Owen's Baconian Cipher

Did Bacon write Shakespeare, or was Shakespeare the author of his own plays ? Had such a question been asked a year ago, the interrogator would have subjected himself to the derision of all critics of English literature and become a target for the wit af the newspaper paragrapher. Ex-Congressman Ignatious Donnelly, of Minn., wrote a book some years ago in which he proved to the satisfaction of nobody except himself, that Bacon wrote Shakespeare, and that the great player only acted the leading roles. But Ignatious Donnelly only beheld the first pale streaks of dawn where another developed a Baconian sunrise, if we may trust the seemingly incontestible proof. In his enthusiasm Donnelly invaded England with his book under his arm, fully expecting to achteve the conquestxif Albion by the crude unfolding of what he conceived to be a cipher, hidden in the lines of the Shakespeareian plays and containing the pathetic narrativo of the life of Sir Francis Racon, his authorship of the Shakespereian literature, and his own heirship of the throne of England, as son of the royal Elizabeth. But wlien Mr. Donnelly reached England and showed his book to the mutton-chop side-whiskers of the English literati, he was laughed to scorn, subjected to the lances of the humorous papers, and had the mortification of seeing a smoked shoulder hanging in the market labeled, " This is Bacon, not Shakespeare." Donnelly only groped in the darkness where anotherhasapparently walked in the light. If a cipher is now finally diScovered, this follows, that Donnelly discovered a few threads of it, but was unable to prove H to a full and successful development. It remained for Dr. Orville W. Owen, of Detroit, to master the great task, and give to the world the Baconian history which for three hundred years lay sealed in the matrhless literary masonry of the so-called works of Sakespeare, the undisputed works of Bacon, and the hitherto supposed compositions of Robert Green, Geo. Peel, ChristoDher Winslow, and the works of Edmond Spencer, Robert Burton, and othrs. All these works, according to Dr. Owen, contain facts of the Baconian cipher, which claim for Bacon the authorship of theni all. Bacon's letter to the decipherer (which letter is a part of cipher) gives directions for unraveling the whole. We have carefully read the " Letter to the Decipherer," and Sir Francis Bacon's story of his life, and history of Queen Elizabeth, whose son he claims to be, in the cipher narrative. It is intensely interesting, and forms a narrative which it would be hard indeed to construct from the ingenuity or im.agination, if one desired to impose on the public with a fictitious cipher. The Argus must give Dr. Orville W. Owen, of Detroit, credit for having apparently established the truth of the existence of a thrilling cipher narrative containing the story of Sir Francis' sonship to the queen, his wrongs at her hands, his terrible curies upon her, and her loathsome, tragic, and horrible murder hy a trusted hunchback of the court.