Fact well agreed on, it is not likely, that several Hypotheses should so
far differ, as that one should make the Water _then_ and _there_ at the
Highest, _where_ and _when_ the other makes it at the Lowest; as when the
Moon is Vertical to the place. {266}

And what I say of _Galilaeo_, I must in like manner desire to be understood
of what I am now ready to say to you. For I do not profess to be so well
skilled in the History of Tides, as that I will undertake presently to
accommodate my _general Hypothesis_ to the _particular cases_; or that I
will indeed undertake for the certainty of it, but onely as an _Essay_
propose it to further consideration; to stand or fall, as it shall be found
to answer matter of Fact. And truly had not your importunity (which is to
me a great Command) required me to do it, I should not so easily have drawn
up any thing about it, till I had first satisfied my selfe, how well the
Hypothesis would answer Observation: Having for divers years neglected to
do it, waiting a time when I might be at leisure throughly to prosecute
this design.

But there be two reasons, by which you have prevailed with me, at least to
do something. _First_, because it is the common Fate of the _English_, that
out of a modesty, they forbear to publish their Discoveries, till
prosecuted to some good degree of certainty and perfection; yet are not so
wary, but that they discourse of them freely enough to one another, and
even to Strangers upon occasion; whereby others, who are more hasty and
venturous, comming to hear of the notion, presently publish something of
it, and would be reputed thereupon, to be the first Inventers thereof:
though even that little, which they can then say of it, be perhaps much
less, and more imperfect, than what the true Authors could have published
long before, and what they had really made known (publikely enough, though
not in print) to many others. As is well known amongst us as to the
business of the _Lymphatick Vessels_ in _Anatomy_; the _Injection of
Liquors into the veins of Living animals_; the _Exhibiting of a straight
line equal to a crooked_; the _spot in Jupiter_, whence his motion about
his own Axis may be demonstrated; and many other the like considerable
Inventions.

The _other_ Reason (which, with me, is more really of weight, though even
the former be not cotemptible) is, because, as I have been already for at
least three or four years last past diverted from prosecuting the