Brief Lives, Vol. 1

Nicholas Hill (1570?-1610).

[1196]Mr. Nicholas Hill:—This Nicholas Hill was one of the most learned men of his time: a great mathematician and philosopher and traveller, and a poet[1197]. His writings had the usuall fate of those not printed in the author's life-time. He was so eminent for knowledge, that he was the favourite of ...[LXXXVIII.] the great earle of Oxford, who had him to accompanie him in his travells (he was his steward), which were so splendid and sumptuous, that he kept at Florence a greater court then the Great Duke. This earle spent in that ... of travelling, the inheritance of ten or twelve thousand pounds per annum.

Old Serjeant Hoskins (the poet, grandfather to this Sir John Hoskins, baronet, my hon^d friend) knew him (was[1198] well acquainted with him), by which meanes I have this tradicion which otherwise had been lost; as also his very name, but only for these verses[FE] in Ben Johnson's 2d volumine, viz.:—

I fancy that his picture, i.e. head, is at the end of the Long Gallery of Pictures at Wilton[LXXXIX.], which is the most philosophicall aspect that I have seen, very much of Mr. T. Hobbes of Malmesbury, but rather more antique. 'Tis pitty that in noblemen's galleries, the names are not writt on, or behind, the pictures.

He writt 'Philosophia Epicureo-Democritiana, simpliciter proposita, non edocta': printed at Colen, in 8vo or 12mo: Sir John Hoskins hath it.

Thomas Henshawe, of Kensington, esq., R. Soc. Soc., hath a treatise of his in manuscript, which he will not print, viz. 'Of the Essence of God, &c. Light.' It is mighty paradoxicall:—That there is a God; What he is, in 10 or 12 articles: Of the Immortality of the Soule, which he does demonstrate παντουσία and ὀντουσία.

[Fabian Philips, the cursiter, remembers him[1199].]

He was, as appeares by A. Wood's Historie, of St. John's Colledge in Oxford, where he mentions him to be a great Lullianist.

In his travells with his lord, (I forget whither Italy or Germany, but I thinke the former) a poor man begged him to give him a penny. 'A penny!' said Mr. Hill, 'what dost say to ten pound?' 'Ah! ten pound!' (said the beggar) 'that would make a man happy.' N. Hill gave him immediately 10 li. and putt it downe upon account,—'Item, to a beggar ten pounds, to make him happy.'

[1200]He printed 'Philosophia Epicurea Democritiana,' dedicated 'filiolo Laurentio.'—There was one Laurence Hill that did belong to the queen's court, that was hangd with[1201] Green and Berry about Sir Edmund-Berry Godfrey. According to age, it might be this man, but we cannot be certain.

[1202]Mr. Thomas Henshaw bought of Nicholas Hill's widow, in Bow lane, some of his bookes; among which is a manuscript de infinitate et aeternitate mundi. He finds by his writings that he was (or leaning) a Roman Catholique. Mr. Henshaw believes he dyed about 1610: he dyed an old man. He flourished in queen Elizabeth's time. I will search the register of Bowe.

[1203]I have searched the register of Bow, ubi non inventus Nicolas Hill.

[1204]Vide tom. 1 of Ben: Johnson's workes, pag. 48, epigram CXXXIV, title 'The famous voyage'....