Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

with their arrows, and afterward, in great derision, carried about in their camp, as it had been in procession, with drums playing before it, railing and spitting at it, and calling it the God of the Christians, which I note not so much done in contempt of the image, as in despite of Christ and the Christian religion.

ARTHUR WILSON was born at Yarmouth, Norfolk, of a genteel family, in 1596. In the fourteenth year of his age he was sent to France to pursue his studies, and after having remained in that country two years he returned to England, and was placed with Sir Henry Spiller, as one of his clerks in the Exchequer office. In Sir Henry's family he remained for some time, but was at length dismissed thence for having written some satirical verses on one of the maid-servants. After his dismissal he devoted a year to reading and poetry, and then, in 1613, entered, as secretary, into the service of Robert, Earl of Essex, whom he attended in various missions upon the continent for many years. Having, through some misunderstanding with the Earl's lady, been dismissed from his services also, he retired, in 1631, to Oxford, and became gentleman commoner of Trinity College, where he remained nearly two years, during which he was scrupulously observant of the orders of the university. He next became steward to the Earl of Warwick, in whose service he died in the month of October, 1652. Wilson's only literary performance of importance is, The Life and Reign of James the First, which he left in manuscript, and which was published in 1653, the year after the author's death. He also left, in manuscript, a comedy of some merit, entitled The Inconstant Lady.

RICHARD BAKER, with whom we shall conclude our survey of the historical writers of this period, was born at Sissingherst, Kent, in 1568. When in the seventeenth year of his age he entered Hart-hall College, Oxford, and at the end of three years, left the university, went to London, and entered the Inns of Court to study law. He was, however, a man of too considerable quality to follow a profession, and he therefore relinquished his studies in order to travel upon the continent for the improvement of his education. In 1594, he was created master of arts at Oxford, and in the first year of the reign of James the First, was knighted. He married the laughter of Sir George Manwaring of Ightfield, in Shropshire; and having imprudently become security for some of that family's debts, his property, though very considerable, was stripped from him, and to satisfy the balance of the obligation, he was thrown into Fleet prison, where, after lingering for several years, he finally died, on the eighteenth of February, 1645.

While in prison, Sir Richard Baker wrote Meditations and Disquisitions on portions of Scripture, translated Balzac's Letters and Malvezzi's Discour ses on Tacitus, and composed two pieces in defence of the theatre. His principal work, however, is A Chronicle of the Kings of England, from the time of the Romans' Government unto the Death of King James. This work, which appeared in 1641, the author complacently declares to be 'collected with so great care and diligence, that if all other chronicles were lost,

this only would be sufficient to inform posterity of all passages memorable or worthy to be known.' Notwithstanding such high pretensions, the 'Chronicle,' in matter, must be regarded as an injudicious performance, and not worthy of much reliance. The style, however, is very superior, and is described in a letter written to him by his former college friend, Sir Henry Wotton, as full of sweet raptures and of researching conceits; nothing borrowed, nothing vulgar, and yet all flowing from you, I know not how, with a certain equal facility.'

With Hobbes the metaphysician, and Lord Herbert, our present remarks will close.

THOMAS HOBBES was the son of a clergyman, and was born at Malmersbury, in Wiltshire, on the fifth of April, 1588. His mother's alarm at the approach of the Spanish Armada, which was then near the coast, is said to have hastened his birth, and was probably the cause of a constitutional timidity with which he was affected through life. Having made considerable progress in the learned languages at school, he entered, in 1603, Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he spent, in diligent application, five years; and at the expiration of that time he became private tutor to the son of William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire. In 1610, Hobbes attended Lord Cavendish in his travels through France, Italy, and Germany, and after their return to England he continued to reside with him as his secretary. It was during his residence with the Earl of Devonshire, that he became intimate with Lord Bacon, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Ben Jonson. His patron and his pupil both dying, the former, in 1626, and the latter two years after, Hobbes again visited Paris, but in 1631, he undertook to superintend the education of the young Earl of Devonshire, with whom he set off, three years after, on a tour through France, Italy, and Savoy. At Pisa he became intimate with Galileo, the astronomer, and elsewhere held communication with other celebrated characters.

