 
 11. „ Harl. Bagford Collection, 5892, 1. 
 
 12. „ with rose in pentagon. Finch Hatton MSS. 304. 
 
 13. „ diamond. MS. Quintilian. Brit. Mus. 4829 iv. 
 
 14. „ Themata Varia. Finch Hatton MSS. 304. 
 
 15. „ MS. 
 
392 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 16, 18. Crowns. Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World. 
 Several patterns. 1614. 
 
 19. „ North's Plutarke. Brit. Mus. 10,605, i. 2. 
 1603. 
 
 20. Truth seated in triple ellipse, five pearls, diamond, tre- 
 
 foil, water, cross, crown. Joynson's foolscap paper. 
 1890. Another, one-tenth of an inch smaller, details 
 different, Toogood's paper. Another in fly-leaf to 
 book has Time as an old man instead of Truth. 
 
 Plate VIII. 
 
 1. Tower. Nuremberg Chronicle. Jo. Ames' collection, 
 
 Bodleian library. 
 
 2. Castle-like candlesticks. A. Powlett — French docu- 
 
 ment. Cotton MSS. 73, 92. 
 3, 4. Pillars or candlesticks, drawn in Fenn's collection, 
 pp. 8, 21. 
 
 5. Double candlesticks, with grapes, etc. Note the B. 
 
 Douai Testament. 1600. 
 
 6. Single candlesticks. Observations on Ccesar's Com- 
 
 mentaries — Clement Edmundes. 1609. 
 
 7. Double candlestick in Visitation of Wiltshire. Pedi- 
 
 grees signed by Wm. Camden (Clarencieux). Harl. 
 MSS. 1111. This water-mark follows for five pages 
 the Bacon pedigree, beginning at fol. 38. Again 
 they occur ten times in a pedigree of the Penryddokes. 
 The widow of John Penryddoke married John Cooke, 
 kinsman of Lady Anne Bacon. 
 
 8. Double candlesticks. Lectures on St. John, " preached " 
 
 by Arthur Hilderson. 1628. 
 
 9. „ Quarles' Feast for Wormes. 1631. 
 
 10. „ Marlowe's Jew of Malta. British Museum, 
 644c 70. 1633. 
 
 11. „ Milton's Comus. (Several patterns.) 1634. 
 12-12e. „ Quarles' Emblems. (Sixteen patterns.) 1635 — 
 
 1634. 
 13, 13a. „ A Review of the Councell of Trent — Anon. 
 
 (Five patterns.) 1638. 
 14, 14a. „ Be Augmentis. 1638. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 393 
 
 Plate IX. 
 
 15. Double candlesticks. History of Life and Death. 1638. 
 
 16. ,, Advancement of Learning. 1640. 
 17, 17a. „ Ben Jonson's Poetaster. 1640. 
 18, 19. „ History of^Henry VII. 1641. 
 
 20. „ Sir Kenelm Digby's Treatises. 
 
 21. The Art of Making Devises, etc. — Anon. Various. 
 
 Very large and elaborate in edition 1650. S. Ken. 
 Forster, 87c. 1646. 
 
 22. Double candlesticks. Fuller's History of the Holy 
 
 Warre, 3rd edition, Cambridge. 1647. 
 
 23. „ Undescribed and dateless. Bodleian collection, 
 
 25, 837d i. 
 
 Plate X. 
 
 24, 25. Double candlesticks. Sir Kenelm Digby Of Mans 
 
 Soul 1669. 
 26, 27. „ Sir Kenelm Digby Of Bodies. 1669. 
 28, 29. ,, De Augmentis. 1674. Others like these and 
 
 the above, but with variations, in Clark's Examples, 
 
 1656. 
 30. „ Undescribed and dateless. Bodleian collection. 
 
 Plate XI. 
 
 1 — 3. The vine and grapes. Dutch MSS. British Museum 
 collection, 318c, Vol. V. 1431—1445. 
 
 4. Grapes, diamond. Letter from the Ambassador of 
 
 Venice. Cotton MSS. 1600. 
 
 5. „ Letter, Spanish, signed "Alonso." Cotton MSS. 
 
 1603. 
 
 6. „ Letter, Seville. Cotton MSS. 1603. 
 
 7. „ C R I (or reversed?). Livorno. Cotton MSS. 
 
 1603. 
 
 8. „ BR. Heraldic and Historical Collection. Lans- 
 
 downe, 205, fol. 248. 
 9, 10. „ These and a great variety of others. Lans- 
 downe, 187, 205, 230, etc, 
 11. „ Biblia Pawperum. 
 
 BB 
 
394 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 12. Grapes. Bible. 1588. 
 13 — 22. „ (Some fragments.) Advancement of Learning. 
 1605. 
 
 23. „ Bible. 1609. 
 24 — 29. „ Book of Common Prayer. 1609. 
 
 Plate XII. 
 
 30 — 34. Book of Common Prayer. Continued from Plate XL 
 
 1609. 
 35—39. Bible. 1610. 
 40 — 42. Florio's Italian-English Dictionary. 1611. 
 
 43. Marlowe's Hero and Leander. Letters M C (for C M ?). 
 1613. 
 44, 45. Sidero Thriambos. 1618. 
 46—48. (With bars.) Shakespeare folio. 1623. 
 
 49. D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation. 1626. 
 50, 51. (With bars.) Shakespeare. 1632. 
 
 52. Quarles' Emblems. 1635—1634. 
 
 Plate XIII. 
 
 53. Bar in Shakespeare. 1632. 
 
 54. De Sapientia Veturum. (Five rays and pearls as crown.) 
 
 1638. 
 
 55. Review of the Councell of Trent — Anon. 1638. 
 56—58. Quarles' Emblems. 1639. 
 
 59—62. Ben Jonson's Works. 1640. 
 
 63. History of the Councell of Trent — translated Sir N. 
 
 Brent. (Vesica Piscis and sacred monogram.) 1640. 
 
 64. Collection of pamphlets, including the Religio Medici — 
 
 Sir Thos. Browne. 1642. 
 Almost the same in Twenty-seven Songs of Sion — 
 Christmas Carols — W. S. 
 
 65. Perspective Curieuse — Pere Niceron — Paris. 1652. 
 
 66. A Priest of the Temple.— George Herbert. 1652. 
 
 67. Chronicle of the Kings of England. — Sir Sam'l Bake. 
 
 1660. 
 68, 69. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. (See Plate XIV.). 1662. 
 70. Life and Death of Thomas Cromwell. (Supposed 
 " spurious " play of Shakespeare.) 1 664. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 395 
 
 71, 74. Ecclesia Restaurata. 1641. 
 
 72, 73. Philippe de Comines' History. 1665. 
 
 75, 75a. " Fulke's " Bible and Commentaries. 1633. 
 
 Plate XIV. 
 
 76. De Augmentis. 1638. 
 77, 78. %foa Syharum. (See Plate XII.) 1638. 
 79—82. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. 1662. 
 83 — 89. La Perspective Curieuse — Niceron. 1663. 
 90, 91. Paradise Lost. 1668. 
 
 92. Paradise Regained. 1668. 
 
 93. The Works of Abraham Cowley. 1669. 
 
 94. The New Atlantis. 1669. 
 95—97. Moliere's Plays. 1682. 
 
 Plate XV. 
 
