There is a small poem, published in 1643, entitled “The Great Assizes holden in Parnassus,” in the manner of a later work, “The Sessions of the Poets,” in which all the Diurnals and Mercuries are arraigned and tried. An impartial satire on them all; and by its good sense and heavy versification, is so much in the manner of George Wither, that some have conjectured it to be that singular author’s. Its rarity gives it a kind of value. Of such verses as Wither’s, who has been of late extolled too highly, the chief merit is their sense and truth; which, if he were not tedious, might be an excellence in prose. Antiquaries, when they find a poet adapted for their purposes, conjecture that he is an excellent one. This prosing satirist, strange to say, in some pastoral poetry, has opened the right vein.
Aulicus is well characterized:—
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———————“hee, for wicked ends, |
Alluding to a ridiculous rumour, that the King was to receive foreign troops by a Danish fleet.
Col. Urrey, alias Hurrey, deserted the Parliament, and went over to the King; afterwards deserted the King, and discovered to the Parliament all he knew of the King’s forces.—See Clarendon.
This Sir William Brereton, or, as Clarendon writes the name, Bruerton, was the famous Cheshire knight, whom Cleveland characterizes as one of those heroes whose courage lies in their teeth. “Was Brereton,” says the loyal satirist, “to fight with his teeth, as he in all other things resembles the beast, he would have odds of any man at this weapon. He’s a terrible slaughterman at a Thanksgiving dinner. Had he been cannibal enough to have eaten those he vanquished, his gut would have made him valiant.” And in “Loyal Songs” his valiant appetite is noticed:
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“But, oh! take heed lest he do eat |
And Aulicus, we see, accuses him of concealing his bravery in a hayrick. It is always curious and useful to confer the writers of intemperate times one with another. Lord Clarendon, whose great mind was incapable of descending to scurrility, gives a very different character to this pot-valiant and hayrick runaway; for he says, “It cannot be denied but Sir William Brereton, and the other gentlemen of that party, albeit their educations and course of life had been very different from their present engagements, and for the most part very unpromising in matters of war, and therefore were too much contemned enemies, executed their commands with notable sobriety and indefatigable industry (virtues not so well practised in the King’s quarters), insomuch as the best soldiers who encountered with them had no cause to despise them.”—Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 147.
“The Scotch Dove” seems never to have recovered from this metamorphosis, but ever after, among the newsmen, was known to be only a Widgeon. His character is not very high in “The Great Assizes.”
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“The innocent Scotch Dove did then advance, |
The Scotch Dove desires to meet the classical Aulicus in the duel of the pen:—
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——————“to turn me loose, |
“The Scotch Dove” is condemned “to cross the seas, or to repasse the Tweede.” They all envy him his “easy mulet,” but he wofully exclaims at the hard sentence,
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“For if they knew that home as well as he, |
This stroke alludes to a rumour of the times, noticed also by Clarendon, that Pym died of the morbus pediculosus.
These divines were as ready with the sword as the pen; thus, we are told in “The Impartial Scout” for July, 1650—“The ministers are now as active in the military discipline as formerly they were in the gospel profession, Parson Ennis, Parson Brown, and about thirty other ministers having received commissions to be majors and captains, who now hold forth the Bible in one hand, and the sword in the other, telling the soldiery that they need not fear what man can do against them—that God is on their side—and that He hath prepared an engine in heaven to break and blast the designs of all covenant-breakers.”—Ed.
A forcible description of Locke may be found in the curious “Life of Wood,” written by himself. I shall give the passage where Wood acknowledges his after celebrity, at the very moment the bigotry of his feelings is attempting to degrade him.
Wood belonged to a club with Locke and others, for the purpose of hearing chemical lectures. “John Locke of Christchurch was afterwards a noted writer. This John Locke was a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented. The club wrote and took notes from the mouth of their master, who sat at the upper end of a table, but the said John Locke scorned to do it; so that while every man besides of the club were writing, he would be prating and troublesome.”
This anecdote deserves preservation. I have drawn it from the MSS. of Bishop Kennet.
“In the Epitaph on John Philips occurs this line on his metre, that
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‘Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus, Primoque pene par.’ |
These lines were ordered to be razed out of the monument by Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester. The word Miltono being, as he said, not fit to be in a Christian church; but they have since been restored by Dr. Atterbury, who succeeded him as Bishop of Rochester, and who wrote the epitaph jointly with Dr. Freind.”—Lansdowne MSS., No. 908, p. 162.