After his return to England in 1637, Hobbes resided in the Earl's family at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire. He now designed to devote himself to study, but he was soon interrupted by the political contentions of the times. Being a zealous royalist, he found it necessary, in 1640, to retire to Paris, where he lived on terms of intimacy with Decartes, and other learned men, whom the patronage of Cardinal de Richelieu had, at that time, drawn together. While at Paris, he engaged in a controversy about the quadrature of the circle, and in 1647, he was appointed mathematical instructor to Charles, Prince of Wales, who then resided in the French capital.

Previously to this time Hobbes had commenced the publication of those works which he sent forth in succession, with the view of curbing the spirit of freedom in England, by showing the philosophical foundation of despotic monarchy. The first of them was originally printed in Latin at Paris, in

1642, under the title of Elementa Philosophica de Cive; which when afterward translated into English was entitled Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society. This treatise is regarded as containing the most exact account of the author's political system. With many profound views, it is disfigured by fundamental and dangerous errors. The principles maintained in it were more fully discussed in his larger work, published in 1651, under the title of Leviathan: or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. Man is here represented as a selfish and ferocious animal, requiring the strong hand of despotism to keep him in check; and all notions of right and wrong are made to depend upon views of self-interest alone. Of this latter doctrine, commonly known as the Selfish System of moral philosophy, Hobbes was, indeed, the great champion, both in the 'Leviathan' and more particularly in his small Treatise on Human Nature, published in 1650.

In the same year another work from his pen appeared, entitled De Corpore Politico; or Of the Body Politic. The freedom with which theological subjects were handled in the 'Leviathan,' as well as the offensive political views there maintained, occasioned great outcry against the author, particularly among the clergy. This led Charles to dissolve his connection with the philosopher, who, according to Lord Clarendon, 'was compelled secretly to fly out of Paris, the justice having endeavoured to apprehend him, and soon after escaped into England, where he never received any disturbance.' He again took up his abode with the Devonshire family, and became intimate with Seldon, Cowley, and Dr. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. In 1654, he published a short but admirably clear and comprehensive Letter upon Liberty and Necessity; where the doctrine of the self-determining power of the will is opposed with a subtlety and profundity unsurpassed in any subsequent writer on that much agitated question. Indeed, he appears to have been the first who understood and expounded clearly the doctrine of philosophical necessity. On this subject, a long controversy between him and Bishop Bramhall of Londonderry took place. Here he fought with the skill of a master; but in a mathematical dispute with Dr. Wallis, professor of geometry at Oxford, which lasted twenty years, he fairly went beyond his depth, and obtained no increase of reputation. The fact is, that Hobbes did not begin to study mathematics until the age of forty, and, like most late learners, greatly overrated his knowledge. When Charles the Second came to the throne, he conferred upon Hobbes an annual pension of one hundred pounds; but, notwithstanding this and other marks of royal favor, much odium continued to rest both upon him and upon his doctrines. The 'Leviathan' and 'De Cive' were censured in Parliament in 1666, and also drew forth many printed replies.

In 1674, Hobbes entered a new field of literature, and published a metrical version of four books of Homer's Odyssey, which was so well received, that in 1675, when he was eighty-seven years of age, he sent forth a translation of the remainder of that poem, and also the whole of the Iliad. These

translations, though very defective, became, nevertheless, so popular, that three large editions of them were required in less than ten years. As a translator in prose he was more successful than in poetry; and his version of the Greek historian Thucydides, one of his early literary performances, is still regarded as one of the best translations of that author ever produced in the English language. Hobbes passed the last five or six years of his life at Chatsworth, and continued to write till his death. His last performance was Behemoth, or a History of the Civil Wars from 1640 to 1660. His death occurred on the 4th of December, 1679, in the ninety-second year of his age.

In his latter years, Hobbes's growing infirmities and habits of solitude rendered him morose and impatient of contradiction. He was never much inclined to read, and was, consequently, familiar with few books. Homer, Virgil, Thucydides and Euclid, were his favorite authors; and he used to say, that if he had read as much as other men, he should have been as ignorant as they. In consequence of the timidity of his disposition, he was continually apprehensive about his personal safety, insomuch that he could not endure to be left alone in a house. From the same motive, probably, it was that, notwithstanding his notorious heterodoxy, he maintained an external adherence to the established church. Though he has often been stigmatized as an atheist, yet the following passages, particularly the first, would seem to indicate that the charge is groundless :—

GOD.

