• THE FREE AND ACCEPTED MASONS IN ENGLAND (2/2)

    From Arthur Neuendorffer@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jul 15 17:53:51 2021
    [continued from previous message]

    (and is listed in the colophon as one of the publishers).

    As further evidence that the real author is concealed Carr points to
    the title page of the first Spanish edition of Don Quixote. The title
    page shows a hooded falcon resting on the gloved hand of a man who is
    hidden from view within a cloud. There is a lion in the picture that
    ostensibly symbolizes England. But who is the hidden falconer? On the
    border around the inner picture are the words, "Post tenebras spero
    lucem", i.e., after darkness I hope for light. Signaling yet again
    that something is hidden here. But how can we solve this dark puzzle?
    Chapter 68 of the Second Part of Don Quixote gives us a clue. Don
    Quixote tells Sancho Panza, "Post tenebras spero lucem", and follows
    the Latin words with a translation, "after darkness I expect light."
    It seems that the explanation has been added to help the reader,
    but Sancho still does not understand. The clue comes at this point.
    Sancho launches into a tribute to sleep, and this tribute is
    virtually a paraphrase of the speech about sleep in Macbeth (which
    appeared a few years before the publication of Don Quixote):

    . Sleep that knits up thE RaVEllED slEaVE of caRE,
    . The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
    . Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
    . Chief nourisher in life's feast.

    (As an additional connection to the Shakespeare works it can be
    noted that the "POST TENEBRAS LUX; after darkness light" legend
    also appeared on the 1600 quarto edition of A Midsummer Nights
    Dream, PRINTed by James Roberts).

    Moreover, Carr establishes a timeline that demonstrates that the
    manuscript of Don Quixote was in England long before it was published
    in Spain. The manuscript of the first part of Don Quixote was in
    England eight or nine years before the book was published in Spain,
    and the second part was translated and registered in London within
    a month of the date it was licensed for publication in Spain. It is
    hardly necessary to note the impossibility implicit in the notion
    that the second part of Don Quixote could have been sent to England
    from Spain, and then translated and made ready for the publisher,
    all in the period of one short month.

    Don Quixote has two parts. The first part was published in Madrid in
    January of 1605. The second part was licensed for publication in
    Madrid on November 5, 1615. Shelton translated both English parts of
    Don Quixote. His first part was published in London in 1612. His
    second part was published in London in 1620. These are subsequent
    to the Spanish publication, HowEVER, Carr cites the following
    statement made by Shelton in his dedicatory letter
    to the first part of Don Quixote:

    "Having translated some five or six years ago,
    the Historie of Don Quixote, out of the Spanish Tongue,
    into English, in the space of forty days"

    This has a very strange implication. If the dedication was written in
    the same year as the publication this would mean the manuscript of the
    book was in London in 1606 or 1607. If the dedication was written when
    the book was registered, in January of 1611, the dates would 1605 or
    1606. On the other hand, Carr notes, the dedication is addressed to
    Lord Walden (Thomas Howard). Thomas Howard was Lord Walden up to 1603
    at which time he was created Earl of Suffolk, and since Shelton was
    dedicating the book to his patron we may be certain he would have been
    careful to get his patron's title right. This indicates the dedication
    was written prior to 1603. If the dedication was written in 1602 the
    "five or six years" would put the manuscript of the book in London in
    1597 or 1596, eight or nine years before it was published in Spain.
    The circumstances in regard to the second part of the book are also
    very suspicious. The second part of the book was registered at the
    Stationer's Company in London on December 5, 1615. It is impossible
    that the text for the second part could have been sent to London
    from Madrid and translated between November 5 and December 5.

    Carr shows this becomes even more suspicious when Thomas Shelton
    is put under the microscope. Carr says, "Who was Thomas Shelton?
    No one knows. Before and after the translation of
    the two parts of Don Quixote, he is an invisible man."

    It is generally acknowledged that the English translation by Thomas
    Shelton was the first translation of Don Quixote in any language, but
    Carr asks the question: was this the first translation from Spanish
    into English, or was the Spanish book actually the first translation
    from English into Spanish? Certainly, if Don Quixote actually
    originated in England the book must have been translated into Spanish
    at some time. Furthermore, since Arabia is used as a blind for
    England, any allusion in the book to this translation would be of
    a translation from Arabic into Spanish. Carr points out that the
    description of precisely such a translation can be found in the book
    itself. In Part One of Don Quixote, chapter 9, in Shelton's text,
    we find a description of the author himself "walking on
    the Exchange of Toledo" and encountering a boy who is selling
    "old quires and scroules written in Arabicall characters":

    "I looked about to view whether I could perceive any
    Moore translated Spaniard that could read them; nor was
    it very difficult to finde there Such an interpreter…
    I requested him to turne me all the Arabicall sheetes…
    That treated of Don-Quixote into Spanish.
    I would pay him What he listed for his paines…
    He translated all the worke in lesse than a moneth and a half."

