August 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



225 



Mr. Donnelly's purpose if he had found it in " A Mid- 

 summer's Night's Dream " or " A "Winter's Tale.") In the 

 first column of p. 7-t the following words are in brackets, 

 " Making the winde my post-horse " and " Under the smile 

 of safety," or Ifn or eleven words in all, according as we 

 count " post-horse " as one word or two. There are six 

 hyphenated combinations, namely, "post-horse," " well- 

 knowne," " peasant-Townes," " worme-eatenhole," " smooth- 

 Comforts-false," and " True-wrongs " (one only of these, the 

 firet, falling within a bracket), so that as these 6 contain 

 1 4 words, we have a means of obtaining a difference of eight, 

 which is one of those we want. We alreadj' have eleven. 

 Adding these eight to the ten already mentioned we have 

 eighteen. Lastly, the word ''post-horse," the only hy- 

 phenated word within brackets, gives us the ditlerence one. 

 Thus we have all the differences we want, besides a few 

 more if we had had occa.<ion for any : — • 



If all the words including the bracketed words and 

 regarding the h3phenated words as two or three are counted, 

 we have 302 words in the column. By counting the 

 hyphenated words as one each, we reduce the number by 

 eight, or to i94. Counting only " post-horse" as one, but 

 leaving all other hyphenated words as two or three, we 

 reduce the 302 words by one, or to 301. Omitting all the 

 bracketed words, but regarding the hyphenated words as 

 two or three, we reduce the number 302 by eleven, getting 

 291. And, lastly, if we omit all the bracketed words and 

 count each hyphenated word as one, we reduce the number 

 302 by eighteen, giving 28-t words. 



Having by this artiticial arrangement (to which, were the 

 truth known, we have been forced after multitudinous trials 

 of more natural ones) obtained five numbers differing from 

 each other by the required numbers, we make a fine show 

 by setting these five numbers under the other five already 

 known to differ by the self-same amounts (for what else 

 were we looking?), and showing that addition gives equiva- 

 lent totals (as, of coui-se, it cannot fail to do), thus — 

 302 294 .301 291 284 



505 513 506 516 523 



807 807 807 807 807 



We might now describe the number 807 as the master 

 number or cipher-key. But it happens that there is a 

 "modifier" 29 as yet not accounted for, which we may as 

 well work into our cipher-key. What is to prevent us 

 from adding 29 to SU7, and calling 836 the master number 

 of the cryptogram ? Nothing except the necessity of first 

 finding the number 83G somewhere or other. But we am 

 find it a dozen times over, if we only look for it with suffi- 

 cient resolution. If we cannot get it in a page or scene, we 

 can take some word which we may regard as striking — 

 "found," for example — and counting backwards and for- 

 wards 830 words from that with suitable selection of the 

 method of counting (that is including or rejecting bracketed 

 words as may be convenient, and also as may be convenient 

 counting hyphenated words as one or two, we are bound to 

 come out in one or other of at leiist eight methods of count- 

 ing available, at some point which we may insist on regard- 

 ing as obviously an intended starting-point. If we find 

 that by leaving out bracketed words and counting hy- 

 phenated words we can reach a convenient starting-place, 

 we can then find how many words the same starting-place 

 will give if bracketed words are all counted and hyphenated 

 words dealt with as if there were no hyphens. Say the 

 number is 900 ; then we can find some other use for this 

 number, and we can, moreover, make quite a point of the 

 remarkable circumstance that 900 exceeds 83G by exactly 

 the number of bracketed words and of hyphenated words 

 counted in one case to make 900 and left uncounted in the 



other to make 836. All this will be very impressive — to 

 the reader, at least, who has been deteired by the array of 

 numbers from paying any siiecial attention to the way in 

 which the numbers have been obtained. Anyone who has 

 attended will see that nothing else could happen. 



But while Mr. Donnelly is very careful to hide from his 

 followers the simplicity of the plan by which he has been 

 able to work his own self-reading narrative into the play 

 selected for defilement, he not less carefully avoids the dis- 

 cussion of the overwhelming difficulty of the task he 

 supposes Bacon to have accomplished. 



The very ease of Donnelly's task results from the com- 

 plexity of the system he imagines, and the consequent 

 divereity of the paths of interpretation open to him. Yet 

 he would have us believe that a long story has been inter- 

 woven in this mo t complicated fashion into a particular 

 edition of a play which had been already _/?i,'e times printed. 

 The folio text was printed from that of the fifth quarto, 

 published in 1613. Now if any one wdl examine that 

 quarto, and conceive himself planning a reprint with a 

 story to be woven in on some complicated cipher-system, 

 without departing in any assential respects from the quarto 

 edition, he will in a few minutes perceive that the task 

 would be not merely ditficult, it would be absolutely im- 

 possible. If Bacon besides his own undoubted mental 

 powers had possessed the creative power of a Shakespeare, 

 while instead of being essentially unmathematical he had 

 possessed the combined mental powers of all the mathe- 

 maticians who have ever lived, even then had been ham- 

 pered by the conditions imagined by Mr. Donnelly, he could 

 not have wrought a sentence of twenty words, nay, nor of 

 ten or five, into an edition differing so little from the fifth 

 quarto as does the folio text of " Henry the Fourth." It is 

 one thing to puzzle out a cipher story from a sufficiently 

 voluminous collection of words ; quite a different and an 

 altogether more ditficult thing to bring a cipher story into a 

 poem, play, or other definite literary work, without inter- 

 fering with its congruity. But this last task, which many, 

 I find, imagine to be all Mr. Donnelly attributes to Bacon, 

 would be child's play compared with the task of so arranging 

 the printing of a new edition of a work already published 

 that a cipher story should be included in it, even one of the 

 simplest sort. That a man like Bacon would devote ten 

 minutes of his valuable time to an attempt of the sort, 

 when one minute would convince him of the impossibility 

 of the task, would be an absurd supposition, even though 

 the story to be wrought in were of the utmost importance. 

 That he would think for a single second of working in the 

 heap of imbecile nonsense attributed to him by ^Mr. 

 Donnelly, no one but a madman could imagine. 



Transmigbation of Socls.— Father Alcolt nsed to say that he 

 remembered having lived previous to this life. The Hindoo believes 

 in his past as we believe in our future. This life, to a Christian, is 

 probation ; and that is the way he accounts for the evil in it. It is 

 not perfect, but it Is preparatory to the perfect. On the contrary, 

 the Oriental says the evil of this lite is the consequence of sin in a 

 previous life, and it is therefore to him the real hell. His object is 

 to escape from it as something that ought not to be. He is in 

 prison because of the past; the Christian fears he will faU into 

 prison hereafter. Both systems involve con^ide^able moral influence, 

 and, it is probable, prevent a vast amount of wrcng-doing. But 

 when we undertake to binge together two lives, there is consider- 

 able liability that any system will fall into the habit of placing 

 undue value on theories concerning the unknown. Father Alcott 

 must have had the advantage of a remarkably good memory. Will 

 the Occidental in the future life have no better recollection of the 

 present than the average Oriental has of his former life .' In the 

 meantime let it not be forgotten that the Apostles' Creed associates 

 the life everlasting with the resurrection of the body. The faithful 

 must not feel free to reject this and accept that part of the 

 Christian creed {vide Pearson on the Creed).— " The Future Life, ' 