The anecdote has appeared, but without any authority. Dr. Symmons, in his “Life of Milton,” observing on what he calls Dr. Johnson’s “biographical libel on Milton,” that Dr. Johnson has mentioned this fact, seems to suspect its authenticity; for, if true, “it would cover the respectable name of Sprat with eternal dishonour.” Of its truth the above gives sufficient authority; but at all events the prejudices of Sprat must be pardoned, while I am showing that minds far greater than his have shared in the same unhappy feeling. Dr. Symmons himself bears no light stain for his slanderous criticism on the genius of Thomas Warton, from the motive we are discussing; though Warton, as my text shows, was too a sinner! I recollect in my youth a more extraordinary instance than any other which relates to Milton. A woman of no education, who had retired from the business of life, became a very extraordinary reader; accident had thrown into her way a large library composed of authors who wrote in the reigns of the two Charleses. She turned out one of the malignant party, and an abhorrer of the Commonwealth’s men. Her opinion of Cromwell and Milton may be given. She told me it was no wonder that the rebel who had been secretary to the usurper should have been able to have drawn so finished a character of Satan, and that the Pandæmonium, with all the oratorical devils, was only such as he had himself viewed at Oliver’s council-board.
I throw into this note several curious notices respecting Burnet, and chiefly from contemporaries.
Burnet has been accused, after a warm discussion, of returning home in a passion, and then writing the character of a person. But as his feelings were warm, it is probable he might have often practised the reverse. An anecdote of the times is preserved in “The Memoirs of Grub-street,” vol. ii. p. 291. “A noble peer now living declares he stood with a very ill grace in the history, till he had an opportunity put into his hands of obliging the bishop, by granting a favour at court, upon which the bishop told a friend, within an hour, that he was mistaken in such a lord, and must go and alter his whole character; and so he happens to have a pretty good one.” In this place I also find this curious extract from the MS. “Memoirs of the M—— of H——.” “Such a day Dr. B——t told me King William was an obstinate, conceited man, that would take no advice; and on this day King William told me that Dr. B——t was a troublesome, impertinent man, whose company he could not endure.” These anecdotes are very probable, and lead one to reflect. Some political tergiversation has been laid to his charge; Swift accused him of having once been an advocate for passive obedience and absolute power. He has been reproached with the deepest ingratitude, for the purpose of gratifying his darling passion of popularity, in his conduct respecting the Duke of Lauderdale, his former patron. If the following piece of secret history be true, he showed too much of a compliant humour, at the cost of his honour. I find it in Bishop Kennet’s MSS. “Dr. Burnet having over night given in some important depositions against the Earl of Lauderdale to the House of Commons, was, before morning, by the intercession of the D——, made king’s chaplain and preacher at the Rolls; so he was bribed to hold the peace.”—Lansdowne MSS., 990. This was quite a politician’s short way to preferment! An honest man cannot leap up the ascent, however he may try to climb. There was something morally wrong in this transaction, because Burnet notices it, and acknowledges—“I was much blamed for what I had done.” The story is by no means refuted by the naïve apology.
Burnet’s character has been vigorously attacked, with all the nerve of satire, in “Faction Displayed,” attributed to Shippen, whom Pope celebrates—
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——“And pour myself as plain |
Shippen was a Tory. In “Faction Displayed,” Burnet is represented with his Cabal (so some party nicknames the other), on the accession of Queen Anne, plotting the disturbance of her government. “Black Aris’s fierceness,” that is Burnet, is thus described:—
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“A Scotch, seditious, unbelieving priest, |
One hardly suspects the hermit Parnell capable of writing rather harsh verses, yet stinging satire; they are not in his works; but he wrote the following lines on a report of a fire breaking out in Burnet’s library, which had like to have answered the purpose some wished—of condemning the author and his works to the flames—
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“He talks, and writes, that Popery will return, |
Thomas Warton smiles at Burnet for the horrors of Popery which perpetually haunted him, in his “Life of Sir T. Pope,” p. 53. But if we substitute the term arbitrary power for popery, no Briton will join in the abuse Burnet has received on this account. A man of Burnet’s fervid temper, whose foible was strong vanity and a passion for popularity, would often rush headlong into improprieties of conduct and language; his enemies have taken ample advantage of his errors; but many virtues his friends have recorded; and the elaborate and spirited character which the Marquis of Halifax has drawn of Burnet may soothe his manes, and secure its repose amid all these disturbances around his tomb. This fine character is preserved in the “Biographia Britannica.” Burnet is not the only instance of the motives of a man being honourable, while his actions are frequently the reverse, from his impetuous nature. He has been reproached for a want of that truth which he solemnly protests he scrupulously adhered to; yet, of many circumstances which were at the time condemned as “lies,” when Time drew aside the mighty veil, Truth was discovered beneath. Tovey, with his visual good humour, in his “Anglia Judaica,” p. 277, notices “that pleasant copious imagination which will for ever rank our English Burnet with the Grecian Heliodorus.” Roger North, in his “Examen,” p. 413, calls him “a busy Scotch parson.” Lord Orford sneers at his hasty epithets, and the colloquial carelessness of his style, in his “Historic Doubts,” where, in a note, he mentions “one Burnet” tells a ridiculous story, mimicking Burnet’s chit-chat, and concludes surprisingly with, “So the Prince of Orange mounted the throne.”
