F, One long syllable. Now for the first time can the world be informed why the sneer "Bome boon for boon prescian, a little scratcht, 'twil serve" was inserted on lines 14, 15, page 136 of the folio of 1623. Priscian declares that F was a mute and Bacon mocks him for so doing. Ausonius while giving the p.r.o.nunciation of most letters of the alphabet does not afford us any information respecting the sound of F, but Quintilian xii. 10, s. 29, describes the p.r.o.nunciation of the Roman F.

Some scholars understand him as indicating that the Roman F had rather a rougher sound than the English F. Others agree with Dr.

H.J. Roby, and are of opinion that Quintilian means that the Roman F was "blown out between the intervals of the teeth with no sound of voice." (See Roby's Grammar of the Latin language, 1881, x.x.xvi.) But Dr. A.

Bos in his "Pet.i.t Traite de p.r.o.nonciation Latine," 1897, a.s.serts that the old Latin manner of p.r.o.nouncing F was effe. Even if Dr.

A. Bos is correct it is not at all likely that effe was a dissyllable, but most probably it would be sounded very nearly like the Greek "[Greek: phi],"

that is as "pfe." In any case (even if it were a dissyllable) F would, with the DI of LUDI, form two long syllables and scan as a spondee. The use of single consonants to form long or short syllables was very common among the Romans, but such appear mostly in lines impossible to quote.

But the Great Author was well acquainted with such instances, and in this same page 136, in lines 6, 7, 8, he gives an example, shewing that the letter "B," although silent in debt, becomes, when debt is spelled, one of the four full words--d e b t, each of which has to be counted to make up the number "151."[6]

This, which is an example of the great value and importance of what, in many of the plays, appears to be merely "silly talk" affords a strong additional evidence of the correctness of the "revealed" and "revealing" sentence which we shew was intended by the author to be constructed out of the long word. Bacon therefore was amply justified in making use of F as a long syllable to form the second half of a spondee.

BACONIS Three long syllables, the final syllable being long by position. Pedantic grammarians might argue that natus being a participle ought not to govern a genitive case, but should be followed by a preposition with the ablative case, and that we ought to say "e Bacone nati" or "de Bacone nati." Other pedants have declared that natus is properly, i.e., cla.s.sically, said of the mother only, although in low Latin, such as the Vulgate, we find 1 John v. 2, "Natos Dei," "born of G.o.d." But the Author of the plays, who instead of having "small Latin and less Greek" knew "_All_ Latin and very much Greek," was well aware that Vergil, Aeneid i. 654 (or 658 when the four additional lines are inserted at the beginning) gives us "Maxima natarum Priami," "greatest of the daughters of Priam," and in Aeneid ii. 527 "Unus natorum Priami," "one of the sons of Priam." There exists therefore the highest cla.s.sical authority for the use of "Nati" in the sense of "Sons"

or "offspring" governing a genitive case.

"F. Baconis nati," "Francis Bacon's offspring,"

is therefore absolutely and cla.s.sically correct.

NATI Two long syllables. A noun substantive meaning as shewn above "sons" or "offspring."

TUITI Two short syllables and one long syllable, which last is elided and disappears before the "o" of orbi. Tuiti which is the same word as tuti is a pa.s.sive past participle meaning saved or preserved. It is derived from tueor, which is generally used as a deponent or reflexive verb, but tueor is used by Varro and the legal writers as a pa.s.sive verb.

ORBI Two long syllables. The word orbi may be either the plural nominative of orbus meaning "deprived" "orphaned," or it may be the dative singular of Orbis meaning "for the world." Both translations make good sense because the plays are "preserved for the world" and are "preserved orphaned."

The present writer prefers the translation "for the world," indeed he thinks that to most cla.s.sical scholars "tuiti orbi," "preserved discarded," looks almost like a contradiction in terms.

Note on Honorficabilitudinitatibus

BACONIS.--On page 131 is shewn a photogravure of the t.i.tle page of Bacon's "De Augmentis," 1645, which is in fact a pictorial representation of an anagram "Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi." On this t.i.tle page we find "Baconis" used as the genitive of Bacon's name in Latin. Baconis is also found in XIII th century ma.n.u.script copies of Roger Bacon's works, where the t.i.tle reads "Opus minus Fratris Rogeri Baconis," and in 1603 there was published in 12 at Frankfurt "Rogeri Baconis ... De Arte Chymiae."