    The time period given for the translation, Carr notes,
    is practically identical to the forty days given by Shelton
    for his translation of the book into English. Carr points
    that the period given strains credibility and
    was probably a deliberate ploy to move the reader
    to inquire further into the matter.

    A really curious feature of the second part of Don Quixote, noted
    by Carr, is the name of the neighbor of Don Quixote, Thomas Cecial.
    Sir Thomas Cecil was a neighbor and friend of Bacon's. When Bacon
    left Grays Inn for Twickenham in 1595 to escape the plague,
    Richard Cecil, the son of Thomas Cecil accompanied him.

    In his Preface to The Reader the author of Don Quixote says:

    . "I tooke often times my pen in my hand, as not knowing
    what I should write, and being once in a muse with my paper
    before me, my pen in my eare, mine elbow on the table,
    and my hand on my cheeke, imagining what I might write."

    Carr notes that this seems to have been a habitual posture of
    Bacon since the memorial to Bacon erected by Sir Thomas Meautys
    in St Michael's Church, St Albans shows Bacon seated exactly
    as described in the preface to Don Quixote, and in the memorial
    Meautys describes this as the habitual posture of Bacon.
    Meautys tells us [He] "used to sit thus":

    Carr finds in Don Quixote some 70 quotations, or expressions, that are identical or similar to those that appear in the works of Bacon, or Shakespeare, Carr notes that in his De Augmentis Bacon says:

    . "Dramatic poesy, which has the theatre for its world, would be of
    excellent use if well directed. For the stage is capable of no small
    influence both of discipline and of corruption. Now of corruption in
    this kind we have enough, but the discipline has in our time been
    plainly neglected. The action of the theatre, though modern states
    esteem it but ludicrous unless it be satirical and biting, was
    carefully watched by the Ancients that it might improve mankind in
    virtue; and indeed many wise men and great philosophers have thought
    it to the mind as the bow to the fiddle."

    And in Shelton's Don Quixote we find the following:

    "Comedie, as Tully affirmes, ought to be a mirrour of mans life, a
    patterne of manners, and an Image of TRUTH. If wee would passé further
    to examine the divine Comedies that treate of God, or the lives of the
    Saints, what a multitude of false miracles doe the composers devise?

    . The auditour, having heard an artificiall and well ordered Comedy,
    . Would come away delighted with the *JESTs* , & instructed by the
    . TRUTHs thereof; wondering at the successes, grow discreeter by
    . the Reasons, warned by the deceits, become wise by others example,
    . Incensed against vice, and enamoured of virtue;
    . all which affects A good Comedie should stirre up in
    . the hearers minde, were he NEVER so grosse or clownish…
    . It is not possible for the bow to continue still bent:
    . nor can our Humane and fraile nature sustaine it selfe long,
    . without some Helpe of lawfull recreation."

    Carr examines the Spanish and English texts of Don Quixote in detail
    and finds numerous indications that the English text came first. Not
    only this, but he even examines the topology of Don Quixote and finds
    many indications that the landscape through which Don Quixote wanders
    in his quest is actually the landscape of England instead of the
    landscape of Spain. One example of this is the windmill episode,
    which has become the most celebrated incident in the whole work.

    Immediately before going forth on his adventure where he encountered
    the windmill Quixote's barber, cook, and niece have thrown out and
    burned his books, and even blocked up and hidden the door to his
    library. His niece tells him that an enchanter who rode on a serpent,
    has destroyed the books. She says his name was Muniaton, but Don
    Quixote says he was Freston. Then when he goes he comes to a landscape
    where there are 30 or 40 windmills, but Quixote says they are really
    giants. Carr notes that near the village of Friston in Sussex, a
    village that was originally spelt as Freston is a figure of a giant,
    227 feet high, known as the long Man of Wilmington, who according to
    one legend was the giant of Friston (Freston), nearby stood an old
    windmill, and there are a number of windmills in the neighborhood.
    Carr also notes that one of the traditional interpretations of the
    Long Man of Wilmington is that he is the Sun God, and that Muniaton
    can be interpreted to mean the wisdom-enhanced spirit of the Sun. So
    Carr says, "in the county of Sussex, in the south-eastern corner of
    England, only sixty miles from London, we are in a land of windmills,
    of giants, of old legends and tales of singlecombat." And he adds
    that nearby is a small, deep pool of clear water and that there
    was a legend that in ancient times a dragon, a creature of enormous
    size that had wings and looked like a serpent was wont to come
    forth from the depths of this hole and prey on the sheep
    in the neighboring areas.

    Charles Fort, aficionado of the roads less traveled, named one of his
    books, The Book of the Damned, because, he said, the facts in the book
    were damned to be ignored and excluded by mainstream scholars &
    scientists. Who Wrote Don Quixote may or may not be a book of
    the damned, but it is certainly a damned interesting book.
    As Francis Bacon said, "Some books are to be tasted, others
    to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
    Who Wrote Don Quixote is one of the latter. ----------------------------------------
    Art Neuendorffer

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