Before concluding these preliminary remarks, we would 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 which the speaker (whose common sense is always excellent) 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 labor?

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 within, and that a living ball of fluff and feathers would step 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 comprehension 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 barr'd, 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.

From the Promus 1 we gather the elements of a new phraseology, newly coined words, turns of expression, metaphors, proberbial 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. From the Novum Organum and the Advancement of Learning, a mass of new

1 Bacon's private MS. notes, in the Harleian collection, British Museum.

ideas, theories, aphorisms, and philosophical reflections. From the Wisdom of the Ancients, parables "new" and "deep," and 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, was one and the same.

Again, when we find Shakespeare writing in many different styles; when we find his styles so varied that his warmest admirers differ and wrangle over them, and assign 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 to be finest poetry; and then, 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 about forty thousand metaphors and similes, common sense is forced to declare that here again the author is one and the same.

When 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 concerning 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 first institution, we find it contrary to common sense to maintain 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, yet 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 particulars 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 endeavors 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, when 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 the 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 center."

CHAPTER II.

FRANCIS BACON: 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 known about Francis Bacon in some parts or phases of his chequered life, yet there is a great deal more which is obscure, or very inadequately treated of 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