TUITI.--Pedanticgrammarians such as Priscian whom the author mocks at in the line "Bome boom for boon precian, a little scratcht, 'twil serve," falsely tel us that there is a pa.s.sive verb "tueor" with a past participle "tutus." As a matter of fact it is the same verb "tueor" that is used both as a pa.s.sive and as a deponent, and "tutus" or "tuitus" may be used indifferently at the pleasure of the writer. Sall.u.s.t uses "tutus," not "tuitus," as the past participle of the deponent verb.

Opposite to the next page is shewn a type transcript of the cover or outside page of a collection of ma.n.u.scripts in the possession of the Duke of Northumberland, which were discovered in 1867 at Northumberland House. Three years later, viz., in 1870, James Spedding published a thin little volume ent.i.tuled "A Conference of Pleasure," in which he gave a full size Facsimile of the original of the outside page which is here shewn in _reduced type_ facsimile. He also gave a few particulars of the MSS. themselves.

In 1904 Mr. Frank J. Burgoyne brought out a Collotype Facsimile of every page that now remains of the collection of MSS. in an edition limited to 250 copies I a fine Royal Quarto at the price of 4 4s. 0d. O f the MSS.

mentioned on the cover nine now remain, and of these, six are certainly by Francis Bacon; the first being written by him for a masque or "fanciful devise" which Mr. Spedding thinks was presented at the Court of Elizabeth in 1592.

The list of contents was written upon this outside page about 1597, and among those original contents which are now missing were Richard II. and Richard III. Mr. Spedding was satisfied that these were the so-called Skakespearean plays. There are also the tiles of various other works to which it is not now necessary to allude, but the reader's attention should be especially directed to the (so-called) scribblings. Mr.

Spedding says: "I find nothing either in these later scribblings or in what remains of the book itself to indicate a date later than the reign of Elizabeth." The "scribblings" are therefore written by a contemporary hand. For the purpose of reference I have placed the letters _a, b, c, d, e_, outside of the facsimile.

(_a_) "honorificabilitudine." This curious long word when taken in conjunction with the words "your William Shakespeare." which are also found upon this page, appears to have some reference to the same curious long word which is found in the ablative plural in "Loves Labour's lost," which appeared I 1597, and was the play to which Shakespeare's name was for the first time attached, and, as I shew, in Chapter X., p.

84, it was placed there in order to give with absolute certainty a key to the real authorship.

(_b_) "By Mr ffrauncis William Shakespeare Baco"--with ffrauncis written upside down over it and your/yourself written upside down at the commencement of the line. Baco would require Baconis as its genitive.

(_c_) "revealing day through every crany peepes." We think that this is an accurate statement of the revelations here afforded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Modern Script Facsimile of MS Folio 1 _Reduced to about one-third the size of the original_]

(_d_) your "William Shakespeare." Almost directly above this your appears also William Shakespeare.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Full-Size Facsimile of Written Ornament on Outside Page of Northumberland MSS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Full-Size Facsimile of Written Ornament in "Les Tenure de Monsieur Littleton." Annotate by Francic Bacon.]

(_e_) The three curious scrolles at the top right-hand corner are very similar to the scrolls which are found upon the t.i.tle page of a law book ent.i.tled, "Les Tenures de Monsieur Littleton," printed in 1591, in the possession of the writer, which is throughout noted in what the authorities at the British Museum say is undoubtedly the handwriting of Francis Bacon.

As I have pointed out upon page 114 and upon various other pages in my book "upside down" printing is a device continually employed by the authors of certain books in order to afford revelations concerning Bacon and Shakespeare. As a whole this curious scribbled page affords remarkable evidence that William Shakespeare is "yourself" Francis Bacon.

Now and now only can a reasonable explanation be given for the first time of the purpose of the reference to Priscian, in lines 14 and 15, Plate 21, Page 87. And it is a singular circ.u.mstance that so far as the writer is aware not one of the critics has perceived that the mockery of Priscian forms a neat English iambic hexameter, indeed, in almost all modern editions of the Shakespeare plays, both the form and the meaning of the line have been utterly destroyed. In the original the line reads "Bome boon for boon prescian, a little scracht, 'twil serve."

