his _new learning_ among the
most eminent scholars, to whom he submitted his early discoveries. A
very copious letter by Sir Thomas Bodley on Bacon's desiring him to
return the manuscript of the _Cogitata et Visa_, some portion of the
_Novum Organum_, has come down to us; it is replete with objections to
the new philosophy. "I am one of that crew," says Sir Thomas, "that say
we possess a far greater holdfast of certainty in the sciences than you
will seem to acknowledge." He gives a hint too that Solomon complained
"of the infinite making of books in his time;" that all Bacon delivers
is only "by averment without other force of argument, to disclaim all
our axioms, maxims, &c., left by tradition from our elders unto us,
which have passed all probations of the sharpest wits that ever were;"
and he concludes that the end of all Bacon's philosophy, by "a fresh
creating new principles of sciences, would be to be dispossessed of the
learning we have;" and he fears that it would require as many ages as
have marched before us that knowledge should be perfectly achieved.
Bodley truly compares himself to "the carrier's horse which cannot
blanch the beaten way in which I was trained."[225]

Bacon did not lose heart by the timidity of the "carrier's horse:" a
smart vivacious note in return shows his quick apprehension.

"As I am going to my house in the country, I shall want my papers, which
I beg you therefore to return. You are slothful, and you help me
nothing, so that I am half in conceit you affect not the argument; for
myself I know well you love and affect. I can say no more, but _non
canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvae_. If you be not _of the lodgings
chalked up_, whereof I speak in my preface, I am but to pass by your
door. But if I had you a fortnight at Gorhambury, I would make you tell
another tale; or else I would add a cogitation _against libraries_, and
be revenged on you that way."

A keen but playful retort of a great author too conscious of his own
views to be angry with his critic! The singular phrase of the _lodgings
chalked up_ is a sarcasm explained by this passage in "The Advancement
of Learning." "As Alexander Borgia was wont to say of the expedition of
the French for Naples, that they came with chalk in their hands to mark
up their lodgings, and not with weapons to fight; so I like better that
entry of truth that cometh peaceably with chalk to mark up those minds
which are capable to lodge and harbou