July 2, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



205 



except myself. Myself I never satisfy. For so great are the ser- 

 vices which you have rendered me, that, seeing you did not rest in 

 your endeavours on my behalf till the thing was done, I feel as if 

 my life had lost all its sweetness, because I cannot do as much in 

 this cause of years. The occasions are these: Ammonias, the 

 king's ambassador, openly besieges us with money, the business IS 

 carried on through the same creditors who were employel in it 

 when you were here, ^tc." 



Here Mr. Donnelly closes his quotation and comments as follows : 

 " I haie capitalised the words all and is, supposing them to be 

 part of the sentence,' All is lost,' but I am not sure that I am right 

 in doing so.* The sentence ends as above and leaves us in the 

 dark." 



Truly Jlr. Donnelly is very much in the dark. To any one 

 reading the quotation from Bacon by the light of ordinary common- 

 sense, It is clear that the passage from Cicero's letter shonld be 

 printed in two alphabets ; and on referring to the original 

 (ed. 1857-58, vol. iv., p. Ho) we find that this is the case. It 

 happens that in this edition (and doubtless in that quoted by Mr. 

 Donnelly) the printers, instead of using Roman and italic founts, 

 have used two different founts of italics, so that the distinction 

 does not at once strike the unpractised eye. It becomes obvious 

 after a moment's examination, but this llr. Donnelly has not 

 bestowed upon it. The passage from Cicero reads thus in Bacon 

 (or rather is thus given by the careful translator) : — ' " In all duty 

 or rather piefy ioivarAs yo« / satisly everybody except my.'ielf. 

 My^self I nerer safis///. For so," kc, xc. Substitute a for the 

 Roman letters and h for the italics, divide into fives, and apply the 

 above key, and it will be at once clear that these 85 letters repre- 

 sent the 17 letters of "All is Lost. Mindarus." The reader, if he 

 pleases, can write out the rest of the passage for himself ; noting, 

 however, that Bacon, that is, his translator, spells " endeavours '' 

 with a " u " and that the " my " in " I feel as if my life " is inter- 

 polated by Mr. Donnelly. 



If the rest of Mr. Donnelly's cryptographic inspirations are as 

 futile as the idea of "capitalising all and is,' Shakespeare's laurels 

 are pretty secure. Tlir jiian n-ho fails to understand Bacon's 

 crplanation of a perfectly iiinple cipher is scarcely the guide one 

 would clwose to follow through a labyrinthine cryptoi/ram. If ^Mr. 

 Donnelly can see through a millstone, he should surely be able to 

 see through a crystal; yet Bacon's perfectly lucid exposition leaves 

 him, confessedly, " in the dark.'' Unless his vision improves 

 miraculously as he goes on, we fear that the world's judgment of his 

 theory will be summed up in the word— but no; as a little exercise 

 for Mr. Donnelly we will put it in cipher, thus : — 

 C h T o n n h o t n t h \ y o s.f 



AN UNDECIPHERABLE CIPHER. 



By Eicii.vKD A. Proctor. 



I;YPT0GE.\M3 being in fashion, I will 

 tlescribe :i cipher of my own invention — 

 possibly it may have been thought of bcfofe, 

 but not to my knowledge — which is, so far 

 as I can see, altogether undecipherable 

 without the key. 



The correspondents first prepare a table, 

 whereof each retains a copy, containing 

 twenty cijther-keys, such as the following : — 



17. MALIKPtESTUZ— 2324312412031 

 1 23i.5 67890 . 

 All, of course, are to be different, except that under the 



* The fun of this is partly lost when the English version is 

 followed. By sheer accident the words capitalised by Mr. 

 Donnelly occur both in the long passage and in the real message. 

 In the Latin the words translated " I feel as if my life had lost all 

 its sweetness," run " Vitam mihi esse ace-rbam putem," and in the 

 extract from Cicero the first word(/'er(itte) of the message does not 

 occur at all. 



t Even after reading the Gazette article, Mr. Donnelly wLU pro- 

 bably not see his way to the interpretation of this little cryptogram. 

