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SIR FRANCIS BACON'S

CIPHER STORY.

DISCOVERED AND DECIPHERED BY

ORVILLE W. OWEN, M. D.

VOL. I.

DETROIT AND NEW YORK:

HOWARD PUBLISHING COMPANY,

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INTRODUCTION

(TO LIBRARY EDITION.)

The reviews of the first issue of the "Cipher Story" have been varied and entertaining. The space devoted to its discussion has marked a most unusual interest, and also shown that not a few have failed to comprehend what the book is, and really contains, notwithstanding the very full and complete statements of Mr. George P. Goodale, Mr. Hunsaker and Mr. Cooper-Journalists and Critics of note-whose personal knowledge of the methods used, and character of the work, is most clearly and most strongly stated.

It must be understood that this is a deciphering—a translation of a story running through many books. Bacon's Philosophical Works were written in Latin, and we have the translations only, to study, and thus a second party's rendering of the original thoughts, which from the nature of the case would not be exact. Then from the Plays and other works, which have come down to us in the Old English of 1623, and from these translations of the Latin text, has to be extracted the connected Story through the means of the Cipher Keys. The student, on reflection, will admit it would be impossible to so fit and join the words and sentences, as to make all smoothly read in the exact metre, rythm and measure of the highest literary productions of the nineteenth century.

On page 21 of the Cipher Story, Bacon says: (deciphered from the Novum Organum and from As You Like it).

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Our own safety, we executed the work in short

And scattered sentences, linked together in rude lines,

And any reader of moderate sagacity

And intelligence should see our manner of writing

This history (as it actually and really is)

Is such that it could not be compounded and divided,

Composed, decomposed, and composed again in manifold ways,
And made to mingle and unite by fits and starts,

And be in verse. It will be found the feet are

Some of the story

Weak and lame, even in the blank verse.
Look at the mass of works we use.
Has more feet than the verses would bear,
And you must exercise your own judgment
And give it smoothness when it lamely halts.

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Or beauty as it might have been made,

Had we not, to prevent its discovery, and to provide
For our own future safety, buried it deep
Beneath a mass of falsehood."

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Bacon anticipated the difficulty of translating into smooth measures, and gave the decipherer liberty to *** exercise your own judgment, and give it smoothness when it lamely halts." In the translation, I have not dared to depart from the original text, as it has come to me through the Cipher, in thought or word, and from the first page, to the foot-note on the last, there is no word added to, or subtracted from, the great originals. Whatever is found in this work is Francis Bacon's, and the criticisms that have been made are upon the Works of Francis Bacon as they exist. The Cipher and method of application will be given to the public in a later book, and the marvel will be that it should have been hidden so long.

DETROIT, December 16th, 1893.

ORVILLE W. OWEN, M. D.

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