It may seem absurd in a man to print a book, and yet to wish not only to keep it private, but also to prevent it from _circulating_ privately. But after considering the matter carefully, with reference to what I may call the interest of the subject--I mean to the chance of making a successful and durable impression upon the popular opinion--I am satisfied that it would not be judicious to present the question to the public _first_ in this form. It would probably provoke controversy. The result of the controversy would depend upon reviewers. Reviewers, until they have heard the evidence as well as the argument, are not in a condition to judge; yet unless the evidence be made easily accessible and bound up with the argument, they cannot be expected either to seek it out or to suspend their opinions, but will simply proceed to judgment _without_ hearing it. In such a case, considering the strength of popular prepossessions and the tendency of the first blow at them to raise a dust of popular objections, the verdict would in the first instance go against me; and though I might appeal with a better chance to the second thoughts and the next generation, yet the appeal would be conducted at great disadvantage, because I should then stand in the position of an advocate with a personal interest in the cause. As it is, I hope in my division of Bacon's works to set forth _all_ the evidence clearly and impartially, so that everybody who has the book will have the means of judging for himself, and if I can get that credit for justice and impartiality which I mean to deserve, I do not much doubt the issue. But the first reception of the work, upon which in these times so much depends, will itself depend very much upon my coming before the public with a clear and unsuspected character: and this, if I should previously acquire the reputation (justly or not) of an advocate engaged to make good his own cause, I could not expect. FitzGerald, writing to Donne at the end of 1848, says of _Evenings with a Reviewer_: I saw many of my friends in London, Carlyle and Tennyson among them; but most and best of all, Spedding. I have stolen his noble book away from him; noble, in spite (I believe, but am not sure) of some _adikology_ in the second volume: some special pleadings for his idol: amica Veritas, sed magis, etc. And Donne in reply: I, too, have Spedding's "glorious book," which I prefer to any modern reading. Reading one of his "Evenings" is next to spending an evening with the author. Thompson, whose health had completely broken down in 1849, was undergoing the water-cure at Great Malvern, and early in 1850 Spedding writes to him: