is asserted that "no one will be put upon his oath, except the man who, having no scruples about taking an oath, is also veracious enough to say so." But surely any one who fears to swear falsely-and as to those who do not, it cannot be matter of any regret that they should avoid taking an oath―any one who fears to commit perjury, would find his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth, if he should ever attempt to declare, openly and deliberately, his belief in the Divine authority of a rule, which he in his heart considers as the invention of over-scrupulous Quakers. That no danger of such evasions is to be apprehended, Lords Denman, Campbell, and Brougham have given their assurance. There is "no grave necessity" for the continuance of a law, which inflicts punishment on those who seek to adhere to their highest duty. W. R.

U. C.

ART. VII. THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HOBBES.

1. Thomæ Hobbes Angli Malmesburiensis Philosophi Vita, 1681. 2. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, of Malmsbury, now first collected and edited by Sir William Molesworth, Bart. London, 1839. (Incomplete.)

THE seventeenth century witnessed a mighty change in European philosophy. Men woke up in it, and examined for themselves. The fallacies that had obtained in courts and cloisters, were laid bare; the laborious triflings of the schoolmen were driven from the halls that had yielded them a home. Something was sought more tangible and true, than the subtle disquisitions upon which the learned, for centuries, had wasted their powers. Man became practical, and in earnest. Then were laid the true foundations of the science of metaphysics-a science, venerable with the names of illustrious professors, and enriched with the treasures of the first minds of their age. The speculations of ancient philosophy were chiefly, if not entirely, ethical in their nature: whilst, for us, with a clear revelation of Christianity, there is another field of inquiry opened wide and boundless as the mind of man. In the early stage of its progress, the ideal and the sensual schools of philosophy appeared; Descartes advocated the former, and Gassendi,

as might be expected, from his well-known Epicurean tendencies, the latter. O anima!' was the sportive style of address assumed by the chief of the materialists towards his opponent, who somewhat angrily addressed him as 'O caro!' names which, to use the language of Mr. Hallam," do not ill represent the spiritual and carnal philosophies; the school that produced Leibnitz, Kant, and Stewart, contrasted with that of Hobbes, Condillac, and Cabanis."-Lit. vol. 3.

Hobbes was the first English writer in the school of unmitigated materialism. The date of his birth, is 1588; the place, Malmsbury, a town in Wiltshire, memorable as the residence of the chief English historian of the twelfth century. The living was held by the father of Hobbes, of whom little is known. Mrs. Hobbes, we should imagine, was no heroine. Like her son, she seems to have possessed much of that better part of valour-discretion. The terror produced by the Spanish Armada, found its way into the quiet parsonage of Malmsbury, and caused the premature birth of him who was destined to occupy so conspicuous a place amongst the learned of his own and future times. Fear he drank in from his childhood; it became the ruling principle of his life; it is the key to his philosophy and his conduct. But of this anon; return we to the few incidents of his outward history ;— ;-like that of most men of speculation, rather than of action, it is a tale soon told.

Till the age of fourteen, he studied at the grammar-school of his native place, under Robert Latimer. There he made such progress in his classical studies, as to turn the Medea into elegant Latin verse. Thence he proceeded to Oxford, where he studied for five years the logic and the physics of Aristotle. With the son of William Cavendish, afterwards Earl of Devonshire, he travelled into France and Italy; and finding that the philosophy of Aristotle was not held in much esteem, he studied diligently, upon his return, the poets and historians of Greece and Rome. About this time, he gained the friendship of Francis Bacon, of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, of the dramatist, Ben Jonson; the first of whom he assisted by translating some of his works into Latin; the last assisted Hobbes in his translation of Thucydides, published in 1618, confessedly to warn his countrymen against the dangers of democracy. As a translation, the book is still in request.

We have now arrived at a resting-place in the life of Hobbes-the publication of his first work. He had now reached the maturity of his manhood, and was in the fulness of his power. Conscious that in his own bosom he bore the seeds of no common harvest, he went on in silence and loneliness, storing up that scheme of philosophy which was

soon to be the idol of many-the wonder of all. The storm was then brewing that shortly burst, and, eventually, swept the Stuart from his country and his crown. Men's hearts failed them for fear. Mobs

paraded the streets of London. Wonders were seen in heaven above, and on the earth beneath. Sir John Evelyn* tells us, how one night a bright cloud, in the shape of a sword, was visible. The fainthearted obtained their passports, and travelled along the vineyards of France, or beneath the blue sky of Italy; the brave looked to it that their steel was good, and their hands strong. A man, such as Hobbes, could have been no careless or indifferent spectator. He chose his part, and kept it to his dying day. He endeavoured to demonstrate, on philosophical principles, the utter impossibility of civil and religious liberty;-he sided with despotic power.

more.

In 1629, he travelled again into France, as tutor to a gentleman of the name of Clifton, his former patron being dead. There he began the study of mathematics, delighted with them as a means, but nothing A little while after, he accompanied the younger son of the Countess of Devonshire, in his travels through France and Italy. During his stay in Paris, he made himself master of such natural philosophy as was then taught. In 1637, we find him returned to England, soon, however, to leave it. He hastened from a land in which a plain country gentleman had spirit and patriotism enough, even then, to give a deadly check to the grasping pretensions of king-craft. That very year, John Hampden was warring it, single-handed, against the royalty of England, backed by the nobles and the clergy of the land. To Hobbes, the atmosphere of Paris was far more suitable than the bracing air that swept across the soil of Britain. He much preferred talking with Father Marsenne about the sensitive operations of animals, or with Gassendi, about the doctrines of Epicurus, to listening to the speeches of such men as Pym, Eliot, or Hampden. To stem the tide of liberty, he published, in 1642, his book De Cive;' and while his fellowcountrymen were freely shedding their hearts' best blood for all that they held dear, Hobbes was far away, teaching mathematics to the Prince of Wales, or aiding despotism, by employing his leisure hours in writing the Leviathan.

Upon its publication, in 1651, he sent a copy to Prince Charles, who first received it graciously; the clergy, however, objected to it, and Hobbes was obliged to leave Paris; consequently, he returned to England. The Earl of Devonshire opened his doors to his former

Vide, his Diary.

tutor, who lived with him the remainder of his life. At the Restoration, Charles remembered him. Hobbes hastened to London, and was allowed to kiss the hand of his sacred Majesty. The king deed his likeness to be taken, and hung up in the royal close; and cferred on him that substantial-and even to a philoso, her, by no meats umpleasant proof of regard—a pension. Hobbes retained his facules to the last, and d'ed of d age, Dec. 1679.

His works are far too many to enum rate. Besides those we have mentioned, and the De Corpore' (published after his domestication in the Earl of Devonshire's family), and the Behemoth' (not published till after his death), they were p.`c`pally controve.s ́al; and, with the exception of bis famous mathematical controversy with Seth Ward and Professor Wallace, in support of Liess contaired in the Leviathan. At the age of eighty-six, he began to pay court to the muses; though, if Pope is to be believed, with ill, or rather, no success. Dryden, however, took a somewhat more favourable view of his poetic He translated and published the ad and Odyssey, with some critical remarks of his own. His friends were numerous; besides the great names we have given, we may reckon Galileo, Cowley, Selden, Waller, Sir Kenelm Digby, the annotator on the eloq ent and poetic Brown, William Harvey, the celebrated discoverer of the circulation of the blood, the stately Clarendon, and the comic Butler. Cowley weut so far as to praise the philosopher, in an ode more remarkable for quaintness and conceit-the Attic salt of the Caroline writersthan for beauty of thought, or elegance of expression. Such lines as the following, are more creditable to Cowley's feelings as a friend, than to his skill as a poet:—

"Thou great Columbus of the golden land of new philosophies,

"Thy task much harder is than his;

"For thy learned America is

"Not only found out first by thee,

"But thy eloquence and thy wit

"Has planted, peopled, built, and civilized it."

We fancy we see some indications of what manner of man he was, in that engraving of King Charles's picture, commonly prefixed to his life. It is the face of the solitary thinker; of a man whose heart had never opened itself to the pure love of woman; a stranger to her bright words, and sanny influences. Latterly he grew so crabbed, so impatient of all difference of opinion, that his friends, when they introduced a stranger, first made him promise that he would say nothing to arouse the easily-excited anger of Hobbes. He was

After his early

temperate, in every thing but in the use of tobacco. dinner twelve was the bou, he would retire into his room with ten or twelve pes around him; and smoke, and we, and th'ak fo hours. Shakspere, ia the Winter's Tale, makes Autolycus sing "a quart of ale is a dish for a king;" a higher dignity than that of a crowned head, that of a losopher belonged to Hobbes, an bis royal luxury was a pipe. To, as to many a great mau s. ce, be fun of tobacco was "sweet as the breach of mo"," —as the odorous perfumes "of Araby the Bles," -as the balmy breezes of Liesium. H's fea fulness boru ed on the ridiculoas; gloss located. in everywhere. He was afraid to be al .e. He flowed the Earl of Devose from seat to seat. Though so il as to be obliged to rice in a bed aced for him in the carriage, yet he would go with the Ea from Chatsworth Har wicke, where he died. Lis fer dit more than this,—it not only proved that between the ignorant rustic and the proud philosopher, toere is more of a oneness of thought and conduct than men generally ak; but it did worse, it made him cringe and reirac, where a high- ined man would have held up his head, and gone right on. le dedicated his Leviatan to Francis Godol, hin, whom he had never seen, i hope to obtain the legacy his brother Sidney had left him. His enemies charged him with Atheism; whereupon he grew suddenly religious; took the Sacrament, went regularly to church, and appealed to that as a proof of his orthodoxy ;—though he always went out after the prayers were read, and when remonstrated with, merely replied, that he knew as much as the chaplain could teach him. In truth, his religion was not much unlike that of Johnson's friend Campbell-" Cam; bell is not "always rigidly careful of truth in his conversation,-Cam, bell is a good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in the inside "of a church for many years; but he never passes a church without "pulling off his hat. This shows that he as good princi, les." The parliament ordered his Leviathan to be burat. The clergy censured and refuted it. His doctrines everywhere became exposed to obloquy, and coward-like he came forward, and, regardless of reputation, of consistency and truth, he pleaded that whatever objectionable doctrines the Leviathan contained, were not bona fide his own, but were merely suppositions; though before he had endeavoured to shiell himself by asserting that since the abolition of the High Court of Coramission, there was no court that could legally take cognizance of heresy. To one thing alone he remained steadfast, through good and bad report,to suffer for no principle-to be a martyr for no cause. When the political horizon of his native land was dark with thunder-clouds, he