After reading this note, how would that learned foreigner proceed, who I have supposed might be projecting the “Judgments of the Learned” on our English authors? Were he to condemn Burnet as an historian void of all honour and authority, he would not want for documents. It would require a few minutes to explain to the foreigner the nature of political criticism.
Dryden was very coarsely satirised in the political poems of his own day; and among the rest, in “The Session of the Poets,”—a general onslaught directed against the writers of the time, which furnishes us with many examples of unjust criticism on these literary men, entirely originating in political feeling. One example may suffice;
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“Then in came Denham, that limping old bard, |
Dr. Wagstaffe, in his “Character of Steele,” alludes to the rumour which Pope has sent down to posterity in a single verse: “I should have thought Mr. Steele might have the example of his friend before his eyes, who had the reputation of being the author of The Dispensary, till, by two or three unlucky after-claps, he proved himself incapable of writing it.”—Wagstaffe’s Misc. Works, p. 136.
I know not how to ascertain the degree of political skill which Steele reached in his new career—he was at least a spirited Whig, but the ministry was then under the malignant influence of the concealed adherents to the Stuarts, particularly of Bolingbroke, and such as Atterbury, whose secret history is now much better known than in their own day. The terrors of the Whigs were not unfounded. Steele in the House disappointed his friends; from his popular Essays, it was expected he would have been a fluent orator; this was no more the case with him than Addison. On this De Foe said he had better have continued the Spectator than the Tatler.—Lansdowne’s MSS. 1097.
Wagstaffe’s “Miscellaneous Works,” 1726, have been collected into a volume. They contain satirical pieces of humour, accompanied by some Hogarthian prints. His “Comment upon the History of Tom Thumb,” ridicules Addison’s on the old ballad of “Chevy Chase,” who had declared “it was full of the majestic simplicity which we admire in the greatest of the ancient poets,” and quoted passages which he paralleled with several in the Æneid. Wagstaffe tells us he has found “in the library of a schoolboy, among other undiscovered valuable authors, one more proper to adorn the shelves of Bodley or the Vatican than to be confined to the obscurity of a private study.” This little Homer is the chanter of Tom Thumb. He performs his office of “a true commentator,” proving the congenial spirit of the poet of Thumb with that of the poet of Æneas. Addison got himself ridiculed for that fine natural taste, which felt all the witchery of our ballad-Enniuses, whose beauties, had Virgil lived with Addison, he would have inlaid into his mosaic. The bigotry of classical taste, which is not always accompanied by a natural one, and rests securely on prescribed opinions and traditional excellence, long contemned our vernacular genius, spurning at the minstrelsy of the nation; Johnson’s ridicule of “Percy’s Reliques” had its hour, but the more poetical mind of Scott has brought us back to home feelings, to domestic manners, and eternal nature.
I shall content myself with referring to “The Character of Richard St—le, Esq.,” in Dr. Wagstaffe’s Miscellaneous Works, 1726. Considering that he had no personal knowledge of his victim, one may be well surprised at his entering so deeply into his private history; but of such a character as Steele, the private history is usually too public—a mass of scandal for the select curious. Poor Steele, we are told, was “arrested for the maintenance of his bastards, and afterwards printed a proposal that the public should take care of them;” got into the House “not to be arrested;”—“his set speeches there, which he designs to get extempore to speak in the House.” For his literary character we are told that “Steele was a jay who borrowed a feather from the peacock, another from the bullfinch, and another from the magpye; so that Dick is made up of borrowed colours; he borrowed his humour from Estcourt, criticism of Addison, his poetry of Pope, and his politics of Ridpath; so that his qualifications as a man of genius, like Mr. T——s, as a member of Parliament, lie in thirteen parishes.” Such are the pillows made up for genius to rest its head on!
Wagstaffe has sometimes delicate humour; Steele, who often wrote in haste, necessarily wrote incorrectly. Steele had this sentence: “And ALL, as one man, will join in a common indignation against ALL who would perplex our obedience:” on which our pleasant critic remarks—“Whatever contradiction there is, as some suppose, in all joining against all, our author has good authority for what he says; and it may be proved, in spite of Euclid or Sir Isaac, that everything consists of two alls, that these alls are capable of being divided and subdivided into as many alls as you please, and so ad infinitum. The following lines may serve for an illustration:—
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‘Three children sliding on the ice |
“Though this polite author does not directly say there are two alls, yet he implies as much; for I would ask any reasonable man what can be understood by the rest they ran away, but the other all we have been speaking of? The world may see that I can exhibit the beauties, as well as quarrel with the faults, of his composition, but I hope he will not value himself on his hasty productions.”
