New-York tribune., 1909-05-15
Some Acrostics Dra5cn from the
Writings of William Shakespeare.

SOME AcRosTIc sIGNATUREs 90 OF y1I57Ai FRAiHseMlS sM
VTSCOTNT ST. ALBAN. Together with some some
Others. all of which are now foT the Ie-iIIi In
Stone Booth. 4to, pp xii 6Sl. The Hough'oh
Mifhin Company
This book embodies the results of a seareh III
the poems and plays Of William Shakespeare
for the signature Of Francis Bacon, placed there
in as the author explains, in acrostic form we
have never accepted the Baeonian hypothesis
and We do not regard It as confirmed oy MI
Booths collection Of acrostics The latter pos
sess. however. curious interest, which should
render this volume very attractive to the reader
With a turn for puzzles of any kind. He viii
study it. toe the more sympathetically mas
much as the author does not obtrude the side
on which he may naturally be assumed TO nave
ranged himself in an old controversy. Mr.. Booth
proceeds upon his task not so much in the mood
of a Baconian, in the strict sense of the term
as IN that of disinterested detective His attl-
tude would be the same if he were looking Tor
an aerostic disclosing, say, line like Long 1--we
Queen Elizabeth" instead of a signature 1t is
true that the cIoven hoof of the anti-orthodox
commentator is disclosed clearly enough in the
title Of his twelfth chapter, running as follows
''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, HlstoTies
and Tragedies. which have been assigned TO the
serve the authors agreement with Mr.. G. G.
Greenwood, who has sought TO demonstrate in
his recently published volume, The Shakespeare
Problem Restated' that the poems and plays
were not written by the actor of Stratford, but
by some other person using the name Of Shake
speare as a pseudonyme- But in the framing Of
his scheme Mr.. Booth has left the controversial
point 10 take care of itself. concentrating his
attention the expcation of the cipher which
he believes Bacon TO have used, and the elucida-
tion of the acrostics or structural signatures
which he himself has worked out by applying
the cipher in question
He prepares the reader for his argument by a
few pages on cryptography in the past showing
how ciphers have been used, and touching upon
the significance of anonymity and pseudonymity
in the history OF literature. His purpose in this
brief introduction is TO exhibit the credibity OF
the cipher idea. It has been employed with ease
in divers recorded instances. He then gives us
8 chapter on method" and follows it with one
containing practical specimens. The simplest
Of acrostic forms is that in which the first letter
of each line in a poem is so chosen by the
author that, read from top to bottom. these
letters shall spell the name or words he wishes
70 reveal Thus Mr. Booth prints a poem in
which the first letters of all the twenty lines
spell "Sr Francis Walsingham" He gives an
other specimen of the same sort from FRANCOIS
Eillo1. Another kind of acrostic which he cites
is that employed by Poe I'm his Valentine" sent
20 Frances Sargent Osgood. Her name is en-
bodied in the composition You spell il out by
using the first letter Of the first line then the
second letter of the second lire. then the third
letter of the third line and until you reach
the twentieth letter in the twentieth line The
cipher attributed to Bacon in this volume, how
ever, IS not so simple. Instead OF setting forth
his scrostic in the first letters of the successive
lines in a given set the cipherer proceeds on a
plan which Mr.. Booth thus describes:
Suppose that the first and last initial letters
right or left hand corners of stanza or distinct
block Of prose the rest Of the letters Of the
fan on the initial letters OF any word they viii
Ien an t1at elpnerer mas 10 90 Is 70 see fhqt I9
hand corner initial OF the text and ends the
inifaI of the word At the left hand at the
bottom
You find the letters that you want by looking
for them among the initial letters of the words
in your text, and if. for example the acrostic is
Francis Bacon" the text beginning with an
F, you look to the right in the first line for the
first initial r." then you continue and come
back TO the left on the second line looking for
initial ca" and then 20 the right in the third
line until you find initial n" and so on to
the left-hand corner at the bottom. thus spelling
out the name The principle is that the cipherer
has so arranged his composition that if you fol-
low his sequence with exactitude, you are bound
10 finish the spelling of the name at that left
hand bottom corner and nowhere else. This is
the cipher in its simplest form. But the cipher
which Mr.. Booth describes is also played with in
other ways. Sometimes you get the name by
spelling il from the upper right-hand corner to
point in the middle of the text. where the last
letter of the name falls. Then you can spell the
name backwards from that point the lower
left-hand corner, and it will work out thus
showing that the cipher is keyed" from the
middle. There are other ways, and their num-
Der. we may note in passing would seem greatly
10 increase the chances of working out the
acrostic sought; but better than any description
Of them will be a selection from Mr.. Booths ex-