Bacon, Shakespeare and the Rosicrucians, by W. F. C. Wigston

0 BACON SHAKESPEARE ROSICRTTCIANS BY W. F. C. WIGSTON ' AUTHOR OF " A NEW STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE " Our age doth produce many such, one of the greatest being a Stage Player, a man with sufficient Ingenuity for imposition." t) Rosichuciax Confession, 1615. WITH TWO PLATES LONDON GEORGE REDWAY YORK STREET COVENT GARDEN MDCCCLXXXVm Generated for John Patrick Deveney (University of Chicago) on 2015-06-14 23:12 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086727005 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-us-google /44S4. JJ 3UN 17 18Bi) ^SHA^y / Generated for John Patrick Deveney (University of Chicago) on 2015-06-14 23:12 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086727005 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-us-google Generated for John Patrick Deveney (University of Chicago) on 2015-06-14 23:12 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086727005 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-us-google Co THE STUDENTS OF HERMETIC SCIENCE IN AMERICA XTbis TKHorfe is ©eolcatefc, IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF APPRECIATION, BY THE AUTHOR. Generated for John Patrick Deveney (University of Chicago) on 2015-06-14 23:12 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086727005 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-us-google Generated for John Patrick Deveney (University of Chicago) on 2015-06-14 23:12 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086727005 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-us-google PREFACE. As this work follows rather closely upon the publication of Mr " Donnelly's Great Cryptogram," it may be as well, in order to avoid misconception, and any unjust charge of plagiarism (or unlaw ful desire to make capital out of the interest excited by the cipher problem) —to point out that as long ago as 1884, we published (under the auspices of Messrs Triibner & Co.), a work entitled " A New Study of Shakespeare." In it almost all the problems suggested in the present work are implied, and discussed at greater or less length. To belief in the Bacon authorship of the plays we have long been a convert, and a chapter on that subject may be refound in our first work. The theory that the plays and poems contain a planned spiritual Rebirth or promise " of Revelation for posterity is the key-centre of A New Study of Shakespeare." In it we attempted to suggest how that has been done, and representatively reflected in some of the plays. We therefore think we owe it to ourselves to lay claim to what ever originality there may be in that work, seeing that the time is rapidly approaching when the world must take a greater and more absorbing interest in these problems. We have no cipher (alas !) to present the reader, but pending the solution, or further Generated for John Patrick Deveney (University of Chicago) on 2015-06-14 23:12 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086727005 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-us-google viii PREFACE. elaboration of Mr Donnelly's Cryptogram, there are many ways still left open to the student desirous of a closer and deeper acquaintanceship with the art called Shakespeare's. Any letters or communications upon this subject may be addressed to the Author, through his publishers. Generated for John Patrick Deveney (University of Chicago) on 2015-06-14 23:12 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086727005 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-us-google INTRODUCTION. "But the Idols of the Market-place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through the alliances of words and names." —Bacon. Evidence differs as to weight, very much less in accordance with the evidence itself than with the capacities of the people receiving it. An apple falling is to Newton anticipation, supplying sufficient faith to discover and toil at the laws of gravitation. We may depend upon it, Newton not only saw, but believed because he saw. And how can this sort of evidence, with which the history of every discovery is replete, be made the vulgar sort of evidence which the average intellect requires before it is convinced 1 Take Mr Donnelly's recent work upon the authorship of the plays. Examine the first volume carefully, where the evidence is simply overwhelming. Do we think fifty such volumes would convince 1 is a some people A thousand times no ! There large predomi nant class of people, who, to begin with, cannot grasp or seize the issues of comparative evidence at all. There is another large class whose minds are so infected with the idols of the Tribe, Theatre, and Den, as to be totally prepossessed and prejudiced against any rational weighing of the evidence when given. The human mind cannot hold two beliefs at the same time, or fairly examine evidence destructive of established faith, until the work is already partially accomplished by preparatory criticism. We see in the history of all great changes in matters of Religion or Philosophy, that the ground must be first cleared, the mind dis is, abused or shaken in its idols, by a process of criticism, which is as it were, a purge to drive out prepossessions. What the sort of evidence that inspires men like Columbus, Galileo, or Newton Generated for John Patrick Deveney (University of Chicago) on 2015-06-14 23:12 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086727005 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-us-google x INTRODUCTION. with faith by its anticipation and prevision, to toil and labour in darkness, to risk danger and bear solitude unrecognised by their fellow-men ? It cannot be the sort of evidence the noisy world requires, because it would be no evidence at all. Imagine Newton assuring the world that the laws of gravitation were prefigured by the fall of an apple ! Or Columbus persuading us now-a-days of hemispheres unseen, from the simple analogy that fired his mind, that as the Mediterranean had a southern land limit in Africa, so ought the Atlantic to have some western boundary or terra firma ! Yet these men were right, and their prevision and faith from what to them was conclusive evidence, worth all the knowing scepticism of the world put together. This, in short, is the history of discovery and invention, that certain minds liko certain eyes on board a ship at sea, see land before others. A great fallacy is that general consensus of opinion and length of time constitute a prerogative or standard of evidence. As if any millions or billions of uneducated, unreflecting persons, who take their opinions from hearsay, and just this fallacy of tradi tion, can weigh against one genuine expert, or one person who reflects, studies, and thinks beyond the general mind. Every day wo hear something to the effect that three centuries have passed, and no one has (with a few rare exceptions) questioned the authorship of the plays.1 Very true, but nobody even exa mined, or thought of examining, the evidence for or against this question, seriously, until lately. Ages have evolved, myriads of the human race gone below, who never questioned the Mosaic cosmogony, or the origin of man, as therein set down, until Darwin came with his theory. There have been thousands of surface critics of the plays, but no one has plumbed the question of why this mystery about Shakespeare's life—wherefore this silence —whence came his education— and thousands of other 1 How many more centuries passed between Virgil's age and Warburton's " " Divine Legation in which, for the first time, the real meaning of the Vlth book of the .-Kneid was expounded ! Generated for John Patrick Deveney (University of Chicago) on 2015-06-14 23:12 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086727005 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-us-google INTRODUCTION. xi such questions 1 Because it is of comparatively recent date, that the profound classical learning, the enormous scholarship,- the varied attainments, and the vast experience of Law, State, and Court life have been fully recognised or universally appreciated in the plays. The world is just commencing to realize that, joined to this enigma of mystery (which is too deliberate and too it carefully planned to be the result of chance), there is, as were, another side to the plays and poems — a profound, unrevealed is side, that suggests a possible solution of the riddle. For there a striking analogy between these plays and Nature, inasmuch as both hold the same reserve, the same secrecy, and the same silence, as if to say that no other revelation, save what they afford of themselves, shall be given. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in one of his works, illustrates the disturbance produced by more light and new theories, by the picture of an old stone long imbedded in the grass, which in a moment of mischief we reverse with foot or stick. What a surprise for all the crawling and vermiculate things who have long dwelt in the land of darkness, so tranquilly and so comfort ably ! How they scurry and hurry away, anything but grateful is ! for this influx of sunshine Yet in a few months the spot as green as the rest. And so it is with truth—somebody draws back the curtains of some old-established fallacy, some association of names with ideas, and nothing more, and lo, what an outcry is there at this pulling up the blinds from those who would like to sleep on for another century or so ! This applies particularly to the problem of the authorship of the Shakespeare plays, as well as to the art itself.

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