rise to the opinion that, knowing his great literary ability, James might have employed him to go over the work of the

translators with him. How

much the work might have been revised is unknown, but whoever aided in the revision may have added many of the graces with which this remarkable production abounds. Certainly the appearance of Bacon's cryptic mark could not fail to be noticeable in this book as in others, with some of which it is now known he had

something to do. Attention was, of course, called to this, and has amused Stratfordians as much as some of their speculations have amused their opponents.

That Bacon was associated with Baudoin in his book on Emblems1 appears in the preface:

The great Chancellor, Bacon, having awakened in me the desire of working at these emblems, has furnished me the principal ones which I have drawn from the ingenious explanation that he has given of some fables, and from his other works.

This same Baudoin translated Bacon's Essays into French in 1626. Mr. Smedley says:

The first volume of Emblemata in which traces of Bacon's hand are to be found is in the 1577 edition of Alciat's Emblems, published by the Plantin Press, with notes by Claude Mignault.2

This edition bears the head-piece which we have been discussing.

1 Jean Baudoin, Recueil d'Emblèmes. Paris, 1638.

2 William T. Smedley, The Mystery of Francis Bacon, p. 141 et seq. Cf. Dealings with the Dead, Oliver Lector.

There are several other emblem books interesting to students of Bacon, one by Bonitius of 1659, which we have thus far been unable to consult, but there is not the least doubt that Bacon, among his many literary activities, was personally interested in the publication of a number of emblem books. In these we should expect to find emblems relating to him. We will produce but the following.

In his "New Atlantis" published by Rawley a few months after his death, we find Time drawing from an open tomb a nude woman with the motto, "In time the hidden truth shall be revealed." This puts us in memory of the words of Rawley:

Be this moreover enough to have laid, as it were, the foundations, in the name of the present age. Every age will, methinks, adorn and amplify this structure, but to what age it may be

vouchsafed to set the finishing hand - this is known only to God and the Fates.1

This same figure appears in a book which gives a history of the early years of the reign of King

James I, and is

entitled "Truth

brought to Light

and discovered by Time."

In the following we see Fortune standing upon a sphere, and raising with her right hand to the pinnacle of Fame a figure wearing the hat which distinguishes Bacon, as clearly as 1 Manes Verulamiani, Introduction. London, 1626.

the helmet does Pericles; while with the other, she casts down an actor wearing the equally distinguishing buskins.

The "Minerva Britannia" of 1612 presents to us an equally revealing emblem. On page °33, which is the numerical name of Bacon, appears an oval wreathed with laurel, and a Latin motto which translated is "One lives in his genius, other things depart in death," and on the opposite page, "To the most judicious

pen which has just written, "By the mind shall I be seen." This finds an echo in the "Attourney's Academy," dedicated "To True Nobility and Tryde learning beholden To no Mountaine for Eminence, nor supportment for Height. Francis Lord Verulam and Viscount St. Albans."

O give me leave to pull the Curtayne by
That clouds thy Worth in such obscurity.
Stay Seneca, stay but awhile thy bleeding,
T'accept what I received at thy Reading;
Here I present it in a solemne strayne,

And thus I pluckt the Curtayne backe again.

We could show scores of similar emblems and many pages to illustrate Bacon's unwritten life, did space permit. A single contemporary allusion to the Stratford actor of equal sig

nificance would be hailed as sufficient proof of his authorship of the immortal dramas.

TITLE-PAGES

Quite as interesting a use of cryptograms is found on titlepages. We will examine several the meaning of which is too evident to mistake.

The first title-page is of a book treating of cryptography, and the stenographic system of Trithemius, pseudonym of Gustavus Selenus, published at Lunenburg in 1624. The author styles himself the Homo Lunæ, or Man in the Moon. The book, however, was fathered by Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, whose directions to the engraver, transcripts of which the writer has found in several collections of literary material, are a curious example of the care exercised in having at hand, of easy access to the over-curious, a simple method of turning him aside, for the greatest minds of this age played with cryptograms, employing the most insignificant, and to us seemingly childish, devices in their game of hide-and-seek, to mislead the inexpert. In this case the engraver is told to show Trithemius at a table with a man lifting the philosopher's hat from his head. The man shown, however, is not Trithemius at all, but quite unlike him, as his portrait unmistakably reveals. The question is, why was this change? The most probable theory is that the directions were a simple exhibition of craft. It is just possible, of course, that the Duke, about to begin his book, consulted Bacon- the head of the secret brotherhood to which both belonged upon the subject, and that he, seeing in it one of those opportunities of which he had before availed himself, arranged to conceal in it the key to the First Folio, at that time in press. This would account more readily to the modern mind for the changes in the figures on the titlepage, but a knowledge of the methods employed by the old cryptographers incline us to the view that the directions. to the engraver were intended to be misleading. Mr. Bow