Poor Steele, with the best humour, bore these perpetual attacks, not, however, without an occasional groan, just enough to record his feelings. In one of his wild, yet well-meant projects, of the invention of “a Fish-pool, or Vessel for Importing Fish Alive,” 1718, he complains of calumnies and impertinent observations on him, and seems to lay some to the account of his knighthood:—“While he was pursuing what he believed might conduce to the common good, he gave the syllables Richard Steele to the publick, to be used and treated as they should think fit; he must go on in the same indifference, and allow the Town their usual liberty with his name, which I find they think they have much more room to sport with than formerly, as it is lengthened with the monosyllable Sir.”
The late Gilbert Wakefield is an instance where the political and theological opinions of a recluse student tainted his pure literary works. Condemned as an enraged Jacobin by those who were Unitarians in politics, and rejected because he was a Unitarian in religion by the orthodox, poor Wakefield’s literary labours were usually reduced to the value of waste-paper. We smile, but half in sorrow, in reading a letter, where he says, “I meditate a beginning, during the winter, of my criticisms on all the ancient Greek and Latin authors, by small piecemeals, on the cheapest possible paper, and at the least possible expense of printing. As I can never do more than barely indemnify myself, I shall print only 250 copies.” He half-ruined himself by his splendid edition of Lucretius, which could never obtain even common patronage from the opulent friends of classical literature. Since his death it has been reprinted, and is no doubt now a marketable article for the bookseller; so that if some authors are not successful for themselves, it is a comfort to think how useful, in a variety of shapes, they are made so to others. Even Gilbert’s “contracted scheme of publication” he was compelled to abandon! Yet the classic erudition of Wakefield was confessed, and is still remembered. No one will doubt that we have lost a valuable addition to our critical stores by this literary persecution, were it only in the present instance; but examples are too numerous!
Shaftesbury has thrown out, on this head, some important truths:—“If men are forbid to speak their minds seriously, they will do it ironically. If they find it dangerous to do so, they will then redouble their disguise, invoke themselves into mysteriousness, and talk so as hardly to be understood. The persecuting spirit has raised the bantering one. The higher the slavery, the more exquisite the buffoonery.”—Vol. i. p. 71. The subject of our present inquiry is a very remarkable instance of “involving himself into mysteriousness.” To this cause we owe the strong raillery of Marvell; the cloudy “Oracles of Reason” of Blount; and the formidable, though gross burlesque, of Hickeringill, the rector of All-Saints, in Colchester. “Of him (says the editor of his collected works, 1716), the greatest writers of our times trembled at his pen; and as great a genius as Sir Roger L’Estrange’s was, it submitted to his superior way of reasoning”—that is, to a most extraordinary burlesque spirit in politics and religion. But even he who made others tremble felt the terrors he inflicted; for he complains that “some who have thought his pen too sharp and smart, those who have been galled, sore men where the skin’s off, have long lain to catch for somewhat to accuse me—upon such touchy subjects, a man had need have the dexterity to split a hair, to handle them pertinently, usefully, and yet safely and warily.”—Such men, however, cannot avoid their fate: they will be persecuted, however they succeed in “splitting a hair;” and it is then they have recourse to the most absurd subterfuges, to which our Hobbes was compelled. Thus also it happened to Woolston, who wrote in a ludicrous way “Blasphemies” against the miracles of Christ; calling them “tales and rodomontados.” He rested his defence on this subterfuge, that “it was meant to place the Christian religion on a better footing,” &c. But the Court answered, that “if the author of a treasonable libel should write at the conclusion, God save the king! it would not excuse him.”
The moral axiom of Solon “Know thyself” (Nosce teipsum), applied by the ancient sage as a corrective for our own pride and vanity, Hobbes contracts into a narrow principle, when, in his introduction to “The Leviathan,” he would infer that, by this self-inspection, we are enabled to determine on the thoughts and passions of other men; and thus he would make the taste, the feelings, the experience of the individual decide for all mankind. This simple error has produced all the dogmas of cynicism; for the cynic is one whose insulated feelings, being all of the selfish kind, can imagine no other stirrer of even our best affections, and strains even our loftiest virtues into pitiful motives. Two noble authors, men of the most dignified feelings, have protested against this principle. Lord Shaftesbury keenly touches the characters of Hobbes and Rochester:—“Sudden courage, says our modern philosopher (Hobbes), is anger. If so, courage, considered as constant, and belonging to a character, must, in his account, be defined constant anger, or anger constantly recurring. All men, says a witty poet (Rochester), would be cowards, if they durst: that the poet and the philosopher both were cowards, may be yielded, perhaps, without dispute! they may have spoken the best of their knowledge.”—Shaftesbury, vol. i. p. 119.
