Galileo and Bacon by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Galileo was a great genius, and so was Newton; but it would take two or / three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler.[1] It is in the order of / Providence, that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind -- the Kepler -- / should come first; and then that the patient and collective mind -- the / Newton -- should follow, and elaborate the pregnant queries and illumining / guesses of the former. The laws of the planetary system are, in fact, due / to Kepler. There is not a more glorious achievement of scientific genius / upon record, than Kepler's guesses, prophecies, and ultimate apprehension / of the law[2] of the mean distances of the planets as connected with the / periods of their revolutions round the sun. Gravitation, too, he had fully / conceived; but, because it seemed inconsistent with some received / observations on light, he gave it up, in allegiance, as he says, to Nature. / Yet the idea vexed and haunted his mind; _"Vexat me et lacessit,"_ are his / words, I believe.

We praise Newton's clearness and steadiness. He was clear and steady, no / doubt, whilst working out, by the help of an admirable geometry, the idea / brought forth by another. Newton had his ether, and could not rest in -- he / could not conceive -- the idea of a law. He thought it a physical thing after / all. As for his chronology, I believe, those who are most competent to / judge, rely on it less and less every day. His lucubrations on Daniel and / the Revelations seem to me little less than mere raving.