The Mystery of Francis Bacon

Excerpt: ...published in 1612. AD. D.B. "Si bene qui latuit, bene vixit, tu bene vivis: Ingeniumque tuum grande latendo patet." "Thou livest well if one well hid well lives, And thy great genius in being concealed is revealed." D. is elsewhere used by Owen as the initial of Dominus. The suggestion that Ad. D.B. represents Ad Dominum Baconum is therefore reasonable. Thomas Powell published in 1630 the "Attourney's Academy." The book is dedicated "To True Nobility and Tryde learning beholden To no Mountaine for Eminence, nor supportment for Height, Francis, Lord Verulam and Viscount St. Albanes." Then follow these lines:- "O Give me leave to pull the Curtaine by That clouds thy Worth in such obscurity. Good Seneca, stay but a while thy bleeding, Pg 107 T' accept what I received at thy Reading: Here I present it in a solemne strayne, And thus I pluckt the Curtayne backe again." In the "Mirrour of State and Eloquence," published in 1656, the frontispiece is a very bad copy of Marshall's portrait of Bacon prefixed to the 1640 Gilbert Wat's "Advancement of Learning." Under it are these lines:- "Grace, Honour, virtue, Learning, witt, Are all within this Porture knitt And left to time that it may tell, What worth within this Peere did dwell." The frontispiece previously referred to of "Truth brought to Light and discovered by Time, or a discourse and Historicall narration of the first XIIII. yeares of King James Reign," published in 1651, is full of cryptic meaning and in one section of it there is a representation of a coffin out of which is growing "A spreading Tree Full fraught with various Fruits most fresh and fair To make succeeding Times most rich and rare." The fruits are books and manuscripts. The volume contains speeches of Bacon and copies of official documents signed by him. The books of the emblem writers are still more remarkable. "Jacobi Bornitii Emblemata Ethico Politica," 1659, contains at least a dozen plates in which Bacon is...