Chapter V

THE FRATERNITY OF THE ROSY CROSS '
When the English secret Fraternity of the Rosy Cross was founded is yet to be ascertained.
John Heydon, who paraphrased Bacon's New Atlantis and called it The Land of the Rosicrucians, may have done the same thing with private writings of Bacon's in the possession of some member or members of the Fraternity.
The following passages, which Heydon claims as his own, were almost surely the words of Francis Bacon. This was the opinion of Mrs. Pott, a great student of Bacon's writings now deceased.
" I was twenty when this book was finished, but methinks I have outlived myself; I begin to be weary of the sun — I have shaken hands with delight, and know all is vanity, and I think no man can live well once but he that could live twice. For my part I would not live over my hours past or begin again the minutes of my days; not because I have lived well, but for fear I should live them worse.
" At my death I mean to take a total adieu of the world, not caring for a tombstone and epitaph, but in the universal Register of God I fix my contemplations on Heaven. I writ the Rosicrucian Infallible Axiomata in four books, and study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. ... I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less."
(Compare " I'gin to be aweary of the sun " — Macbeth, V. 5. " Cassius is aweary of the world " — Julius Ccesar, TV. 3. Also Bacon's posthumous Essay of Death.)
If the above be a clue, young Francis may have set about forming his
literary society very soon after returning from his travels on the continent
of Europe. Sir Philip Sidney, Dyer and Gabriel Harvey would have been
amongst the earliest members.
29
30 SECRET SHAKESPEAEEAN SEALS
We know that the Faerie Queene, with its Red Cross Knight, was in preparation some years before 1589, and we find the Impresa 287, on A Choice of Emblems, written in 1585.
The Fraternity only showed its head when a serious attempt was made to extend its beneficent activities on the continent of Europe. Its first Manifesto seems to have been sent abroad in 1610 (see Waite's Real History of the Rosicriicians). It was in MS. in Germany in that year, and seems to have been printed in Venice in 1612 as a chapter of a book by Boccahni, entitled /. Ragguagli di Parnasso. Boccalini was an Italian architect who commenced as author that year, at the age of sixty.
He met with a tragical death the following year.
It was pubhshed in English in 1656 by Henry Carey, Earl of Monmouth. The English version has some curious printer's marks, and exhibits the 287 Seal. It was newly translated in 1704 by N. N., Esq. In this, in the