St. Paul daily globe., 1888-06-25
REVEALS The SNAP.
Donnelly, Goaded by the
Critics, Explains His
Cipher.
He Makes His Publishers
Responsible for His
Secrecy.
To Be Criticised He Finds
at Last Is Exasper-
ating.
He Gives a Chieagoite the
Credit for Seeing the
Point.
London Letter.

London Letter.
A representative of the New York
World called upon lgnatius Donnelly
at his chambers in this city and had a
most interesting conversation with him
in relation to his Shakespeare-Bacon
cipher, which has created so much dis
cusSiOn on both sides of the water. Nr.
DOnnelly felt somewhat eXacerbated in
consequence of the rasping OF his crit
les, but he made several most interesting
statements, revealing, in fact. the origin
of his cipher numbers, the secret so
carefully withheld in his book. Mr..
Donnelly upon this point said:
81 am well aware that the holding
back of the explanation Of the deriva-
ton of the cipher numbers sos, 5C6, 513,
SIG and 523 has prejudiced many against
my work. | did this at the suggestion
of me publishers. l supposed that if /
showed that these numbers, together or
separately, produced coherent narra-
tiveS the critics would admit the exist
ence of cipher whether they
knew where the numbers came
from or not. But it seems
few or none take that view of the
matter. They place their principal 90
lection to the cipher on the fact that |
have not given the primal number of
which the above numbers are mOdifica-
tionS. In some cases they have been
unfair. When my London publishers,
Sampson Low IL Co, sent out copies of
my book to the reviewers of the five
principal London. dailieS they sent to
each letter saying that the origin of
the root-numbers had been withheld at
the request of my publishers, for
prudential reasons, but that l
was ready to communicate the facts in
respect to the same in confidence to the
reviewers, to satisfy them that the num-
berS were not arbitrary. No one of the
reviewers called on me for the proffered
information; but one of them, the critic
of the London Standard, in his article
proceeded to discuss the origin of those
numbers, and, with the letter of my
publishers in his hands, declared they
were arbitrary, and that they
could not be derived in the man
ner | had indieated-by null
tiplylng number found on the first
column of page "a by some other num-
ber. 1t is difficult to properly char
acteriZe such conduct. but it illustrates
the spirit in which [ have been met all
through this controversy.
''As the absence of the primal root
number is the great stumbling block
with many to the acceptance of the
cipher have determined, with. the con-
sent, and, i'll fact, upon the suggestion
of my publishers, to give the full ex-
planation of the same to the public.
1.-The system of mechanism of the ci-
pher is perfect. On the first column of
page IA (the first page of the second part
OF King Henry IV.0 we find
the muInpliers to-wit: G twelve. the
number of words III italics on the col
umn; (2) ten, the ten words IN brackets
Oh the column, that is to say, the SEN
tences t Making the wind my post
horsel, and 1 Under the smile of safetyl.
and (3) eleven, those ten bracket words
first above given, plus one, that is
counting the hyphenated word post
horse as two words. The second
ond column of page "a gives
us the 'modiliers,' caused by
dividing the text into three parts by the
stage directions: Enter Northumber-
land' and Enter Trayers;' and after
these mOdifierS have played their part
in the story we have another set f"f of II
'modifiers' caused by similar breaks on
page 73. The numbers multiplied are
the pages embraced in the second scene
of the play-viZ.: IA, Is and 76.
Il think this must be plain to every
one. Here we have the numbers that
multiply, the numbers that are multi
piled and the 'modifers,' which help to
tell the story by increasing the number
of words in the narrative.
''If the critic will turn to page 57I
ct seq of my book he will see that |
give curious example where two
words, found out match precisely.
counting from the same two starting
points, with the numbers S36 and 900,
the difference between the two num-
berS 60 being precisely made up by the
number of bracketed and hyphenated
words, which are not counted in the
one case to make $50, but are counted
in the other to make 900. How are
these two numbers obtained?
Thus: l have stated above that
there are twelve italic words on the first
column of page "a, and that this is one
of the multiplierS, and that the number
of page rs is one of the numbers null
tiplied; 10 multiplied by 12 makes 900.
| also stated above that Ii is another
multiplier, and that rs is one of the
pages multiplied; rs multiplied by Ii
is $50.
Now, $50 is the primal root number,
from which all my root numbers, sos,
5O6, 513, 516, and 523 are derived. How?
''1f the critic will turn to page $50 of
my book he will find The diagram Oh
which the cipher depends If he will
turn to the second column of page IA,
given therein, he will find that the last
modifier given in the diagram is 20.
How does it come? 1t represents the
number of words on column 2, page "a.
between the first word of the last SUBJ
division and the bottom of the column.
Now, $50 tells cipher story of thou
sands of words, and, after exhauSting
itself, it is modified to create new
cipher number. How? BY deducting
90. This gives us the number SO7.
This also gives us thousands of words
of the cipher narrative. But it is again
modified. How? By deducting the num-
Der of words on column one of page
"a. How many words are there on
that column? That depends on how
you count them. If you count all the
words on the, column, including the
bracketed words, and counting the hy-
phenated words as two or three words
each as the case may be, we have (See
page $50 of my book 302. If yGl count
the bracketed and dnon-bracketed words,
but count the hyphenated words
as one word each, we have 294 words.
Ii you count the non-bracketed words,
but not the bracketed words, and count
the hyphenated words as double words,
we have 291 words. If you count in the
non-bracketed and bracketed words
and count all the hyphenated words as
double words, except 'post-horse' (Which
is a bracket Sentence), we have 301
words. If we count only the nom
bracketed words and count each of the
hyphenated works as one word each we
have 2S4 words in the column.
These different modes of counting
give us then five totals-302, 294, 291, 30l
and 2S4. Now we have but to take the
secondary root number given above,
S07, and deduct these different numbers
from it, and we obtain the five cipher