 1. Pot, like chalice. From book printed by Caxton, before 
 
 Sotheby. 1491. 
 
 2. „ From MS. British Museum, vi. 318c. 1497. 
 
 3. „ Letter (or copy) from W. Latimer to M. W. 
 Pace. Hatton Finch, 29,549. 1530. 
 
 4. „ Letter, French, unsigned. Cotton MSS. Nero 
 
 vi. 1596. 
 5, 6. „ Letter, copies of English. Cotton MSS. Nero vi. 
 1596. 
 
 7. „ Letter, signed Walsingham. Cotton MSS. Nero 
 
 vi. 1577. 
 
 8. „ Letter, Walsingham to Leycester. Cotton MSS. 
 
 Nero vi. 1577. 
 
 9. „ Letter, Nathaniel Bacon to the Lord Chancellor. 
 Tenison MSS. 1579. 
 
 10. „ Letter, H. Maynard to Anthony Bacon. Teni- 
 son MSS. 1580. 
 11, 12. „ Letter, H. Maynard to Anthony Bacon, copies. 
 Tenison MSS. 1580. 
 
 13. „ Letter, Francis Bacon to W. Doylie. Tenison 
 MSS. 1580. 
 
 14. „ Letter, Sir Amyas Powlett to A. Bacon. Cotton 
 
 MSS. 1580. 
 
396 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 15, 16. Pot, like chalice. Letter, Walsingham to A. Bacon. 
 Cotton MSS. 1587. 
 
 17. „ Advertisement from Paris. Cotton MSS. 1587. 
 
 18. „ Ten Sets of Emblems in Verse — Anon. (The 
 verses are like Quarles'.) Tenison MSS. 1587. 
 
 19. „ Mrs. Anne Bacon to her brother Anthony. 
 
 Tenison MSS. 1591. 
 Another pot, exactly similar, Richard Barker to 
 Anthony Bacon. Tenison MSS. 1591. 
 
 20. ,, Lady Anne Bacon to her son Anthony. Tenison 
 
 MSS. 1592. 
 
 21. ,, Henry Maynard to Anthony Bacon. Tenison 
 MSS. 1592. 
 
 22. „ M. Colman to Anthony Bacon. Tenison 
 
 MSS. 1592. 
 
 23. „ Alexander Bence to Anthony Bacon. Tenison 
 MSS. 1592. 
 
 Plate XVI. 
 
 1. Letter by Sheryngton to Archbishop Whitgift. Teni- 
 son MSS., Lambeth. 1593. 
 Another, but without rays, Alexander Bence to Anthony 
 Bacon. Tenison MSS., Lambeth. 1592. 
 2, 3. Miscellaneous pedigrees — some of the Bacon family, 
 (Several patterns.) Harleian MSS. 1393, Ms. 31, 42, 
 46, etc. 
 
 4. Letter, unsigned — Of the debt of the Low Countries. 
 
 Various. Finch Hatton MSS. 338. 1590. 
 
 5. Letter unsigned, undated. 
 
 6. Letters from Henry Cobham. One speaks of Daubigne 
 
 being sent into Scotland. Another has the letters 
 A B. The same in letters from Sir Amyas Powlett. 
 Cotton MSS. Calig. E. 108, 159—161, 203, 210. 
 1581. 
 
 7. Estratto da Avisi da CoiutantinopolL Cotton MSS. 
 
 Nero vi. 19. After 1603. 
 9. Letters, dateless, unsigned. Speak of Cardinal 
 Alobrandini. Cotton MSS. Nero vi. 17. 
 10. Letters, intercepted, to Signor Valete " al Conte." 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 397 
 
 Signed Andrea Van Nellecouen. Cotton MSS. Nero 
 vi. 23. 
 11, 12, 15, 17. Letters unsigned, undated. Cotton MSS. 235, 
 267, 314, 393—437. 
 
 14. Pedigrees connected with the Bacon family. Harl. 
 
 1393, 108. 
 16. Note : This is the only example of a two-handled pot 
 in the British Museum collection. It is there called 
 " Vase, from MS. Quintilian." The latter is not in 
 the museum. (The sheet on which this " vase " is 
 found is amongst a collection of foreign papers, 
 1881.) Dateless. 
 
 Plate XVII. 
 
 1. From the Works of Thos. Becon, Vol. I., or Thos. 
 
 Beacon, Vol. II. 1560. (Note this mark and spell- 
 ing of the name, with regard to the last pot in our 
 collection.) 
 
 2. Francis Bacon's Apologie. 1604. 
 2 — 5a. Advancement of Learning. 1605. 
 
 6 — 14. Translation of Certaine Psalms. 1625. 
 10. War with Spain. 1629. 
 
 15. Hut Vitis et Mortis. 1637. 
 16 — 18. Sapientia Velerum. 1638. 
 
 19—23. Hist. Life and Death (and next sheet). 1638. 
 
 Plate XVIII. 
 
 1—3. Hut Life and Death. 1638. 
 
 4. Hist. Experimentally et Naturalis, De Vcntis, etc., 
 
 1638, and others in edition of 1650. 
 5, 6. History of Henry VII. 1638. 
 7—14. De Auymenlis. 1638. 
 
 Plate XIX. 
 
 1 — 1. Advancement of Learning. 1610. 
 
 5. De Aug mentis. 1645. 
 
 6. Racon's Remaiues. Baconiana (one of three varieties). 
 
 1648. 
 
398 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 7. New Atlantis and Sylva Sylvarum. 1650. In the New? 
 Atlantis, 1669, there are five patterns. 
 8 — 10. Sylva Sylvarum. 1651. 
 
 Nearly the same as No. 10 in XXV III Sermons by 
 Jeremy Taylor. 1654. 
 11, 12. Szjlva Sylvarum. 1658. 
 
 Plate XX. 
 
 13. Sylva Sylvarum. 1658. 
 
 14. History of Life and Death. 1658. 
 
 15. Undescribed, in the Bodleian Collection. 1662. 
 16—18. New Atlantis. 1669. 
 
 19, 20. Advancement of Learning. 1674. 
 
 Plate XXI. 
 
 1. North's Plutarke. Last fly leaf; otherwise foreign 
 paper. 1579. 
 2, 2a. A Handful of Gladsome Verses Given to the Queen's 
 
 Maiestie. 1592. 
 3 — Sy. Spenser's Faerie Queene. S. Ken. Mus., Forster and 
 Dyer Library. 1596. Note the A B, F B, A F, R C, 
 etc., and a date (1586 reversed?). 
 4, 5. Homer's lliades — Chapman. 1598. 
 6— 6d. A Pithie Exhortation. 1598. 
 
 Plate XXII. 
 
 1 — 8. Montaigne's Essays. 1603. 
 9. North's Plutarke. 1603. 
 10, 11. The Examination, etc., of George Sprot. 1609. 
 12 — 15. Observations on Ccesar's Commentaries — Clement 
 
 Edmundes. 1609. 
 16—22. Florio's Italian-English Dictionary. 1611. 
 23, 24. London Triumphing— T. Middleton. 1612. 
 
 Plate XXIII. 
 
 1 — 3. Drayton's Polyalbion. 1613. 
 4, 5. Civitalis Amor. 1613. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 399 
 
 6, 7. Marlowe's Hero and Leander. Brit. Mus. 1076h 6. 
 1613. 
 8. Another pot with 1 1. 
 9—21. Ben Jonson's Works. 1616. 
 22 a, c & d. Stowe's Survey of London. 1618. 
 
 22 b. The World Lost of Tennis. 
 23—26. Selden's History of Tithes. 1618. See next plate. 
 
 Plate XXIV. 
 
 1—11. Selden's History of Tithes. See Plate XXIII. 1618. 
 
 12. Triumphs of Love and Antiquity — Middleton. 1619. 
 
 13. The World Lost at Turn's— Middleton. 1619. 
 14, 14a. Chapman's Byron's Conspiracie. 1625. 
 
 15. 
 16. 
 17-1 7c. Love's Labour's Lost (quarto). 1631. 
 
 Space does not admit of a collection found in C. Marlowe's 
 Troublesome Reigne of King Edward II. 1622 (Brit. Mus. 82c 
 22) ; Dr. Faustus, pot, hand and rose ; Jew of Malta, pot with 
 V D ; others with crescent and crown. Also in Edward II., 
 1598, other patterns with hand and star. Also in Hero and 
 Leander, 1629 and 1637 ; The Rich Jew of Malta, 1633 ; The 
 Queen's Wake, 1610 ; The Order of the Solemnitie of the Creation 
 of Prince Henrie, 1610 ; Tam Robur in Colis Arbor Jovis, 1610 ; 
 and other plays, masques, etc., of " the Elizabethan and Jaco- 
 bean" dramatists, some anonymous. 
 
 Plate XXV. 
 
 1. Euphues' Anatomie of Wit — J. Lilie. 1631. Almost 
 the same in Euphues' History of England. (British 
 Museum, 12, 410cc 1.) 
 2 — 9. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. 1632. 
 
 10. Milton's Comus. A masque presented at Ludlow Castle. 
 
 1634. 
 
 11. Quarles' Emblems. 1639. No second half visible ; 
 
 other patterns in the edition of 1645, and a pot with 
 I P in History of Samson, 1631. 
 
400 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 12. Sir Kenelm Digby, Observations on the 22nd Stanza, dr., 
 
 of the Faerie Queene. (British Museum, ll,805aab, 
 p. 17.) 
 
 13. Fuller's Church History. 1648. 
 
 14. " Diodati " Testament and Commentary. Annotations 
 
 to the Book of the Revelations. 1648. 
 
 Plate XXVI. 
 
 1 — 6. The Alcoran of Mahomet — Anon. Six bold patterns. 
 1649. 
 7. New Testament. 1650. 
 8 — 10. Daniel's Collection of the History of England. 1650. 
 11, 12. Scourge for the Assyrian — Anon. Tract. 1652. 
 
 13. Designe for Plentie. Tract. 1652. 
 14, 14a. George Herbert's Priest to the Temple (and some non- 
 descripts). 1652. 
 
 15. Clark's Examples. 1657. Some similar in XXVIII. 
 
 Sermons — Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 Plate XXVII. 
 
 1. The Way of Bliss— Elias Ashmole. 1658. 
 
 2. The Doctrine of Original Sin — Ashmole. 1658. 
 
 3. From Paper and Paper Making — Richard Herring, 3rd 
 
 edition. 1863. This is reprinted from Ures 
 Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures, " with illus- 
 trations and Additions." As is usual in all books 
 professing to publish any account of these matters, 
 the illustration is without any date or description as 
 to its meaning, or the book from which it was taken. 
 
 4. Sir Robert Howard's Four Neic Plays. 1664. 
 
 5. Shakespeare. 1664. 
 
 6. Sir Kenelm Digby's Powder of Sympathy. 1669. One 
 
 of several patterns. This book is an allegory or 
 parable of the " Rosicrucian '' sort. 
 
 7. Sir Kenelm Digby's Treatise of Bodies. 1669. Several 
 
 patterns. 
 
 8. Sir Kenelm Digby's Treatise of Souls. 1669. Several 
 
 patterns. 
 
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 401 
 
 9. Traced on a piece in the collection of English paper- 
 marks at the Bodleian Library. On the paper is 
 written: "Geneva Bible, 1561." But the Geneva 
 Bible of that date (which is the date of Francis 
 Bacon's birth) has not this paper-mark, and a pot of 
 this size (nearly 5 inches) is not found till nearly 
 one hundred years later. The figures reversed — 
 1651 — would be about the date. 
 
 10. On the same sheet as No. 9. Here the pot is not 
 
 traced, but on the paper is written in the same hand 
 of a well-known Professor : " From Bacon's Works," 
 with the date added, 1563-4. In the works of 
 "Thomas Becon," Vol. L, or "Thomas Beacon," 
 Vol. II., there is no pot like this. See ante. 
 
 11. CR. From Sir Kenelm Digby's Of the Soul. 1669. 
 12, 13. Cowley's Works. 1669. 
 
 Had space permitted, it was the intention to add extra and 
 nondescript designs to prove that it was by intention and 
 selection that the marks specially classed as " Baconian " were 
 introduced into a certain very comprehensive circle of books of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The curious and 
 industrious reader should satisfy himself on this point by 
 studying the " extras " in these or other books of the period. 
 He will find shields, chains, fleur-de-lis, roses, bell-flowers, 
 cardinals' hats, shrines, lambs and flags, lions, Mercury's rods, 
 spread eagles, double-headed eagles, etc., with a quantity of 
 distinct but nondescript figures, and many of the old foreign 
 marks, varied or modified. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that the present collection consists 
 only of selections made from the limited number of books from 
 which we have been able to draw. Unfortunately, many other 
 books related to the subject had been examined with a view to 
 other particulars before we had grasped the importance of the 
 paper-marks as first links in the chain. 
 
 All the editions of books of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries should be searched ; the most elementary educational 
 books, as well as the sermons " preached " ; masques and plays 
 " produced " ; songs and hymns " written," " penned," " pre- 
 sented," " set to music " ; theological, scientific and historical 
 
 cc 
 
402 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 works " collected," " augmented, 1 ' " revised " ; classical and 
 foreign works " translated out of the Latin," or " first printed 
 in the English tongue." 
 
 Where the hieroglyphic pictures, next to be described, are 
 conspicuous and abundant, the water-marks seem to have been 
 less regarded. Yet this is not an invariable rule. On the other 
 hand, where the name of the supposed author on the title-page, 
 or the signature of the dedication, is printed in mixed types, 
 differing from the rest of the printing, we are seldom dis- 
 appointed in our search after water-marks, unless the book 
 was published abroad, or the paper made from wood and not 
 from cotton fibre. 
 
403 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abbott, Dr., quoted 51—79 < 
 
 Abrac, 274 
 
 Academies, 197 
 
 Acting, see Stage, 145 ; in song, 139 
 
 Advancement of Learning, 22, 28, 
 
 39, 157, 161, 171, 178, 179, 185, 
 
 233, 325, 327 
 Advice to the Queen, 45 
 Advice to Earl Rutland, 46 
 JEsop, 27 
 
 Africa, Learned Men, 30 
 Age, Gross, Ignorant, 104 
 Albanus, 275 ; St. Alban, 275—279 
 Albans, St. Lord, 196 ; Earl of, 279 
 Alchemists, 29, 188, 194; Rosicru- 
 
 cians Not, 245 ; Freemasons 
 
 Not, 246 
 Allegory, 28-30, 185 
 Alleyn, Edward, 25, 142—144 
 Alphabet, " Cipher," 48, 49, 128, 200 
 A.mbiguities, Language, 26 ; Notes, 
 
 Letters, 46—49, 71; Inscrip- 
 tions, 204-5 
 Analogies, Bacon's, 73, 159, 170, 185, 
 
 222 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, 94, 179, 
 
 223, 235 
 Andreas, Johann Valentin, Preface, 
 
 14 33 191 247 
 Anthroposophia, 338, 339, 341 
 Antitheta, 173, 174, 185 
 Anton, 63 
 Antonio, 100, 127 
 Aphorisms, 184 
 Apollo, 72 
 Apologia, 101, 129 
 Apophthegms, 27, 85, 101, 129, 184, 
 
 231 
 Apprentices, Rosicrucians, 204 
 Apuleius, 191 
 
 Arabia, Learned Physicians, 30, 195 
 Arcadia, 39 
 Architect, Alban, 157, 275 ; Bacon, 
 
 159, 176 ; Of the Universe, 269 
 Argument of the Work, 1—23 
 Ariel, 224, 226 
 Aristotle, 19, 91, 92, 173 
 Art of Healing, 204 
 Arts, Masonic, 271 ; Anagrams, or 
 
 Art of Changes, 274 
 Arundel, Earl of, Preface, 116, 147 
 
 Asia, Learned Men, 29, 30 
 Ashmole, Elias, 321 ; Way of Bliss, 
 
 396 
 Asmond and Cornelia, 114 
 Assizes in Parnassus, 72 
 Astrology, 161-2, 271 
 Astronomy, 161, 162, 271 
 Atlantis, New, 25, 63, 84, 197, 265 ; 
 
 Merchants of, 322 
 Aubrey, John, 36, 60, 67, 72, 80 
 Authors, Feigned, 46, 210, 351 
 Autobiography, Francis Bacon's, 
 
 33—35, Footnote 
 Avenzoar, Averroes, Avicenna, 195 
 Axioms, Infallible Axiomata, 203 
 
 Bacon, Anthony, 24, 41, 83, 86, 96, 
 100, 120, 125 ; Little Known of, 
 44, 94, 96, 349 
 
 Bacon, Edward, 126. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, Birth and Parentage, 
 Preface ; Boyhood, 32, 88—94, 
 103—105; Character, 49-82, 
 107, 108, 150; Fixed Notions, 
 91—96 ; Gifts, 22, 81, 87, 94 ; 
 His Dream, 99 ; Concealed 
 Poet, 24, 33, 72, 74; Recluse, 
 25, 42, 45 ; Age, Death, 24, 147 ; 
 Secrecy,35, 38; Solicitor-General, 
 Attorney-General, 134 ; Chan- 
 cellor, 138 ; Correspondents, 
 Helpers, 24, 25, 48, 52, 88, 96, 
 107-8 ; Portraits, 74-5, 86, 88, 
 89, 99, 168; Poverty, 44, 100, 
 125; Religion, 253, 255—257. 
 Founder R. C, 42; Studies, 
 Bible, 29—31; Oriental, 93; 
 Classical, 29 ; Scientific, 34 ; 
 Obscure, 25—27 ; Book of Ori- 
 sons, Will, Trustees, 146 
 
 Bacon, Nathaniel, 86, 87 
 
 Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 14, 84—86, 99. 
 See Preface 
 
 Bacon, Lady Anne, 87, 99, 106-7. 
 See Preface. 
 
 Bagford, John, 287 
 
 Bailey, 188 
 
 Bankside Players, 138 
 
 Bartholomew Fair, 196 
 
 Bartholomew, St., Massacre of, 254 
 
 Baxter, Richard, 351 
 
 PP 
 
404 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Beaumont, John, 25, 132 
 
 Beneficence, Rosicrucian, 205 
 
 Becon, Beacon, Bacon, 324. Note 
 
 Bennet College, 215 
 
 Beza, 154 
 
 Bible, Bacon and, 29, 31, 213, 265 ; 
 Diodati, 213; Douai, 392; 
 Hebrew, 155 
 
 Bible, Figures, Marks in, 299, 
 393-395 
 
 Biform Figures in Nature, 337 
 
 Bodley, Sir Thos., 210 
 
 Boener, Peter, 61, 81 
 
 Book of Nature, God's, 161, 163 
 
 Books, Bacons, Disfigured ; Fly- 
 Leaves ; Frontispieces ; Title 
 Pages, 214, 215 
 
 Books and Collections Withheld, 
 215, 216 
 
 Books, Translations, Feigned and 
 Orignals, 199, 200 
 
 British Museum, Suppressed Col- 
 lections of Books, MSS., Paper- 
 marks, Prints, 283-288 
 
 Browne, Thomas, 71 
 
 Bruno, Giordano, 25, 280 
 
 Brunswick, Duke of. See Cipher. 
 
 Buckingham, Marquise of, 49, 143 
 
 Burleigh, Lord, 51, 88 
 
 Bull Inn, 83 
 
 Burton, Robert, 151 
 
 Cabala, 46 ; Cabalists, 188, 220 
 Ccesar, Julius, Obsns. on, 167, 170 
 Camden, John, 167, 210 ; Camden s 
 
 Annals, 167 
 Campbell, Lord, 36, 53, 54, 56 
 Candle, 324-327 
 Carausius, 275, 277-8 
 Carey's, 210 
 Carleton, 53, 140 
 Carvalho, S. N., 63, 64. 
 Catalogues Garbled, Preface ; 
 
 Omissions in, 43, 44 
 Cavendish, Lord, 146 
 Caxton, 292 
 
 Cecils, 99, 144. See Burleigh 
 Chain of Ideas, Sciences, 29, 52, 153, 
 
 309 
 Chamberlain, 53, 68, 133, 140 
 Chapman, 174 
 
 Chemical Marriage, 189, 192, 194, 
 247 
 
 Chemistry, 160, 161; Chymical 
 Collections, 321 
 
 Christian Rosenkreuz, 187, 247 
 
 Christianity, 270 
 
 Church, Bacon's View, 149 ; Pacifi- 
 cation of the, 326 
 
 Church, Dr., 53, 58, 73 
 
 Cicero, 171, 282 
 
 Ciphers, Preface, 38 ; Alphabet, 48, 
 49, 128, 200 ; Bacon's Biliteral, 
 23 
 
 Ciphers, Various, 12, 48, 295 
 
 Clavel, 247 
 
 Coke, 66 
 
 Collet, Dean, 154 
 
 Collections, Concealed, 42, 285—286; 
 Bacon's Notes in Harleian Col- 
 lection ; Promus* 43, 44 
 
 Collections to be Compiled, and 
 Scholars to be Employed and 
 paid, 201. 
 
