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n Mr Ignatius Donnelly writes that one day he happenednto be perusing a copy of Every Boy’s Book (1868 edition) belonging tonone of his sons when he came upon an article on Cryptography. If Mr Donnellynhad read on a little, he would have found articles on fencing, firework making,ngardening and philately, which may have inspired him to enquire further intonone those subjects, thereby preventing him from taking cryptography to hisnheart.
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| Other subjects that could have distracted Donnelly |
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nIf he had, the world of Shakespearean studies would have been spared a greatndeal of misery and the rest of the world would have been spared his 1888 opus ThenGreat Cryptogram. Mr Donnelly was, sadly, not the sort of man to let thingsnlie. Nor was he the sort of man to keep his crackpot theories to himself butninstead he had an overwhelming impulse to inflict them on the rest of humanity.
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| Ignatius Donnelly – Atlantis – 1882 |
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nHis first foray into pseudobabble began with Atlantis, The AntediluviannWorld (1882) in which he explains, at length and with a straight face, hownthe same deluge that is called Noah’s flood in the Bible destroyed the ancientncivilization of Atlantis that is mentioned in the works of Plato. A few of thenred haired, blue eyed inhabitants managed to escape the destruction and make itnto Ireland, where they founded the Aryan race, n(it should be mentioned that his full name was Ignatius Loyola Donnelly,nso you can guess where his family emigrated from).
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| Ignatius Donnelly – Ragnarok – 1883 |
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nIn 1883, he followed thisnnonsense up with another catastrophe-based tome, Ragnarok, The Age of Firenand Gravel (yes, you read that right, fire and gravel) in which hentells us how the earth had a near-miss with a massive comet, an incident whichncaused that same flood that had destroyed Atlantis (and made all the mammothsngo extinct).
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| A Comet misses the Earth and crashes into the Sun |
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nFive years later, someone let him get too close to the writing materialsnand he was off and at it again. That article in Every Boy’s Book put thenconjunction of secret codes, Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare intonDonnelly’s fertile imagination, where the usual lunacy began to ferment. Thenresultant brew was a book that Donnelly called The Great Cryptogram -n998 pages of such inspired madness that you may wish to take a little pause atnthis point, pop into your kitchen and make a nice tin-foil hat for yourself,njust to be on the safe side.
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| Ignatius Donnelly – The Great Cryptogram – 1888 |
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nTo warn you in advance, Ignatius Loyola Donnellynwas an American gentleman who began his career as a lawyer and if that wasn’tnbad enough in itself, he moved on to become a politician – and a Republican onento boot, as if you couldn’t have guessed – before starting up a political partynof his own. Right, now you know the kind of mind that we’re dealing with, so ifnyou’re sitting comfortably, I’ll begin.
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| Every Boy’s Book – George Routledge and Sons |
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nIn the Every Boy’s Book,nDonnelly read that if, hypothetically, Francis Bacon had hidden a coded messagenin a book for boys, only one person in a thousand would notice it. What,nreasoned Donnelly, if Bacon had hidden a real coded message somewhere.nWhere might he put it, where just one person in a thousand would notice it?nHe’d hide it in the first folio of Shakespeare’s plays, of course. Mr Donnellynbought himself a facsimile copy, got out his crayons, and started counting.
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nThenfirst thing he noticed was that the pagination of the first folio is all overnthe place. Some page numbers are out of order, even though the text itself isnuninterrupted. Some page numbers are missed out, some are repeated and therenare blank unnumbered pages. Now this might just be the printers gettingnconfused and muddled up. Then Donnelly started looking at the words thatnappeared printed in italics on each page, counted them up and multiplied them by the number of the page on which they appeared.
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| William Shakespeare – First Folio – 1623 |
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nOne example he brings tonour attention is on page 53 of the Histories (the Histories, Comedies andnTragedies are number separately in the first folio) in the play King Henrynthe Fourth Part One. There are seven words in italic letters in the firstncolumn that appears on page 53. 7 multiplied by 53 is 371, and thenthree-hundred-and-seventy-first word in the first column on the same page is ‘Bacon’.nHe looks next at page 67 (Why page 67? Maybe because he found what he wasnlooking for there). He counts up the words in italic letters – there are six.nHe multiplies this 6 by the number of the page (67) and gets 402. Thenfour-hundred-and-second word on that same page is ‘S.Albones’, and blessnmy boots if Francis Bacon wasn’t Viscount St Albans!
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| Shakespeare First Folio with annotations – click on image to embiggify |
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nDonnelly returns to page 53.nHe notices that word number 648 on that page is Nicholas. He counts upnthe words in italics in the first column on page 54 – there are twelve. Twelventimes fifty-four = 648. ‘Nicholas’, word 648 on page 53, is the name ofnFrancis Bacon’s father. By now, Donnelly believes he’s truly onto something. Henmultiplies 53 by 6 (= 318), and counts the number of words from the firstnsubdivision on page 55. There are 255 words. He subtracts 255 from his 318,nwhich leaves 62. He counts sixty-two words down from the subdivision in thensecond column on page 55. The word is ‘Francis’. Heaven’s above.
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nHenturns again to page 54. He counts down to the first division in the page. 396nwords. He counts down to the word ‘Bacons’ on the same page. 198 words.n396 + 198 = 594. And 594 is 54 times 11. He counts backwards up the firstncolumn for 477 words (53 times 9) and he arrives at the word ‘son’. Whatndoes all that give you? “Francis Bacon Nicholas Bacons Son”. Bloomingnheck.
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nnnTomorrown– more counting and sums.
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nIncidentally, for those of you interested in such things, this post marks this blog’s first birthday. That’s 365 consecutive days with at least one post on each day. Thanks to anyone who has arrived here once and has seen fit to return again. I hope you will be able to come back again during the next year. Best wishes, Michael.
