Sir Thomas Bodley wrote to Lord Bacon, remonstrating with him on his _new mode of philosophising_.

It seems the fate of all originality of thinking to be immediately opposed; a contemporary is not prepared for its comprehension, and too often cautiously avoids it, from the prudential motive which turns away from a new and solitary path.

BACON was not at all understood at home in his own day; his reputation--for it was not celebrity--was confined to his history of Henry VII., and his Essays; it was long after his death before English writers ventured to quote Bacon as an authority; and with equal simplicity and grandeur, BACON called himself "the servant of posterity." MONTESQUIEU gave his _Esprit des Loix_ to be read by that man in France, whom he conceived to be the best judge, and in return received the most mortifying remarks.

The great philosopher exclaimed in despair, "I see my own age is not ripe enough to understand my work; however, it shall be published!" When KEPLER published the first rational work on comets, it was condemned, even by the learned, as a wild dream.

COPERNICUS so much dreaded the prejudice of mankind against his treatise on "The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," that, by a species of continence of all others most difficult to a philosopher, says Adam Smith, he detained it in his closet for thirty years together.