With an heroic spirit, that virtuous statesman, Lord Clarendon, rejects the degrading notion of Hobbes. When he looked into his own breast, he found that courage was a real virtue, which had induced him, had it been necessary, to have shed his blood as a patriot. But death, in the judgment of Hobbes, was the most terrible event, and to be avoided by any means. Lord Clarendon draws a parallel between a “man of courage” and one of the disciples of Hobbes, “brought to die together, by a judgment they cannot avoid.” “How comes it to pass, that one of these undergoes death, with no other concernment than as if he were going any other journey; and the other with such confusion and trembling, that he is even without life before he dies; if it were true that all men fear alike upon the like occasion?”—Survey of the Leviathan, p. 14.
They were distinguished as Hobbists, and the opinions as Hobbianism. Their chief happened to be born on a Good Friday; and in the metrical history of his own life he seems to have considered it as a remarkable event. An atom had its weight in the scales by which his mighty egotism weighed itself. He thus marks the day of his birth, innocently enough:—
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“Natus erat noster Servator Homo-Deus annos |
But the Hobbists declared more openly (as Wood tells us), that “as our Saviour Christ went out of the world on that day to save the men of the world, so another saviour came into the world on that day to save them!”
That the sect spread abroad, as well as at home, is told us by Lord Clarendon, in the preface to his “Survey of the Leviathan.” The qualities of the author, as well as the book, were well adapted for proselytism; for Clarendon, who was intimately acquainted with him, notices his confidence in conversation—his never allowing himself to be contradicted—his bold inferences—the novelty of his expressions—and his probity, and a life free from scandal. “The humour and inclination of the time to all kind of paradoxes,” was indulged by a pleasant clear style, an appearance of order and method, hardy paradoxes, and accommodating principles to existing circumstances.
Who were the sect composed of? The monstrous court of Charles II.—the grossest materialists! The secret history of that court could scarcely find a Suetonius among us. But our author was frequently in the hands of those who could never have comprehended what they pretended to admire; this appears by a publication of the times, intituled, “Twelve Ingenious Characters, &c.” 1686, where, in that of a town-fop, who, “for genteel breeding, posts to town, by his mother’s indulgence, three or four wild companions, half-a-dozen bottles of Burgundy, two leaves of Leviathan,” and some few other obvious matters, shortly make this young philosopher nearly lose his moral and physical existence. “He will not confess himself an Atheist, yet he boasts aloud that he holds his gospel from the Apostle of Malmesbury, though it is more than probable he never read, at least understood, ten leaves of that unlucky author.” If such were his wretched disciples, Hobbes was indeed “an unlucky author,” for their morals and habits were quite opposite to those of their master. Eachard, in the preface to his Second Dialogue, 1673, exhibits a very Lucianic arrangement of his disciples—Hobbes’ “Pit, Box, and Gallery Friends.” The Pit-friends were sturdy practicants who, when they hear that “Ill-nature, Debauchery, and Irreligion were Mathematics and Demonstration, clap and shout, and swear by all that comes from Malmesbury.” The Gallery are “a sort of small, soft, little, pretty, fine gentlemen, who having some little wit, some little modesty, some little remain of conscience and country religion, could not hector it as the former, but quickly learnt to chirp and giggle when t’other clapt and shouted.” But “the Don-admirers, and Box-friends of Mr. Hobbes are men of gravity and reputation, who will scarce simper in favour of the philosopher, but can make shift to nod and nod again.” Even amid this wild satire we find a piece of truth in a dark corner; for the satirist confesses that “his Gallery-friends, who were such resolved practicants in Hobbianism (by which the satirist means all kinds of licentiousness) would most certainly have been so, had there never been any such man as Mr. Hobbes in the world.” Why then place to the account of the philosopher those gross immoralities which he never sanctioned? The life of Hobbes is without a stain! He had other friends besides these “Box, Pit, and Gallery” gentry—the learned of Europe, and many of the great and good men of his own country.
Hobbes, in defending Thucydides, whom he has so admirably translated, from the charge of some obscurity in his design, observes that “Marcellinus saith he was obscure, on purpose that the common people might not understand him; and not unlikely, for a wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men), that wise men only should be able to commend him.” Thus early in life Hobbes had determined on a principle which produced all his studied ambiguity, involved him in so much controversy, and, in some respects, preserved him in an inglorious security.
