The extract given above from Kepler, is taken from an Essay, published with the later editions of the _Nuncius_, the object and spirit of which seem to have been greatly misunderstood, even by some of Kepler's intimate friends.--They considered it as a covert attack upon Galileo, and, accordingly, Maestlin thus writes to him:--"In your Essay (which I have just received) you have plucked Galileo's feathers well; I mean, that you have shown him not to be the inventor of the telescope, not to have been the first who observed the irregularities of the moon's surface, not to have been the first discoverer of more worlds than the ancients were acquainted with, &c. One source of exultation was still left him, from the apprehension of which Martin Horky has now entirely delivered me." It is difficult to discover in what part of Kepler's book Maestlin found all this, for it is one continued encomium upon Galileo; insomuch that Kepler almost apologizes in the preface for what may seem his intemperate admiration of his friend. "Some might wish I had spoken in more moderate terms in praise of Galileo, in consideration of the distinguished men who are opposed to his opinions, but I have written nothing fulsome or insincere. I praise him, for myself; I leave other men's judgments free; and shall be ready to join in condemnation when some one wiser than myself shall, by sound reasoning, point out his errors." However, Maestlin was not the only one who misunderstood Kepler's intentions: the Martin Horky of whom he speaks, a young German, also signalized himself by a vain attack upon the book which he thought his patron Kepler condemned. He was then travelling in Italy, whence he wrote to Kepler his first undetermined thoughts about the new discoveries. "They are wonderful; they are stupendous; whether they are true or false I cannot tell."[49] He seems soon to have decided that most reputation was to be gained on the side of Galileo's opponents, and his letters accordingly became filled with the most rancorous abuse of him. At the same time, that the reader may appreciate Horky's own character, we shall quote a short sentence at the end of one of his letters, where he writes of a paltry piece of dishonesty with as great glee as if he had solved an ingenious and scientific problem. After mentioning his meeting Galileo at Bologna, and being indulged with a trial of his telescope, which, he says, "does wonders upon the earth, but represents celestial objects falsely;"[50] he concludes with the following honourable sentence:--"I must confide to you a theft which I committed. I contrived to take a mould of the glass in wax, without the knowledge of any one, and, when I get home, I trust to make a telescope even better than Galileo's own."