 Collections, MSS., Cotton, Harley, 
 Finch Hatton, Tenison, Gibson, 
 Rawley, 96, 119 
 
 College of the Six Days, 198 
 
 Colleges, Bacon's Scheme for Get- 
 ting Help from Them, 201 
 
 Colours of Good and Evil, 10, 127 
 
 Comedy of Errors, 106, 121 
 
 Comet of 1572, 218, 219 
 
 Commentaries, Ccesar s, 167, 326 
 
 Common-places, Bacon's, 173 
 
 Concealed Man, Poet, 38-42 
 
 Conference of Pleasure, 107, 110, 118 
 
 Confession of Faith, 145 
 
 Constable, Sir John, 145, 215 
 
 Cooke, Lady A., 86—88 
 
 Cotton Family, 210 
 
 Cowlev, Abraham, 64, 174 
 
 Craik,"52, 71 
 
 Crashaw, 174 
 
 Critics, 23, 50-82, 121, 198 
 
 Croly, Dr., 295 
 
 Crotona, " Groton," 274 
 
 Croptographice Gustavi Seleni, 12 
 
 Dante, 73 
 
 Davies, 210 ; Mythology of the 
 Druids, 253 
 
 * Since the above was written another, perhaps more valuable dis- 
 covery, has been made. Mr. Stone in his " Court, Camp and Cloister." 
 enumerates the documents which he has found useful in his work. He 
 writes thus : — " Volume 5106 consists mainly of notes made by Sir Francis 
 Bacon from the year 1594 to 1596, or thereabouts ; they form the chief basis 
 on which rests the theory that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's works." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 405 
 
 De Augmentis. See Advancement of 
 
 Learning 
 De Interpretatione Prcemium, 42 
 Death, Bacon's, 24, 147 ; Life and 
 
 Death, 161 
 Death, Masonic, 253 
 " Deficients" in Learning, 10, 28, 38, 
 
 39, 149-185 * 
 
 Delius, Dr., Chronology of Shake- 
 
 peare's Plays, 100 
 Demonology, 101 
 Demosthenes, 171 
 Dense and Rare, 25, 101, 160 
 Devey, 53, 73 
 
 Device of an Indian Prince, 127 
 Device, Order of the Helmet, 107 
 Device, Philautia, 177 
 Diction, Bacon's 
 Dictionaries, 163, 196-7, 207 
 Difficulties in Baconian Research, 
 
 264 
 Digby, Sir Kenelm, 210 
 Diodati, John (God's Gift), 213 
 Diogenes, 29 
 
 Dionysus, Moral Philosophy, 182 
 Dioscorides, 195 
 Discovery of Guiana 
 Discoveries on Men and Matter 
 Diseases of Style, 116 
 Disguises, Preface 
 Dixon, Hepworth, 59, 106, 107 
 Doctrine of the Soul 
 Doctrine of Union of Soul and Body, 
 
 101, 224 
 Doctors Differ, 49—82 
 Dogs, Cynics, 23, 50—82, 198 
 Donnelly, Honorable Ignatius, His 
 
 Pioneer Cipher, 12, 48, 295 
 Dorset, Earl of, 146 
 Doyly, Mr., 209 
 Dramatic Poesy, 26 
 Dramatists, Elizabethan, 103 
 Druids, 275 
 
 Drummond, of Hawthorneden, 210 
 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, 
 
 Preface 
 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Essex, 
 
 Preface 
 
 Ebb and Flow of the Sea 
 Edmunds, Clement, 168 
 Effiat, Marquis d', 45, 146 
 Egerton, Sir Thos., 138, 142 
 Egypt, Study of, 91 ; Symbolism, 
 
 277 ; Travels, Pythagoras, 273 
 Elegie Au Seigneur Antoine Bacon, 
 
 43 
 Elizabeth, Queen, Preface, 17, 110, 
 
 119, 128—131 ; Her Death, 101 
 
 Elizabethan Dramatists, 103 
 
 Elocution, 174 
 
 Emblems, 123, 129, 185, 265—270 
 
 England's Helicon, 208 
 
 Entertainments, 107 
 
 Epitaphs, 14, 203, 217 
 
 Equivocations, 17, 19 
 
 " Errors," Preface ; Intentional, 13, 
 
 46 
 Essex. Earl, of 45, 46, 59, 68, 69, 
 
 101, 118, 119, 126-9 
 Estienne, 155 
 Eton, 201, 216 
 
 Euclid, 30 ; Problem 47 of Book 1, 
 Eulogies, 43 [273 
 
 Evasions, 18, 19 
 Evelyn, John, F.R.S., 213, 214 
 Every Man in His Humour, 40 
 Experimental History, 157, 197 
 Eye, 267, of the World, 324 
 
 Fables, 27, 182 
 
 Fairie Queene, 39 
 
 Fairies, 100, 225-233 
 
 Faith and Science, Conflict, 154 
 
 Fama Fraternitatis, 194-8, 219 
 
 Father X., Preface 
 
 Faunt, Nicholas, 41, 119, 209 
 
 Feigned Histories, 129, 176, 272 
 
 Feigned Initials, 214 
 
 Feigned Names, 38, 204, 214 
 
 Figurative Language, 29 
 
 Filum Labyrinthi, 183 
 
 Fischer, Dr., 74 
 
 Five, 339 
 
 Florio, John, 25, 40, 209, and James 
 I., 41 
 
 Foundations, 109, 201, 212 
 
 Fountains of Memory, &c, 176 
 
 Fowler, Professor, 50, 52, 74 
 
 France, Bacon in, 98, 100 
 
 Francis I. Founds the Royal Col- 
 lege, 154, 156 
 
 Freemasonry, 11 ; Aims, 260 ; Arts, 
 16, 271 ; Concealment, 19, 22-3, 
 274; Histories of, 271, 276-7; 
 Symbols, 14 
 
 Freezing Meat, 147 
 
 Friends, Collaborators, 25 
 
 Fulgentius, 25 
 
 Fuller, Dr., Preface, 144 
 
 G = Gad, Ghadol, God, Gott, 332-3 
 
 Galen, 29 
 
 Garbled Documents, &c, 128, 188 
 
 Geometry, 269, 270 
 
 German Paper, 284 
 
 Qesta Grayorum, 40, 45, 113 
 
 Globe Theatre, 129 
 
406 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 God's Gift College, 144, 213 ; Gift of 
 
 Wisdom, 310, 340 
 Golden Legend, 311 ; Golden Age, 
 Goodman, Bishop, 101 [124 
 
 Gorhambury, 84, 99, 145-6, 196 
 Gosnold, Henry, 119 
 Gower, Peter, 273 
 Grammar Deficient, 184, 185 
 Graves, 14, 44, 108, 217 
 Gray's Inn, 73, 79, 83, 103-109, 114, 
 
 119, 120, 131—140, 146, 207 
 Greece, 27, 182 ; Depreciated, 201 ; 
 
 Greek, 154 
 Greece and Rome, 29, 30, 185 
 Gresham College, 213—216 
 Greville Fulke, 46, 231 
 Grocyn, William, 154 
 Grossness of the Age, 10 
 Groton, 273 
 
 Guiana, Discovery of, 168 
 Gymnosophists, 188 
 
 Hallam, 168, 169 
 
 Harleian Collection, 31, 43 
 
 Hay ward, Dr. John, 68, 116, 129— 
 
 Hearne, 288 [131 
 
 Hebrew, 154, 155 
 
 Helicon, 355 
 
 Heliodorus, 191 
 
 Helmet, Owner of the, 107 
 
 Helmet, Pluto's Invisibility, 200 
 
 Herbert William, 146, 174, 215 ; Earl 
 
 of Pembroke, 278 
 Hercules' Columns, 156 
 Hermit, Preface, 45, 178 
 Hermetic Philosophers, 188 
 Herring, Richard, 293, 294 
 Heywood, Thomas, 351 
 Hieroglyphic Designs, Pictures, 27, 
 