Hobbes explains the image in his Introduction. He does not disguise his opinion that Men may be converted into Automatons; and if he were not very ingenious we might lose our patience. He was so delighted with this whimsical fancy of his “artificial man,” that he carried it on to government itself, and employed the engraver to impress the monstrous personification on our minds, even clearer than by his reasonings. The curious design forms the frontispiece of “The Leviathan.” He borrowed the name from that sea-monster, that mightiest of powers, which Job has told is not to be compared with any on earth. The sea-monster is here, however, changed into a colossal man, entirely made up of little men from all the classes of society, bearing in the right hand the sword, and in the left the crosier. The compartments are full of political allegories. An expression of Lord Clarendon’s in the preface to his “Survey of the Leviathan,” shows our philosopher’s infatuation to this “idol of the Den,” as Lord Bacon might have called the intellectual illusion of the philosopher. Hobbes, when at Paris, showed a proof-sheet or two of his work to Clarendon, who, he soon discovered, could not approve of the hardy tenets. “He frequently came to me,” says his lordship, “and told me his book (which he would call Leviathan) was then printing in England. He said, that he knew when I read his book I would not like it, and mentioned some of his conclusions: upon which I asked him, why he would publish such doctrine: to which, after a discourse, between jest and earnest, he said, The truth is, I have a mind to go home!” Some philosophical systems have, probably, been raised “between jest and earnest;” yet here was a text-book for the despot, as it is usually accepted, deliberately given to the world, for no other purpose than that the philosopher was desirous of changing his lodgings at Paris for his old apartments in London!
The duplicity of the system is strikingly revealed by Burnet, who tells of Hobbes, that “he put all the law in the will of the prince or the people; for he writ his book at first in favour of absolute monarchy, but turned it afterwards to gratify the republican party. These were his true principles, though he had disguised them for deceiving unwary readers.” It is certain Hobbes became a suspected person among the royalists. They were startled at the open extravagance of some of his political paradoxes; such as his notion of the necessity of extirpating all the Greek and Latin authors, “by reading of which men from their childhood have gotten a habit of licentious controuling the actions of their sovereigns.”—p. 111. But the doctrines of liberty were not found only among the Greeks and Romans; the Hebrews were stern republicans; and liberty seems to have had a nobler birth in the North among our German ancestors, than perhaps in any other part of the globe. It is certain that the Puritans, who warmed over the Bible more than the classic historians, had their heads full of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea; the hanging of the five kings of Joshua; and the fat king of the Moabites, who in his summer-room received a present, and then a dagger, from the left-handed Jewish Jacobin. Hobbes curiously compares “The tyrannophobia, or fear of being strongly governed,” to the hydrophobia. “When a monarchy is once bitten to the quick by those democratical writers, and, by their poison, men seem to be converted into dogs,” his remedy is, “a strong monarch,” or “the exercise of entire sovereignty,” p. 171; and that the authority he would establish should be immutable, he hardily asserts that “the ruling power cannot be punished for mal-administration.” Yet in this elaborate system of despotism are interspersed some strong republican axioms, as The safety of the people is the supreme law,—The public good to be preferred to that of the individual:—and that God made the one for the many, and not the many for the one. The effect the Leviathan produced on the royal party was quite unexpected by the author. His hardy principles were considered as a satire on arbitrary power, and Hobbes himself as a concealed favourer of democracy. This has happened more than once with such vehement advocates. Our philosopher must have been thunderstruck at the insinuation, for he had presented the royal exile, as Clarendon in his “Survey” informs us, with a magnificent copy of “The Leviathan,” written on vellum; this beautiful specimen of calligraphy may still be seen, as we learn from the Gentleman’s Magazine for January, 1813, where the curiosity is fully described. The suspicion of Hobbes’s principles was so strong, that it produced his sudden dismissal from the presence of Charles II. when at Paris. The king, indeed, said he believed Hobbes intended him no hurt; and Hobbes said of the king, “that his majesty understood his writings better than his accusers.” However, happy was Hobbes to escape from France, where the officers were in pursuit of him, amid snowy roads and nipping blasts. The lines in his metrical life open a dismal winter scene for an old man on a stumbling horse:—
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“Frigus erat, nix alta, senex ego, ventus acerbus, |
A curious spectacle! to observe, under a despotic government, its vehement advocate in flight!