Forasmuch as God Almighty is incomprehensible, it followeth that we can have no conception or image of the Deity; and, consequently, all his attributes signify our inability and defect of power to conceive any thing concerning his nature, and not any conception of the same, except only this, That there is a God. For the effects, we acknowledge naturally, do include a power of their producing, before they were produced; and that power presupposeth something existent that hath such power: and the thing so existing with power to produce, if it were not eternal must needs have been produced by somewhat before it, and that, again, by something else before that, till we come to an eternal (that is to say, the first) Power of all Powers, and first Cause of all Causes: and this is it which all men conceive by the name of GOD, implying eternity, incomprehensibility, and omnipotency. And thus all that will consider may know that God is, though not what he is even a man that is born blind, though it be not possible for him to have any imagination what kind of thing fire is, yet he can not but know that something there is that men call fire, because it warmeth him.

PITY AND INDIGNATION.

Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity. But when it lighteth on such as we think have not deserved the same, the compassion is greater, because then there appeareth more probability that the same may happen to us; for the evil that happeneth to an innocent man may happen to every man. But when we see a man suffer for great crimes, which we can not easily think will fall upon ourselves, the pity is the less. And, therefore, men are apt to pity those whom they love; for whom they love they think worthy of good, and therefore not worthy of calamity. Thence it is

also, that men pity the vices of some persons at the sight only, out of love to their aspect. The contrary of pity is hardness of heart, proceeding either from slowness of imagination, or some extreme great opinion of their own exemption from the like calamity, or from hatred of all or most men.

Indignation is that grief which consisteth in the conception of good success happening to them whom they think unworthy thereof. Seeing, therefore, men think all those unworthy whom they hate, they think them not only unworthy of the good fortune they have, but also of their own virtues. And of all the passions of the mind, these two, indignation and pity, are the most raised and increased by eloquence; for the aggravation of the calamity, and extenuation of the fault, augmenteth pity; and the extenuation of the worth of the person, together with the magnifying of his success, which are the parts of an orator, are able to turn these two passions into fury.

LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE.

Forasmuch as all knowledge beginneth from experience, therefore also new experience is the beginning of new knowledge, and the increase of experience the beginning of the increase of knowledge. Whatsoever, therefore, happeneth new to man, giveth him matter of hope of knowing somewhat that he knew not before. And this hope and expectation of future knowledge from any thing that happeneth new and strange is that passion which we commonly call admiration; and the same considered as appetite, is called curiosity, which is appetite of knowledge. As in the discerning of faculties, man leaveth all community with beasts at the faculty of imposing names, so also doth he surmount their nature at this passion of curiosity. For when a beast seeth any thing new and strange to him, he considereth it so far only as to discern whether it be likely to serve his turn or hurt him and accordingly approacheth nearer to it, or fleeth from it: whereas man, who in most events remembereth in what manner they were caused and begun, looketh for the cause and beginning of every thing that ariseth new unto him. And from this passion of admiration and curiosity, have arisen not only the invention of names, but also suppositions of such causes of all things as they thought might produce them. And from this beginning is derived all philosophy, as astronomy from the admiration of the course of heaven; natural philosophy from the strange effects of the elements and other bodies. And from the degrees of curiosity proceed also the degrees of knowledge amongst men; for, to a man in the chase of riches or authority (which in respect of knowledge are but sensuality), it is a diversity of little pleasure, whether it be the motion of the sun or the earth that maketh the day; or to enter into other contemplations of any strange accident, otherwise than whether it conduce or not to the end he pursueth. Because curiosity is delight, therefore also novelty is so; but especially that novelty from which a man conceiveth an opinion, true or false, of bettering his own estate; for, in such case, they stand affected with the hope that all gamesters have while the cards are shuffling.

'The style of Hobbes,' says Sir James Mackintosh, 'is the very perfection of didactic writing. Short, clear, precise, pithy, his language never has more than one meaning, which never requires a second thought to find. By the help of his exact method, it takes so firm hold on the mind, that it will not allow attention to slacken. His little tract on 'Human Nature' has scarcely an ambiguous or needless word. He has so great a power of always choosing the most significant term, that he never is reduced to the poor expedient of using many in its stead. He had so thoroughly studied the genius of the language, and knew so well to steer between pedantry and

« AnteriorContinuar »