Chapter IX

On Preparation of Words Artificially constructed.

Let us now, coming to the matter in hand, consider the Composition of Words above mentioned. This method is entirely different from the methods previously discussed. For here there is no need, as there was in the case of the former Modes, to labor industriously at collecting words: we have a certain alphabet, ingeniously and skillfully constructed, by young learners of the art, and this we are simply to use, like a storehouse of words. Just herein does the difference between this an the preceding Mode become most apparent. For there free discourse results, while here we are always restricted to the forms of a previously arranged alphabet; see, also, Bk.2.c.10. I have shown above in the Eighth Chapter how our Abbot wrote four Books on this Mode. Porta, Bk.2.c.1, has put these alphabets into the form of an epistle, and he has shown that there is no need of a large collection of alphabets. He includes his own epistle within the limits of sixty words. Schwenter, Bk.5., has a Mode whereby we can write by means of a single alphabet; from one alphabet, he carries this method on through three (in which case sentences always result), four and seven alphabets. Porta’s method is less open to suspicion. If the secret includes more than sixty, or , as in the present chapter, fifty seven, letters, Porta tells us to begin a new epistle. The reader will also observe that, although the alphabets are written in certain set forms and are now for the second time made public property, the secret may nevertheless still be hidden by Transposition of Letters or by some other disguise. I have thought it worth while to insert here from Porta, for the benefit of those who do not change to have Porta’s book at hand, the aforementioned table of alphabets, and to present it as arranged by him, entire with one exception: for the sings which Porta placed at the beginning and end of the alphabet, it has seemed to me better, -the alphabet being designed for epistolary purposed, - to substitute notes and words appropriate to an epistle, at the same time omitting the various signs of interpunctuation.

The table is given below, covering several pages.