The ambiguity of “The Leviathan” seemed still more striking, when Hobbes came, at length, to place the right of government merely in what he terms “the Seat of Power,”—a wonderful principle of expediency; for this was equally commodious to the republicans and to the royalists. By this principle, the republicans maintained the right of Cromwell, since his authority was established, while it absolved the royalists from their burdensome allegiance; for, according to “The Leviathan,” Charles was the English monarch only when in a condition to force obedience; and, to calm tender consciences, the philosopher further fixed on that precise point of time, “when a subject may obey an unjust conqueror.” After the Restoration, it was subtilely urged by the Hobbists, that this very principle had greatly served the royal cause; for it afforded a plea for the emigrants to return, by compounding for their estates, and joining with those royalists who had remained at home in an open submission to the established government; and thus they were enabled to concert their measures in common, for reinstating the old monarchy. Had the Restoration never taken place, Hobbes would have equally insisted on the soundness of his doctrine; he would have asserted the title of Richard Cromwell to the Protectorate, if Richard had had the means to support it, as zealously as he afterwards did that of Charles II. to the throne, when the king had firmly re-established it. The philosophy of Hobbes, therefore, is not dangerous in any government; its sole aim is to preserve it from intestine divisions; but for this purpose, he was for reducing men to mere machines. With such little respect he treated the species, and with such tenderness the individual!
I will give Hobbes’s own justification, after the Restoration of Charles II., when accused by the great mathematician, Dr. Wallis, a republican under Cromwell, of having written his work in defence of Oliver’s government. Hobbes does not deny that “he placed the right of government wheresoever should be the strength.” Most subtilely he argues, how this very principle “was designed in behalf of the faithful subjects of the king,” after they had done their utmost to defend his rights and person. The government of Cromwell being established, these found themselves without the protection of a government of their own, and therefore might lawfully promise obedience to their victor for the saving of their lives and fortunes; and more, they ought even to protect that authority in war by which they were themselves protected in peace. But this plea, which he so ably urged in favour of the royalists, will not, however, justify those who, like Wallis, voluntarily submitted to Cromwell, because they were always the enemies of the king; so that this submission to Oliver is allowed only to the royalists—a most admirable political paradox! The whole of the argument is managed with infinite dexterity, and is thus unexpectedly turned against his accusers themselves. The principle of “self-preservation” is carried on through the entire system of Hobbes.—Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, &c., of Mr. Hobbes.
The passage in Hobbes to which I allude is in “The Leviathan,” c. 32. He there says, sarcastically, “It is with the mysteries of religion as with wholesome pills for the sick, which, swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure; but, chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.” Hobbes is often a wit: he was much pleased with this thought, for he had it in his De Cive; which, in the English translation, bears the title of “Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society,” 1651. There he calls “the wholesome pills,” “bitter.” He translated the De Cive himself; a circumstance which was not known till the recent appearance of Aubrey’s papers.
Warburton has most acutely distinguished between the intention of Hobbes and that of some of his successors. The bishop does not consider Hobbes as an enemy to religion, not even to the Christian; and even doubts whether he has attacked it in “The Leviathan.” At all events, he has “taken direct contrary measures from those of Bayle, Collins, Tindal, Bolingbroke, and all that school. They maliciously endeavoured to show the Gospel was unreasonable; Hobbes, as reasonable as his admirable wit could represent it: they contended for the most unbounded toleration, Hobbes for the most rigorous conformity.” See the “Alliance between Church and State,” book i. c. v. It is curious to observe the noble disciple of Hobbes, Lord Bolingbroke, a strenuous advocate for his political and moral opinions, enraged at what he calls his “High Church notions.” Trenchard and Gordon, in their Independent Whig, No. 44, that libel on the clergy, accuse them of Atheism and Hobbism; while some divines as earnestly reject Hobbes as an Atheist! Our temperate sage, though angried at that spirit of contradiction which he had raised, must, however, have sometimes smiled both on his advocates and his adversaries!
The odious term of Atheist has been too often applied to many great men of our nation by the hardy malignity of party. Were I to present a catalogue, the very names would refute the charge. Let us examine the religious sentiments of Hobbes. The materials for its investigation are not common, but it will prove a dissertation of facts. I warn some of my readers to escape from the tediousness, if they cannot value the curiosity.
Hobbes has himself thrown out an observation in his “Life of Thucydides” respecting Anaxagoras, that “his opinions, being of a strain above the apprehension of the vulgar, procured him the estimation of an Atheist, which name they bestowed upon all men that thought not as they did of their ridiculous religion, and in the end cost him his life.” This was a parallel case with Hobbes himself, except its close, which, however, seems always to have been in the mind of our philosopher.
Bayle, who is for throwing all things into doubt, acknowledging that the life of Hobbes was blameless, adds, One might, however, have been tempted to ask him this question:
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Heus age responde; minimum est quod scire laboro; |
But Bayle, who compared himself to the Jupiter of Homer, powerful in gathering and then dispersing the clouds, dissipates the one he had just raised, by showing how “Hobbes might have answered the question with sincerity and belief, according to the writers of his life.”—But had Bayle known that Hobbes was the author of all the lives of himself, so partial an evidence might have raised another doubt with the great sceptic. It appears, by Aubrey’s papers, that Hobbes did not wish his biography should appear when he was living, that he might not seem the author of it.
