Page:Curiosities of Olden Times.djvu/35

Curiosities of Cypher Another method of veiling a communication is that of employing numbers or arbitrary signs in the place of letters, and this admits of many refinements. Here is an example to test the reader's sagacity:

§ †431 45 2+9 +§51 4= 8732+ 287 45 2+9 †¶=+

I just give the hint that it is a proverb.

The following is much more ingenious, and difficult of detection.

Now suppose that I want to write England; I look among the small letters in the foregoing table for e, and find that it is in a horizontal line with B, and vertical line with B, so I write down BB; n is in line with A and E, so I put AE; continue this, and England will be represented by Bbaeacbdaaaeab. Two letters to represent one is not over-tedious: but the scheme devised by Lord Bacon is clumsy enough. He represented every letter by permutations of a and b; for instance, A was written aaaaa, B was written aaaab C was written aaaba, D was written aabaa 23