Chapter One

Containing certain General Considerations touching Interchange
Of Power and Transposition of Letters

The Modes whose function it is to produce Disarrangement of Order in Letters, or, otherwise stated, the Modes which infuse the Order of collocation of Letters, have already been sufficiently explained in the preceding Books. There remain two other principal Modes, which take place respectively by Interchange of Power and by Change of Form in Letters. I will discuss these two Modes in this order in the present Fifth book and in the Sixth Book. Now in explaining the other Modes, I paid special regard to Trithemius; similarly, in expounding these Modes, I am able to refer more particularly to the Frenchman, Blaise de Vigenere, whose work on Ciphers, written in the French language and published at Paris in the year 1586, contains a store of learned information on remote topics. Likewise, I refer to Gabriel de Collanges, of Tours in Auvergne, who, besides translating into French, and attending to the publications of, at Paris in 1561, Trithemius’s work on Polygraphy, added thereto certain matter of his own, such as the short article entitled De Cabala, and a second article containing a new exposition of figures and tables much more finished than the collection given by Trithemius. Then, I also, with good reason, place among the men to whom I refer, the German, Johann Walch, as well as others, whose inventions and devices, all very ingenious, I will in this and the following Book,  - mentioning in each case the author’s name, - bring together, adding thereto a short explanatory commentary of my own.

It has seemed to me to be the part of candor on my part (see Bk.1.c.1 ad fin.) to avoid seeming to deck myself in others’ plumes. I have always, it is true, been far from having any leaning toward this fault, but the recent flagrant case of plagiarism, of wholly unpardonable character, committed by the Frisian, Dominic de Hottinga, jurisconsult, has aroused me to greater indignation and aversion. Dominci, taking the work of another man, the work, namely, on Polygraphy, by de Collanges, to whom reference has just been made, had the audacity, after striking out and suppressing both the name of the author himself and that of the interpreter, to write his own name instead, and, republishing this work in the year 1621, in form and exact reprint of the old Paris edition, to claim the same as his own. He thereby, most laughably, like Maitre Corbeau stripped of his feathers, held himself up to the ridicule of an age of scholars, ever ready to detect and lynx-eyed in their vision; a result he might have known, from the Master of Morals, Horace (Ep.I.4), would inevitably happen.