 So, lest he should find some minor mare's nest in it to weary the 

 world with, we give the solution — 



Chrora o n h o t ' ontho 1 o y o s 



aaaab abbab , baaab jaabbb 



BO s H 



eleven letters there are always the numbers 1, 2, 3 ... 9, 0, 

 and a full stop. Suppose now a message to be forwarded 

 runs as follows — " I will start at seven on Friday morn- 

 ing." The successive words of this message contain 

 1, 4, 5, 2, 5, 2, 6, and 7 letters respectively. The letters in 

 the 17th key- word corresponding to these numbers are 

 respectively 5l, I, K, A, K, A, R, and E — which, there- 

 fore, followed by Z to indicate a full stop, must be given at 

 the beginning of the cipherme.ssage. The words of the 

 mes.sage are to be dealt with as follows by means of the key- 

 number 2324312412031. Take the word " morning "—for 

 m the first, letter write o the 2nd letter after in in the 

 alphabet, because 2 is the first digit in the key-number ; 

 for the second letter write r, the 3rd following letter in 

 the alphabet, because 3 is the second digit in the key- 

 number; for r the third letter, write t, the 2nd letter 

 following r in the alphabet, because the third digit in the 

 key-number is 2 ; and so on, writing for n the 4th following 

 letter r; for i the 3rd following letter /; for /* the 1st fol- 

 low-ing letter o ; and for g the second following letter k, 

 because the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th digits of the key-number 

 are respectively 4, 3, 1, and 2. Thus the word " morning " 

 becomes altered into ortrlok. AH the words of the message 

 are to be dealt with in this waj', which with a little prac- 

 tice becomes very easy, and all the cipher-words thus 

 obtained as well as the key-letters, mikakarez, are to be 

 written as one long word. The message then, thus dealt 

 with, appeai-s in the following form : — 



1 7. /iiikakarezki/lnpu irevvjcwiihxkqqqhukhhzortrlok. 

 The interpretation is quite easy for the correspondent, 

 though absolutely out of reach of any into whose hands the 

 cryptogram may fall. He turns to the key-word and 

 number opposite 17 in his list, and noting that z is the 

 stop letter, recognises mikakare as meaning that the suc- 

 cessive words of the mes.sage contain 1, 4, 5, 2, 5, 2, 6, and 

 7 letters, so he divides up the letters following the first z as 

 follows — ■ 



k\ylnp\uii;cvir\cv\uJixkq\qq\ltukhhz\ortrlok. 

 He then applies to each of these cipher-words the key- 

 number, taking the alphabet backwards as many lettei-s 

 from k, y, n, I, p, iVc, as the several digits of that number 

 require. Thus k gives ;, the second letter before k in the 

 alphabet ; and we thus get the first word / of the message ; 

 the four letters of the next word must be set back in the 

 alphabet 2, 3, 2, 4 letters, giving for y the letter w; for I, i; 

 form, I; and for p, I; so that from the cipher- word ylnp, 

 we get the message-word will. Dealing in the .same way 

 with the other cipher- words, we get the full mess;ige— "I 

 will start at .seven on Friday morning." 



I should like to hear of any way by which a cryptogram 

 on this plan could be puzzled out. Here is a cryptograiu 

 on this method, which the ingenious reader will find no 

 difficulty in reading, being first told that the 13th key-word 

 and key-number appear in the correspondents' lists as 

 follows : — 



13. KNITZTHELOFY— 201534012320 

 1 234567890. 

 The cryptogram is — 



13. uozzznztjneuninpihoidhgirphhrproosjvooosj. 

 I wrote this in 80 seconds. 



The way to write a message quickly is to deal with it as 

 follows : — Suppose the message to be " We are prepared to 

 act," the 13th cipher- key, given above, being employed. 

 Write down the message thus : — 



2 3 8 2 3 



We are prepared to act. 



20 201 20153401 20 201 



Then write down 13 for the cipher-number, nulnuy, from 



the key-word, using the numbei-s 23823 written above the 