 38, 185, 276, 284 
 Hilliard, Miniature Painter, 99 
 Hindu Symbolism, 91 
 History, Bacon, the Study of, 174 ; 
 Civil History, Divisions of, 165 
 History Compiled, 163, 206; 
 
 Appendices, 184 
 History, Dense and Rare, 42 ; Life 
 
 and Death, 42 
 History, Feigned, 175, 189 
 History of Great Britain, 166 ; of 
 Life and Death ; Experimental, 
 160; Henry VII; of Me- 
 chanique ; of the Winds, 160 
 History of the World, 168, 210 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 196 
 Hoby, 88 
 
 Holland, Paper Mills, 196 
 Honorificabilitudinitatibus, 117 
 Hooker, Dr. Richard, 142, 151 
 
 Horce Eliance, 166 
 
 Horticulture, 101, 162 
 
 Howard, Henry, Earl of Norfolk, 
 
 116, 213, 214, 278 
 Howell's Letters, 166 
 Howes, Edmund, 74 
 Humbug of Bacon, 71 
 Hurd's Treatise on Religions, 248 
 Husbandry, 162 
 Hydriotaphia, 71 
 
 Idea of the Law, 203 
 
 Idea of Masonry, 257 
 
 Idea of Painting, 213 
 
 Ignorance of the Age, 10, 32 
 
 Ignorance, Professed, 204, 211, 217 
 
 Illuminati, 14, 160, 178, 196 
 
 Imperator, 204 
 
 Incognito of Rosicrucians, 210 
 
 Indian Boy, Masque, 127 
 
 Indian Philosophy, 91 
 
 Initials, Feigned, 204 
 
 Inns of Court, 135—137 
 
 Inquiries, 201 
 
 Inscriptions, 204 
 
 Instauratio, 48 
 
 Intellectual Globe, 176 
 
 Interpretation of Nature, 35, 42, 153, 
 
 179, 283 
 Inventions, 184 ; Inventors, 221 
 Italy, Anthony and Francis in, 100 
 
 James I., 40, 41, 189 ; Demonology, 
 
 101 
 James II., 276 
 Jermyn, Henry, Earl of St. Alban's, 
 
 279 
 Jesuits, 12, 105, 180, 210, 247 
 Jew, the Hard, 100 ; Shylock, 126 
 Johnson, Benjamin, 210 ; Spelling 
 
 of His Name, 140, 141, Note 
 Jones, Inigo, 144, 278, 279 
 Jonson, Ben, 10, 22, 36, 40, 56, 71, 80, 
 
 102, 140—142, 150,174, 196; John 
 
 Benson, 143 
 Juggling-tricks of Wit and Hand, 
 
 283 
 Knights Templars, 278 
 Knowledge, Conveyed by Images, 
 
 Symbols, 264, 265 
 
 Lambeth Palace Library, 24, 41, 70, 
 76, 86, 96 
 
 Lamp of Tradition, 15, 17, 203, 280 ; 
 Lantern, Light, Candle, 159, 
 320 327 
 
 Lamp, Light of God, 320—327 
 
 Language, Defective, 32 ; Meta- 
 phorical, 17, 25—29, 158, 264, 
 
 Language, Silent, 33 [265 
 
INDEX. 
 
 407 
 
 Language, Universal, 14, 274 
 Law for Ye Merry Tales, 127 
 Learned Men of the East, 30 
 Leicester, Earl of, 40 
 Letters, Francis Bacon, of, 166 
 Leycestevs Commonwealth, 114 
 Ley land, Johan, 272 
 Libraries, Bacon's Plan for,>^212 ; 
 
 His Own, 214, 215, 
 Librum Naturae, 161 
 Life's a Bubble, 113 
 Life and Death, History of, 25, 121, 
 Light, 159, see Lamp [122, 161 
 
 Links, Chains, 29, 152, 308 
 Lucian, Symbolic Writer, 191 
 Lucrece, 117, 125 
 Lumen di Lumine, 321 
 Luther, 219, 309 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 36, 50—56, 62-69, 
 
 72,81 
 Mackay, Dr. A. G. 
 
 Mackay, Dr., of Rosicrucians, Free- 
 masons, 245 
 Mackenzie, Kenneth, R. li., Edited 
 
 Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, 192 
 Madness, 101 
 
 Magdalen College, Oxford, 201 
 Magi, Magicians, Magus, 33, 108 ; 
 
 Anima Magica, 321 
 Manna, 333—335 
 Manuscripts, 96, 119, 167, 315 
 Marks, Secret, Preface, 13, see Paper 
 
 Marks 
 Marlowe, 31, 174 
 Marriage of Truth and Beauty, 
 
 Chymical, 222 
 Masks, Preface, 42, 43 
 Masonry, Preface 121, 122, 243— 
 
 282; Operative, Speculative, 259 
 Masonry, Cyclopaedia of, 192 
 Masques, 107, 131 —137 ; of Flowers, 
 
 138, 140 
 Matthew, Sir Tobie, 36, 46-9, 54, 67, 
 
 71, 78, 128, 210 
 " Mean," 36, Note 
 Meautys, Sir Thomas, 80 
 Mechanique, 202 
 Mede, Joseph 
 Meditations Sacraz, 127 
 Melancholia, 101 
 
 Memory, Imagination, Reason, 164 
 Mercury, Secret and Swift, 200 
 Metaphors, 27—29, see Emblems, 
 
 Symbols 
 Metaphysics, 161, 162 
 Meteorology, 161 
 Method, 11, 15, 41, 45, 95, 111, 155, 
 
 156, 196-198 
 
 Method, Parabolic, 26-29, 41 
 
 Microcosm, 121, 309 
 
 MicrocosmuH, 168, 197 
 
 Middleton, 174 
 
 Milton, John, 73 
 
 Mind, Body, 64, 101 
 
 Minerva, 178 
 
 Mirrors, 103, 104, 309 
 
 Mole, 321 
 
 Money, 205 
 
 Monster Minds, 349—351 
 
 Montagu, Basil, 70- 73, 81 
 
 Montagues, 278 
 
 Montaigne, Essays, 25, 209 ; Visits 
 
 Bacon, 40, 41, 57, 90, 98, 351 
 Montgomery, 40, 278 
 Monuments, 44, 260, see Graves, 
 
 Tombs 
 More, Sir Thomas, 15 
 Morley, Prof. H., English Literature, 
 Moryson, 68 [184 
 
 Mottoes, 204 
 Mountjoy 
 Mumming, 105 
 Munsell, Joel, 287, 288, 293 
 Muses, Hymn to the, 178 ; in poverty, 
 
 179 
 Music, Drama, 145, 180, 268 
 Mystery, Bacon's, 10, 11, 27, 38, 46, 47 
 Mystics, 29, 30 ; Mysteries, 
 
 " spurious," 252 ; Biblical, 341 
 Mystogagus Poeticus, or The Muses 1 
 
 Interpreter, 167, Note 
 
 Names, Changed, Feigned, Secret, 
 
 204, 214 
 Nash, Thomas, 114 
 Natural History, 153, 157, 158, 162 
 Natural Philosophy, 182 ; Science, 
 
