If we are to believe in the existence of the cipher, it follows as a matter of course that Bacon and Shakespeare were acquainted. Nothing is more probable. Bacon was at Court during the whole time that Shakespeare’s plays were presented there. Bacon must at one period have been acquainted with Shakespeare’s patron, Lord Southampton, who was the bosom friend of Bacon’s patron, the Earl of Essex. Bacon was certainly in touch with Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s friend and co-worker. It is scarcely conceivable that the two most prominent figures in the literary world of the day should have been unknown to one another, although there is no authentic evidence to show that they were. In Shakespeare’s True Life (1890), Major James Walter publishes an illustration of Bacon’s house at St. Margaret’s, Richmond, “where Shakespeare was a frequent visitor.” “Twickenham,” says the writer, “is a main connecting link with what is known of Shakespeare’s visits to the neighbourhood; doubly interesting as clearly indicating his intimacy with Bacon, then living at his house, only a short distance on the other side of St. Margaret’s, in Twickenham Park.” Again, “It was just shortly before this plague fright, Shakespeare and Bacon had been jointly engaged in getting up one or more of his plays in Gray’s Inn, and it comes with the saying they should be frequently together in the eminently charming retreat just acquired by Bacon at the munificent hand of Elizabeth’s Favourite (the Earl of Essex).” “Catholic tradition,” the same authority assures us, “asserts that Bacon wrote the first portion of his great essays under the cedars of Twickenham Park; others go further, and say our information is that Shakespeare and Bacon had a special fondness for the two old cedars, and spent much time on occasions of Shakespeare’s visiting and resting with his friend at Twickenham, in reading and converse under the shade of these widespreading venerable trees.” In another part of the same book we read: “Some families, whose past histories should afford information bearing on Shakespeare’s life, assert that he met Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh on more than one occasion at Richmond, and that Bacon was in the habit of receiving them together at his St. Margaret’s home.”

Interesting as are these details, they are, it will be observed, quite unsupported. What the Major says is, unfortunately, “not evidence.” If Major Walter had given us chapter and verse for all this information, we might have verified his evidence for ourselves, but “Catholic tradition” and the unnamed “families with past histories,” and the “others” are too vague to pin one’s faith to. We may, however, assume that Shakespeare was not unknown to Bacon, that they met when Shakespeare was appearing at Gray’s Inn; and it is quite possible, if not probable, that Shakespeare consulted Bacon on the legal references and similes that we find in the Plays.

Bacon, although disloyal, and capable of shameless ingratitude towards his benefactors, had the love of his secretary Rawley, and the warm esteem of such men as Ben Jonson, BoËner, and Toby Matthew. Abbott, who is fully awake to his many faults, notes this curious inconsistency in his nature, and explains it in the conclusion that “whenever he found men naturally and willingly depending on him, and co-operating with him ... his natural and general benevolence found full play.” If we accept this explanation, and it would appear to be the correct solution of his enigmatic character, we can readily understand that Bacon, in a patronising, but good-hearted way, would extend no little favour to a man of Shakespeare’s position and reputation. Shakespeare would be familiar with Bacon’s works, he may even have had the run of Bacon’s library in Gray’s Inn—an assumption of their intimacy, which, if supported by documentary evidence, would establish the theory that the poet used the philosopher as his model for Polonius. Bacon, the great philosopher, and the influential politician, would certainly have “the tribute of the supple knee” of all aspirants to literary fame. Authors would be proud to attract his notice, publishers would be flattered to allow him to glance through the proofs of any books that they were issuing. It is quite natural to suppose that if Shakespeare was known to Bacon, Heming and Condell would have been aware of the fact, and an offer to render them some assistance in publishing the First Folio would have been accepted with alacrity. Such an offer may have been made through Rawley, his faithful secretary; it might have come direct from Bacon to the publishers. How he obtained command of the proofs it is impossible to conjecture with any confidence, but if it is proved that the cipher exists in the Folio, and the other works mentioned—and I am satisfied to believe that it does, until a properly constituted committee reports that it is non-existent—it will be evident that somebody must have overcome the difficulties that the task presented. The law at that time recognised no natural right in an author to the creation of his brain, and the full owner of a MS. copy of any literary composition was entitled to reproduce it, or to treat it as he pleased, without reference to the author’s wishes. Thomas Thorpe, and the other pirates of the period, were always on the look-out for written copies of plays and poems for publication in this manner. All Shakespeare’s plays that appeared in print were issued without his authority, and, in several instances, against his expressed wish. How did Thorpe and his tribe obtain possession of the manuscripts of King Lear, Henry V., Pericles, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, and the rest of the sixteen plays which were in print at the date of the author’s death? If we knew for certain that Shakespeare and Bacon were on terms of intimacy, it would be a justifiable conjecture to suppose that the latter might have had a hand in the business, but if the existence of the cipher in these pirated quartos is verified, we may be quite sure that Bacon was the publishers’ accessory in securing the MSS. for publication.

It is, however, more difficult to satisfactorily explain the claim of Bacon to the authorship of the Anatomy of Melancholy. The first edition, in quarto form, was published in 1621; the cipher appears in the folio that was issued in 1628. In the preface to this edition, the author announces that he will make no more changes in his work: “I will not hereafter add, alter, or retract; I have done.” What do we gather from that, Mrs. Gallup may ask?—surely that Bacon felt his strength failing when he wrote those words; he certainly did not live to see the book through the press. But the fact remains that four more editions were published within Burton’s lifetime, each with successive alterations and additions. The final form of the book was the sixth edition (1651–52), printed from an annotated copy given just before Burton’s death to the publisher, Henry Cripps, who gained, Anthony À Wood tells us, great profits out of the book. This is one of the points upon which we shall hope to hear from Mrs. Gallup.

In this 1628 folio of the Anatomy of Melancholy, Mrs. Gallup has deciphered some ninety pages of a partial translation of Homer’s Iliad. But on comparing this translation with that of Alexander Pope, written about a century later, it becomes clear that it is not taken from the original Greek of Homer, but is, in fact, a prose rendering of Pope’s version. But Mrs. Gallup in a letter to the Times, which appears as these pages are going through the press, declares that an examination of six different English translations of the Iliad, and one Latin, shows her such substantial accord that either of them could be called with equal justice a paraphrase of Pope, or that Pope had copied from the others.