Perhaps the reader will be enabled better to understand the sneer and the mockery by reading the following couplet--

A fig for old Priscian, a little scratcht, 'twil serve A poet surely need not all his rules observe.

And we still more perfectly understand the purpose of the hexameter form of the reference to Priscian if we scan the line side by side with the "revealed" interpretation of the long word honorificabilitudinitatibus.

Bome boon

for boon

prescian

a lit

tle scratcht

'twil serve HI LU

DI F

BACO

NIS NA

TI TUI

TI ORBI

These plays F Bacon's offspring are preserved for the world.

This explanation of the real meaning to be derived from the long word honorificabilitudinitatibus seems to be so convincing as scarcely to require further proof. But the Author of the plays intended when the time had fully come for him to claim his own that there should not be any possibility of cavil or doubt. He therefore so arranged the plays and the acts of the plays in the folio of 1623 that the long word should appear upon the 136th page, be the 151st word thereon, should fall on the 27th line and that the interpretation should indicate the numbers 136 and 151, thus forming a mechanical proof so positive that it can neither be misconstrued nor explained away, a mechanical proof that provides an evidence which absolutely compels belief.

The writer desires especially to bring home to the reader the manifest fact that the revealed and revealing sentence must have been constructed before the play of "Loues Labor's lost" first appeared in 1598, and that when the plays were printed in their present form in the 1623 folio the scenes and the acts of the preceding plays and the printing of the columns in all those plays as well as in the play of "Loues Labour's lost" required to be arranged with extraordinary skill in order that the revealing page in the 1623 folio should commence with the first word of the revealing page in the original quarto of 1598, and that that page should form the 136th page of the folio, so that the long word "Honorificabilitudinitatibus" should appear on page 136, be the 151st word, and fall upon the 27th line.

Bacon tells us that there are 24 letters in the alphabet (_i_ and _j_ being deemed to be forms of the same letter, as are also _u_ and _v_).

Bacon was himself accustomed frequently to use the letters of the alphabet as numerals (the Greeks similarly used letters for numerals).

Thus A is 1, B is 2 ... Y is 23, Z is 24. Let us take as an example Bacon's own name--B=2, a=1, c=3, O=14, n=i3; all these added together make the number 33, a number about which it is possible to say a good deal.[7] We now put the numerical value to each of the letters that form the long word, and we shall find that their total amounts to the number 287, thus:

H O N O R I F I C A B I L I T U 8 14 13 14 17 9 6 9 3 1 2 9 11 9 19 20

D I N I T A T I B U S 4 9 13 9 19 1 19 9 2 20 18 = 287

From a word containing so large a number of letters as twenty-seven it is evident that we can construct very numerous words and phrases; but I think it "surpa.s.ses the wit of man" to construct any "sentence" other than the "revealed sentence," which by its construction shall reveal not only the number of the page on which it appears--which is 136--but shall also reveal the fact that the long word shall be the 151st word printed in ordinary type counting from the first word.

On one side of the facsimile reproduction of part of page 136 of the 1623 folio, numbers are placed shewing that the long word is on the 27th line, which was a skilfully purposed arrangement, because there are 27 letters in the word. There is also another set of numbers at the other side of the facsimile page which shews that, counting from the first word, the long word is the 151st word. How is it possible that the revealing sentence, "Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi," can tell us that the page is 136 and the position of the long word is the 151st word? The answer is simple. The numerical value of the initial letters and of the terminal letters of the revealed sentence, when added together, give us 136, the number of the page, while the numerical value of all the other letters amount to the number 151, which is the number of words necessary to find the position of the long word "Honorificabilitudinitatibus," which is the 151st word on page 136, counting those printed in ordinary type, the italic words being of course omitted.

The solution is as follows HI LUDI F BACONIS NATI TUITI ORBI

the initial letters of which are

H L F B N T O

their numerical values being

8 11 6 2 13 19 14 = total 73

and the terminal letters are

I I S I I I

their numerical values being