 160, 161-164 
 Nature, 152 ; Human, 161 ; Spirits 
 
 of, 159 
 Ne Plus Ultra, 168 
 Netherlands, Marks in Books, 291 
 Neville Family, 88, 115 
 New Atlantis, 25, 63, 84, 161, 198, 
 New Birth of Time, 11 [265 
 
 Noah, 251 
 Norris, Mr., 209 
 Norton 
 
 Notes, Bacon's, 195 
 Novum Organum, 153, 195, 274, 324, 
 
 352, 353 
 Numbers, Pythagoras, 27, 273, 274, 
 
 336 
 
 Oberon, 233 
 
 Obscurity, Bacon, 26—29, 37 — 42, 
 72; Silence, 32 
 
408 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Omissions, Intentional in Books, 
 Catalogues, Registers, 43, 44, 
 102, 106-7, 114, 144, 185, 192, 277, 
 294 
 
 Order, 258, 269, 270 ; Of the Helmet, 
 107, 121 
 
 Orders, Degrees, Freemasons, &c., 
 14, 243, 247—249 
 
 Organum, 153, 195, 274 
 
 Oriental Philosophy, 91, 188; 
 Studies of, 97, 195 
 
 Orpheus, Essay, 355 
 
 -Osborne, of Bacon, 60 
 
 P = Phoded = Redeemer, 290 ; 
 
 Philip, 291 
 Pallas 
 
 Pan, the Universe, 182, 233 
 Pan-Organum, " Wrens," 279 
 Papacy, 191 
 Paper Making, 283, 285, 288, 341, 
 
 343 
 Paper Marks,'Pre/ace, List, 316, 317, 
 
 357—402; Plates I. -XXVII. ; 
 
 British Museum Collection, 285 
 Paper Mills, 291 
 Parables, 182 ; Parabolic Poetry, 
 
 185 
 Parabolic Language, 26 — 28, 284 ; 
 
 Marks, 283—346 
 Paracelsus, 159, 218—225 
 Parasceve, 163, 197 
 Parry, Dr. , Preface 
 Paulet, Sir Amias, 97 
 Peacham, 62, 63 
 Pembroke, Earl of, 40 ; Papers, 41 ; 
 
 Marquis, 278 ; Wilton, 279 
 Pens, Able, 201 
 Pens, Able, Pensions to, 201 
 Perseus, 182 
 
 Peter Gower, Petagore, see Pytha- 
 goras, 273 
 Philalethes 
 Philanthropia, 107 
 Philautia, Device, 177, 178, 260 
 Phillips, Halliwell, Outlines, 74 
 Philology, 10, 31, 32 
 Philosopher's Stone, 245 
 Philosophy, Ancient, 29, 91; Study of 
 
 Egypt, Arabia, Chaldea, Persia, 
 
 India, Pagan, 29, 30, 88, 194-5 ; 
 Phoebus, 43 [201 
 
 Physiognomy, 162 
 Pickering, Lord, 200 
 Places of Residence Changed, 204 
 Plautus his Mencechmus, 121 
 Plato, 157, 191 
 Plays, Francis Bacon of, 144-5 ; 
 
 Shakespeare's, ,110 — 145 
 
 Plays, Latin at Cambridge, 105 
 Pluto's Helmet, 200 
 Poets, 72, 174 ; Feign, 175, 180 
 Poetry, Dramatic, 177 ; Narrative, 
 
 176-7; Parobolic, 26, 27, 177, 
 
 181 
 Pioctiers, Francis Bacon at, 98 
 Poisons, 101, 102 
 Pope, Alexander, 50 
 Porphyry, 29 
 Portraits, Bacon, 87, 99 
 Post Nati, 201 
 Poverty of Bacon, 44, 100, 125 ; Of 
 
 the Muses, 178 
 Praise of Knowledge, 118, 119 
 Praise of the Queen, 111, 118, 119 
 Praise of the Worthiest, 110 
 Prayers, Bacon's, 321, 322 
 Precocious Boys, 93 -5, 194, 279 
 Press, Preface, 23 
 Preston s Illustrations of Masonry, 
 
 257, 277 
 Pride Reprobated, 281 
 Princes Have a Cipher, 200 
 Principia Typographica, 285, 291 
 Printers, 300, 346-7 ; Marks, Rings, 
 
 288 
 Profession of Ignorance, 204, 211, 
 
 217 ; Incapacity, 25, 211 
 Promus, 22, 30, 31, 43, 44, 48, 56, 127, 
 
 171-2, 198, 263, 290 
 Prophecy, 93 
 Prosody, 77 
 Prospero, 214, 247, 267 
 Proteus, Francis Bacon as, 45, 83 
 Proverbs, 204 
 Pseudonyms, 204 
 Puzzolan Powder, Puzzling Dust, 17, 
 
 147, 280, 310 
 Puritan Prejudices, 105 
 Pyramids, Two, 175 
 Pythagoras, 27, 266, 273, 274, 291. 
 
 Quarles, 174, 311, 399 
 
 Rabbis, Intepretation of Scripture, 
 220 
 
 Ragon, Orthodoxie Maconique, 247 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 168, 169, 210, 
 279 
 
 Rawley, Dr. William, 24, 53, 54, 
 75—80, 91, 93-96, 150, 208, 355 
 
 Ray Society, 212 
 
 Recluse, Preface 
 
 Record Office, 216 
 
 Reformation, 92, 93, 189, 193 ; Uni- 
 versal, 11, 32, 294 
 
 Regimen of Health, 101 
 
 Religion, Francis Bacon's, 75, 192, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 409 
 
 253 ; Cicero, 282 ; Rosicrucians, 
 189, 244; Freemasons, 258-9, 
 274 
 
 Renaissance, 11, 14, 108, 160, 284, 
 341 
 
 Research Commended, 270 ; Ob- 
 structed, 283—288 
 
 Revels, 106-7, 114, 120—125 
 
 Revival of Learning, 11, 108, 15f 
 
 Rhazis, 195 
 
 Rhetoric, 39 
 
 Rhythm, 174 
 
 Richard II., 128-131; Richard II., 
 III., 127 
 
 Riches, 205 
 
 Rivers, Treatise on, 278 
 
 Robin Goodfellow, 226, 230, 231 
 
 Rochester, Earl, 135 
 
 Roman Catholics, 189, 210, 247 ; 
 Papal, 204 
 
 Rosicrucian, Dew, 245. 
 
