-13-
And lastly, 6)
there was a curious volume published anonymously in 1620 that connects the
epithet ‘bandito’ to Tobie Matthew. In this translation it was titled A Relation of the Death of the Most
Illustrious Lord Signor Troilo Savelli, a Baron of Rome / [translated from
Italian] by Sir T.M. Knight. This was ascribed to Sir Tobie Matthew by
Henry Peacham in Truth of our Time
(p. 102). A 1663 edition was titled The
Penitent Bandito, or the Historie of the conversion and Death of the most
illustrious Lord Signior Troilo Saavelli, a Baron of Rome. This edition is
said to have Tobie Matthew’s name in Anthony a Wood’s handwriting. Wood was an
antiquarian and ‘professed Rosicrucian’—a topic to be addressed later. But why
the book was renamed ‘The Penitent Bandito’ isn’t known. Bacon would likely
have known and read any book by his closest friend, and perhaps there is
something in the book related to banishment which later came to mind in the
preparation of The Tempest in the First Folio.
In any case,
all of these apparent acrostics, associated by their clear parallel locations
in successive columns, and with names and phrases perfectly suited to each
other, must be extremely unlikely to be a coincidence. Mather Walker calculated
the probability at 181,606,990,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1, using the
Friedman’s table of first-line letter occurrences in the Folio. The Friedman’s
own test of authorship through acrostic or cipher put the odds necessary for
validation at “1 chance in a thousand million” [p. 21] or 1,000,000,000 to 1.
If the probability of the Bacon-Tobey acrostic can be professionally
calculated to be at or beyond this number then that by itself, according to the
Friedmans, would prove Bacon’s authorship. But if the acrostic does not
actually reach that probability, or if the ‘impure’ acrostic pattern is still a
little questionable, then other possible ‘hidden bard’ signatures may be enough
to settle any doubt.
And here is
Mather Walker’s full article:
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