that is, the Roman Catholic Church, the consequence of his birth and bad education, which left him without any knowledge on the subject except what he had acquired from Protestant books of controversy; but that may be passed over. Sorbiere's account of his journey, when it was published, gave much offence in England, and drew forth an elaborate criticism, under the title of Observations, &c., written to Dr. Wren, Professor of Astronomy in Oxford [afterwards Sir Christopher], by Thomas Sprat, Fellow of the Royal Society' [afterwards Bishop of Rochester, and the writer of the History of the Society]. After some other remarks on what is said of Hobbes, Sprat affirms that Sorbiere evidently did not understand his friend's philosophy. Of this he gives as an unanswerable testimony the resemblance that he finds between Hobbes and Bacon, “between whom," says Sprat, "there is no more likeness than there was between St. George and the waggoner." "I scarce know two men in the world," he goes on, "that have more different colours of speech than these two great wits: the Lord Bacon short, allusive, and abounding with metaphors; Mr. Hobbes round, close, sparing of similitudes, but ever extraordinary decent in them. The one's way of reasoning proceeds on particular and pleasant images, only suggesting new ways of experimenting, without any pretence to the mathematics. The other's bold, resolved, settled upon general conclusions, and in them, if we will believe his friend, dogmatical."

A very interesting account of Hobbes's habits of life has been given by Bishop Kennet in his Memoirs of the Family of Cavendish,' though it is evidently coloured in some parts by the writer's clerical antipathies or prejudices. According to a tradition in the family, Kennet informs us, "his professed rule of health was to dedicate the morning to his exercise and the afternoon to his studies. And therefore at his first rising he walked out, and climbed any hill within his reach; or, if the weather was not dry, he fatigued himself within doors by some exercise or other, to be in a sweat, recommending that practice upon this opinion, that an old man had more

moisture than heat, and therefore by such motion heat was to be acquired and moisture expelled. After this he took a comfortable breakfast, and then went round the lodgings to wait upon the earl, the countess, and the children, and any considerable strangers, paying some short addresses to all of them. He kept these rounds till about twelve o'clock, when he had a little dinner provided for him, which he ate always by himself without ceremony. Soon after dinner he retired to his study, and had his candle, with ten or twelve pipes of tobacco, laid by him; then, shutting the door, he fell to smoking, thinking, and writing for several hours." Aubrey says, "He rose about seven, had his breakfast of bread and butter, and took his walk, meditating till ten; then he did put down the minutes of his thoughts. His dinner was provided for him exactly by eleven, for he could not stay till his lord's hour, scilicet about two. After dinner he took a pipe of tobacco, and then threw himself immediately on his bed, with his band off, and slept about half an hour; in the afternoon he penned his morning thoughts." "Towards the end of his life," Kennet adds, "he had very few books, and those he read but very little, thinking he was now able only to digest what formerly he had fed upon." A somewhat different account is given by others, who tell us that he never was a great reader or was surrounded by many books at any time of his life, and that he was wont to say that if he read as much as the generality of literary men, he should be as ignorant as they were. His favourite authors are said to have been Homer, Virgil, Thucydides, and Euclid. "He had very few books," says Aubrey: "I never saw above half a dozen about him in his chamber. Homer and Virgil were commonly on his table; sometimes Xenophon, or some probable history, Greek Testament, or So. "If company came to visit him," Kennet goes on, "he would be free in discourse till he was pressed or contradicted, and then he had the infirmities of being short and peevish, and referring to his writings for better satisfaction." Nearly the same thing is stated in the Latin prose sketch of his life, which is believed to have

been drawn up by Hobbes himself. "His friends," Kennet says, ""who had the liberty of introducing strangers to him, made these terms with them before their admission, that they should not dispute with the old man, nor contradict him.” "He could not," it is afterwards asserted, "bear any discourse of death, and seemed to cast off all thoughts of it: he delighted to reckon upon longer life. The winter before he died he made a warm coat, which he said must last him three years, and then he would have such another. In his last sickness his frequent questions were whether his disease was curable; and when intimations were given that he might have ease, but no remedy, he used this expression, I shall be glad, then, to find a hole to creep out of the world at,' which are reported to have been his last sensible words; and his lying some days following in a silent stupefaction did seem owing to his mind more than to his body. The only thought of death that he appeared to entertain in time of health was to take care of some inscription on his grave. He would suffer some friends to dictate an epitaph, among which he was best pleased with this humour:-This is the true PHILOSOPHER'S STONE."

We have mentioned nearly all Hobbes's works, except his Ecclesiastical History in Latin elegiac verseHistoria Ecclesiactisa, Carmine Elegiaco concinnata 'which was printed at London (Augusta Trinobantum) in May, 1668; with an anonymous commendatory preface, stated by Aubrey to be written by Mr. Thomas Rymer, of Gray's Inn (the compiler of the Foedera). It extends to 2242 lines. Its principal design is to expose the encroachments of the clerical power. Aubrey says that it was written immediately before the Restoration, at Little Salisbury House, where Hobbes then lived with the Earl of Devonshire. "He did read," we are told," Cluverius's Historia Universalis, and made up his poem from thence. His place of meditation was then in the portico in the garden.'

Hobbes, after having made more noise than any other English writer in his own day, and for some time after

his death, filling, it may be said, the whole of the latter half of the seventeenth century with alarm and contention, had fallen into general neglect, and remained to most readers only a mighty and somewhat mysterious name, till attention has been recalled to the extraordinary merits of his writings within the last few years. The public is greatly indebted to Sir William Molesworth for the first complete edition of the works of the Philosopher of Malmesbury, in 16 volumes 8vo., London, 1839-1845. Such a publication could not have been completed except at great pecuniary cost; and it affords an example of munificence and love of letters calling both for the imitation of other men of fortune and for the applause of all men.

THE materials for a life of Samuel Butler are very scanty, and in this respect he resembles Shakspere, and not in this respect only. Like him, in his particular line he excelled, not only all his contemporaries, but the whole world. Like him he occupied a conspicuous position in the public eye; but no one has thought it necessary to leave any record of his whereabout. Like him he has left no traces of the events of his life, of his private feelings, affections, or resentments, scattered in his works, the best memorials of many writers; though in both cases misplaced ingenuity has endeavoured to discover portraits of individuals where a class only has been intended, and the Justice Shallow of the one, and the Justice Hudibras of the other, have been tortured into fancied pasquinades dictated by a feeling of revenge. In both cases the ingenuity has been employed to lower identity to mere reality; to reduce the efforts of genius to that of the copyist; to narrow keen-sighted general observation of