 Rose Cross, 245—249, 257, and Free- 
 masonry, Preface, 281 
 
 Rosenkreuz, Christian, 187, 189 
 
 Rosicrucians, 11, 186—217, 219 ; Not 
 Alchemists, 187 
 
 Rosicrucians, Christian Literary and 
 Scientific Society, 244 
 
 Rosicrucian Books, Double-meaning, 
 
 Royal College, 155 [25 
 
 Royal Society, 72, 213, 214 
 
 Royal Society, Rules for, in Francis 
 Bacon's MS., 201 
 
 Rutland, Earl of, 209 
 
 Sailing of Ships, 102 
 
 Saint Alban, 277 
 
 St. Albans, 100, 147 
 
 St. Michael's, 145 
 
 St. Paul's, 276 
 
 Salt, Sulphur, Mercury, 25, 249 
 
 Sandys, Sir Edward, 143, 144, 210 
 
 Satire, Francis Bacon's, 121 
 
 Savile, Sir H., 143 
 
 Saye and Sele, 295 
 
 Scarborough, Dr., 280 
 
 Scholars to Be Paid, 201 ; Friends, 
 
 Rules for, 204 
 Science, Sons of, 208 
 Science, Secrecy for 100 years, 204, 
 
 208 
 Secrets of God, 163 ; Nature, 158 
 Secret Societies, 186; Francis 
 
 Bacon's Plan for, 201, 203 
 Selden, John, 146, 208, 215, 216, 399 
 Senses, the, 267—269 ; Sensitive 
 
 Nature, 337 
 Seven, 271 
 
 Shadows, 169, 177-8 
 Shaksper, William, 115, 116 
 Shakespeare, Francis Bacon's 
 
 Promus in, 22 
 Shakespeare, Mr. Donnelly's Pioneer 
 
 Discovery in Folio, 12 
 Shakespeare, Francis Bacon Ignores 
 
 Him, 39, 40, 142 
 Shakespeare, Spelling of the Name, 
 
 118 
 Shakespeare, Name Written on 
 
 Francis Bacon's Writing-case, 
 
 116 
 Shakespeare, Sonnets, 25 
 Shakespeare, Plays, 84, 100 — 105, 
 
 110 — 117, 122 — 127, 223, 224, 
 
 236, 238, 242 
 Shepherd's Calendar, 39 
 Ship, Admiral, 102 
 Shirlev Family, 210 
 Short-hand, 12, 207 
 Shrewsbury, Lord 
 Sidney Family, 210 ; Sydney, 142 
 Signs in Inns, Shops, Taverns, 288 
 Signatures Feigned, 204 
 Silent, I Am, 32 
 Similes, 26-32 
 Sion College, 216 
 Societies, Libraries, 212, 213 
 Society of Jesus, 247 
 Society for Propagation of the 
 
 Gospel, 147-8 
 Society Rosicrucians in Anglia, 
 
 Preface 
 Socrates, 152 
 Solomon's House, 15, 108, 149, 153, 
 
 173, 271 
 Somerset, Earl of, 134 
 Sonnets, 25, 109, 111 
 Sons of Science, 183, 208, 340 
 Sophisms, 173 
 Sortaine, 51, 52, 74, 75 
 Sotheby, Principia Typographica, 
 
 285, 287—291 
 Soul of the World, 336-7 
 Southampton, Lord, 125, and Note 
 Sovereign Lady, 110, 111 
 Spanish Translations, 11 
 Speculative Masons, Preface, See 
 
 Freemasons ; Speculative Phi- 
 losophy, 173 
 Spedding, James, 33-5, 50—60, 70— 
 
 78, 81, 97, 108, 110, 119, 193 
 Speech, Forms of, 171, 172 
 Spenser, 151 
 
 Spielman, Sir J, 292-295 
 Spirits of Air, Earth, Water, Fire, 
 
 218—242 
 
410 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Sprat, Dr., Preface, 36, 64, 72, 280, 
 
 350, 
 St. Alban, 277, 288 
 Stage, Francis Bacon's Views of the, 
 
 39, 112, 145, 179; Degraded, 106 ; 
 
 Eevival of, 103 
 Standard Literature, Preface 
 Standen, Anthony, 42 
 Stenography, 12 
 Store, or Promns, 171, 173 
 Storr, 54, 55, 71, 72 
 Style, Diction, " Very Small, 1 ' 111, 
 
 113, 176-7 
 Suffolk, Earl of, 136 
 Superstition, 149, 247 
 Sussex, Earl of, 116 
 Sydney, Sir Philip, 142 
 Sylva Sylvarum, 146, 157—162, 336 
 Symbols, Francis Bacon's, 17, 29, 
 
 158, 265, 303-345 
 Symbols, Egyptian, 265, 277, 303; 
 
 Indian, 302, 303 ; Masonic, 265 
 
 Table-talk, 208 
 
 Tacitus, 130, 167; Richard II., 
 
 128-131; Hamlet, 180 
 Tate, John, Paper-maker, 292-3 
 Temple of Wisdom, 263 
 Thema Cosli, 42 
 
 Temporis Partus Masculus, 202 
 Theatres, 39, 84 
 Theobald, of Shakespeare, 78 
 Theology, 154 
 Tombs, 203, 216, 217 
 Tractates, 184 
 Tradition, Method of, 284 
 Translations, 11 ; Of Bacon's Works, 
 
 199, 200 
 Translators, 211 
 Transportata, 195, 201 
 Travels, Francis Bacon's, 97 — 99, 
 
 127, 202 
 TribtUe of Giving, &c, 110 
 Trinity College, 33, 212 
 Truth Crowned, 111 
 Twickenham, 100, 126, 127 
 Tvpographical " Errors," &c, 12, 13, 
 
 284 
 
 Union of Mind and Body, 101, 224 
 Unity, Francis Bacon's Aim, 193 
 Universal Church, 281 ; Nature- 
 world, 152 ; Language, 274 
 
 Universal Reformation, 32, 148, 192, 
 219 ; Opinions, 91, 119 
 
 University, see Trin. Coll. 
 
 Ure, Dr., Mines and Manufactures, 
 
 [289 
 
 Valerius Terminus, 25 
 
 Veils, 26-29 ; 275 
 
 Venice, Venetian, 273 
 
 Venus and Adonis, 125 
 
 Venus of Apelles ; Verbal Teaching 
 in Masonry, 267 
 
 Verulam, 275, 277 ; Apollo, 72 
 
 Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, 53 
 
 Virgil, 236 
 
 Virginia, Colonisation of, 102 
 
 Vital Spirits of Nature, 121, 159, 
 218—222 
 
 Vivisection, Francis Bacon's Studies, 
 
 rioi 
 
 Wadham College, 213 
 
 Waite, A. E., 187 
 
 Waller, Edmund, 50 
 
 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 209 
 
 War, Political Philosophy, 182 
 
 Water-marks, see Paper-marks 
 
 Webster, 174 
 
 Webb, John, 279 
 
 Westcott, Dr. W. Wynn, 24 3 
 
 Westminster Wits, 201 
 
 Whitgift, Dr., 97 
 
 Whitehall, 40 
 
 Wigston, W. F. C, 52, 187, 193 
 
 Wilkins, Dr., 213 
 
 Winchester, Wits and Pens, 21 
 
 Winds, History of, 101, 102, 223, 
 
 230-1 
 Winds, Witches, 101,228,233-242 
 Wire-marks, 288 
 Wisdom of the Ancients, 26, 28, 167, 
 
 206 
 Wisdom, Temple of 
 Witherbourne, Dr., Preface, 147 
 Withers, 174 
 Wolsey, 102 
 
 Works Published Abroad, 199 
 World, see Microcosm, Histories 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 210 
 Wren, Christopher, 276, 279; his 
 
 Pan Organum, &c, 280 
 Wren, Dr., 279 
 
 Y=The Two Ways, Virtue, Vice, 
 291 
 
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