ters gave us the F which is the first letter of Francis; for "aabab" is F and "habaa" is W.

Now let us take the five letters to the right of that dividing line and we have

T

Y move;

and placing a b under the T and an a under the other letters and we have "baaaa,” which is the cipher symbol for R,—which gave us, reversed, also the B of Bacon.

T

Now let us treat the "Y" as a compound sign, and take two letters to the left of the Y, and two letters to the

T

right of it, and we have "He Ym;” which is equivalent to "babba" which, read in the reversed order, gives us "abbab," which is the cipher letter O.

T

Let us now resolve the sign Y into its elements and we have "ThaTm," which is the equivalent of “baaba,” and that is the cipher letter T.

We took two letters preceding Y and two letters succeeding it and obtained the letter O. Let us now take the two letters preceding T and the two letters succeeding it, and we have

“haTmo;”

which becomes aabaa—the cipher letter E.

We thus have:-

WROTE.

Τ

And all of it evolved out of that symbol "Y,” in the

middle of the fourth line!

We have therefore worked out of the four lines of the inscription the words:

FRANCIS BACON WROTE THE GREENE, MARLOWE AND SHAKESPEARE PLAYES.

There is a rule governing the interpretation of the cipher combinations as to whether they shall be read from front to rear or from rear to front; but it is diffcult to follow it because so many of the signs are the same read from either end. The rule seems to be that those which count from the beginnings of the subdivisions of the inscription, alternate with each other; and those from the ends of the subdivisions also alternate with each other; and thus there is a double but distinct alternation. The cipher in the Plays is constructed upon

CHAPTER XVIII.

Some Considerations.

We do not think any person, however sceptical or critical he may be, will deny that Francis Bacon's cipher was used in the inscription, which at, or soon after the time of Shakespere's death, was carved upon a stone and placed over his mortal remains.

This alone is a most important and pregnant fact.

It must be remembered that on the surface of things. there did not appear to have been the slightest connection, during their lives, between the philosopher and statesman of Saint Albans and the play-actor of Stratford.

There are no prose writings that are attributed to Shakspere. In all the world there is no scrap of manuscript belonging to him,—except four rude signatures,— three of which are attached to his will. And yet the British Museum contains probably tons of manuscripts of that era, including letters of Francis Bacon, and his "Promus," or scrap book of suggestions and quotations, and even the book of memoranda of his legal and other engagements. It is needless to say that, so far as we know, Shakspere never alluded, in writing, to Francis Bacon, or to any one else among his contemporaries. It

is also clear that the voluminous compositions of Bacon do not mention the name of Shakspere; and although they contain innumerable quotations from the poets, ancient and modern, nothing was taken from those plays which are now and must always continue to be the wonder of the world.

Shakspere's grave was more than sixty miles distant from St. Albans, in the midst of a filthy little, strawthatched town of fifteen hundred inhabitants; and surrounded by roads that were almost impassable to the few wheeled vehicles in existence at that time. And yet we find here a stone which unquestionably contains a cipher invented by Francis Bacon in his youth, in Paris; which is subsequently published in one of his philosophical works.

Apart from the statement, made by the secret writing of the inscription, which we have been considering, the mere fact that Francis Bacon's cipher is found on Shakspere's tomb-stone, proves that there was some hidden and mysterious connection between the two men, which did not appear on the surface of their lives.

It will be impossible to find any other inscription, of that age, which contains such an "uncouth mixture" of large and small letters: a mixture, too, which violates reason and all the proprieties; as when the name of "Jesus" is given in small letters, and the next word “Sake" is presented in capitals. It was not the custom of that age, as I have shown, to spell "enclosed" "encloased"; and it certainly never was the custom of that or any other age to divide it in the middle by a hyphen and give the next letter as a capital! Illiteracy on the part of a carver of tomb-stones, might make the size of the

letters irregular, but it certainly would not intersperse dashes and periods in the middle of words where they were not needed; and laboriously carve them into a stone. There is no parallel for that word "HE.Re."

But there could be a great mixture of large and small letters which, when divided, as the cipher rule requires, into groups of five letters each, would not give a single one of the cipher letters, as set forth in the De Augmentis. For instance, not one of those letters begins with two or three b's, or capital letters; and yet in any accidental jumble of large and small letters it could not but happen that there would be some groups, of five letters, which would begin with two or three capitals. For instance if the letters "SAKE f" was one of the groups of five, it would give us "bbbba" which would not be the equivalent of any of the cipher letters.

Not only does the inscription, when divided into groups of five, give us the Baconian cipher alphabet, but it gives us every letter of it! And there is no waste material left over!

-And it will be observed that in working out the sentence: "Francis Bacon wrote the Greene, Marlowe and Shakespeare Playes," we have made no leaps from one part of the inscription to another. There are no jumps, for instance, from the first line to the fourth, or from the fourth to the first. The cipher words are in continuous groups.

The upper left-hand corner gives us THE and SHAKE; the upper right-hand corner gives us SPEARE and AND. The middle subdivision of the second line gives us GREENE; and it is a curious fact that only on this second line are two E's found standing together, just