The man of erudition in closing his elaborate work is still exposed to the fatal omissions of wearied vigilance, or the accidental knowledge of some inferior mind, and always to the reigning taste, whatever it chance to be, of the public.  Burnet criticised VARILLAS unsparingly;[A] but when he wrote history himself, Harmer’s “Specimen of Errors in Burnet’s History,” returned Burnet the pangs which he had inflicted on another.  NEWTON’S favourite work was his “Chronology,” which he had written over fifteen times, yet he desisted from its publication during his life-time, from the ill-usage of which he complained.  Even the “Optics” of Newton had no character at home till noticed in France.  The calm temper of our great philosopher was of so fearful a nature in regard to criticism, that Whiston declares that he would not publish his attack on the “Chronology,” lest it might have killed our philosopher; and thus Bishop STILLINGFLEET’S end was hastened by LOCKE’s confutation of his metaphysics.  The feelings of Sir JOHN MARSHAM could hardly be less irritable when he found his great work tainted by an accusation that it was not friendly to revelation.[B] When the learned POCOCK published a specimen of his translation of Abulpharagias, an Arabian historian, in 1649, it excited great interest; but in 1663, when he gave the world the complete version, it met with no encouragement:  in the course of those thirteen years, the genius of the times had changed, and Oriental studies were no longer in request.

[Footnote A:  For an account of this work, and Burnet’s expose of it, see “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i. p. 132.—­ED.]

[Footnote B:  This great work the Canon Chronicus, was published in 1672, and was the first attempt to make the Egyptian chronology clear and intelligible, and to reconcile the whole to the Scripture chronology; a labour he had commenced in Diatriba Chronologica, published in 1649.  —­ED.]

The great VERULAM profoundly felt the retardment of his fame; for he has pathetically expressed this sentiment in his testament, where he bequeaths his name to posterity, AFTER SOME GENERATIONS SHALL BE past.  BRUCE sunk into his grave defrauded of that just fame which his pride and vivacity perhaps too keenly prized, at least for his happiness, and which he authoritatively exacted from an unwilling public.  Mortified and indignant at the reception of his great labour by the cold-hearted scepticism of little minds, and the maliciousness of idling wits, he, whose fortitude had toiled through a life of difficulty and danger, could not endure the laugh and scorn of public opinion; for BRUCE there was a simoon more dreadful than the Arabian, and from which genius cannot hide its head.  Yet BRUCE only met with the fate which MARCO POLO had before encountered; whose faithful narrative had been contemned by his contemporaries, and who was long thrown aside among legendary writers.[A]