The Columbus of Literature

o piteous in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors, ? he comes before me. (Hamlet, Act II., Sc. I.) A great deal may be discovered concerning Lord Bacon's ends and aims by study of his times, contemporaries, and the people he corresponded with. We know he was in secret correspondence with Father Fulgentio, for a letter of Bacon's is extant, in which he explains to the former the plan and scope of his Instauration. Archbishop Tenison, in his Baconiana or certain genuine remains of Lord Bacon (1679), opens his work with a suspicious reference to Bocca- lini's Ragguagli di Parnasso, from which work was borrowed the first Rosicrucian manifesto entitled, A Reformation of the Whole Wide World. "In this last and most comprehensive account, I have, on purpose, used a loose and Asiatic style, and wilfully committed that venial fault with which the Laconian (in Boccalini) is merrily taxed, who had said that in three words, which he might possibly have express'd in two. I hop'd, by this means, to serve the more effectually, ordinary readers, who stand chiefly in need of this Introduction ; and whose capacities can be no more reach'd by a close and strict discourse, than game can be taken by a net unspread." (p. 4.) It is easy to preceive the author is hinting that his style is not laconic but circumlocutory, and that there is an object for ambiguity in order to catch or deceive the ordinary reader. ypon the next page we read: ...