Baxter, who knew Hobbes intimately, ranks him with Spinosa, by a strong epithet for materialists—“The Brutists, Hobbes, and Spinosa.” He tells us that Selden would not have him in his chamber while dying, calling out, “No Atheists!” But by Aubrey’s papers it appears that Hobbes stood by the side of his dying friend. It is certain his enemies raised stories against him, and told them as suited their purpose. In the Lansdowne MSS. I find Dr. Grenville, in a letter, relates how “Hobbes, when in France, and like to die, betrayed such expressions of repentance to a great prelate, from whose mouth I had this relation, that he admitted him to the sacrament. But Hobbes afterwards made this a subject of ridicule in companies.”—Lansdowne MSS. 990—73.
Here is a strong accusation, and a fact too; yet, when fully developed, the result will turn out greatly in favour of Hobbes.
Hobbes had a severe illness at Paris, which lasted six months, thus noticed in his metrical life:
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Dein per sex menses morbo decumbo propinque |
It happened that the famous Guy Patin was his physician; and in one of these amusing letters, where he puts down the events of the day, like a newspaper of the times, in No. 61, has given an account of his intercourse with the philosopher, in which he says that Hobbes endured such pain, that he would have destroyed himself—“Qu’il avoit voulu se tuer.”—Patin is a vivacious writer: we are not to take him au pied de la lettre. Hobbes was systematically tenacious of life: and, so far from attempting suicide, that he wanted even the courage to allow Patin to bleed him! It was during this illness that the Catholic party, who like to attack a Protestant in a state of unresisting debility, got his learned and intimate friend, Father Mersenne, to hold out all the benefits a philosopher might derive from their Church. When Hobbes was acquainted with this proposed interview (says a French contemporary, whose work exists in MS., but is quoted in Joly’s folio volume of Remarks on Bayle), the sick man answered, “Don’t let him come for this; I shall laugh at him; and perhaps I may convert him myself.” Father Mersenne did come; and when this missionary was opening on the powers of Rome to grant a plenary pardon, he was interrupted by Hobbes—“Father, I have examined, a long time ago, all these points; I should be sorry to dispute now; you can entertain me in a more agreeable manner. When did you see Mr. Gassendi?” The monk, who was a philosopher, perfectly understood Hobbes, and this interview never interrupted their friendship. A few days after, Dr. Cosin (afterwards Bishop of Durham), the great prelate whom Dr. Grenville alludes to, prayed with Hobbes, who first stipulated that the prayers should be those authorised by the Church of England; and he also received the sacrament with reverence. Hobbes says:—“Magnum hoc erga disciplinam Episcopalem signum erat reverentiæ.”—It is evident that the conversion of Father Mersenne, to which Hobbes facetiously alluded, could never be to Atheism, but to Protestantism: and had Hobbes been an Atheist, he would not have risked his safety, when he arrived in England, by his strict attendance to the Church of England, resolutely refusing to unite with any of the sects. His views of the national religion were not only enlightened, but in this respect he showed a boldness in his actions very unusual with him.
But the religion of Hobbes was “of a strain beyond the apprehension of the vulgar,” and not very agreeable to some of the Church. A man may have peculiar notions respecting the Deity, and yet be far removed from Atheism; and in his political system the Church may hold that subordinate place which some Bishops will not like. When Dr. Grenville tells us “Hobbes ridiculed in companies” certain matters which the Doctor held sacred, this is not sufficient to accuse a man of Atheism, though it may prove him not to have held orthodox opinions. From the MS. collections of the French contemporary, who well knew Hobbes at Paris, I transcribe a remarkable observation:—“Hobbes said, that he was not surprised that the Independents, who were enemies of monarchy, could not bear it in heaven, and that therefore they placed there three Gods instead of one; but he was astonished that the English bishops, and those Presbyterians who were favourers of monarchy, should persist in the same opinion concerning the Trinity. He added, that the Episcopalians ridiculed the Puritans, and the Puritans the Episcopalians; but that the wise ridiculed both alike.”—Lantiniana MS. quoted by Joly, p. 434.
The religion of Hobbes was in conformity to State and Church. He had, however, the most awful notions of the Divinity. He confesses he is unacquainted with “the nature of God, but not with the necessity of the existence of the Power of all powers, and First Cause of all causes; so that we know that God is, though not what he is.” See his “Human Nature,” chap. xi. But was the God of Hobbes the inactive deity of Epicurus, who takes no interest in the happiness or misery of his created beings; or, as Madame de Staël has expressed it, with the point and felicity of French antithesis, was this “an Atheism with a God?” This consequence some of his adversaries would draw from his principles, which Hobbes indignantly denies. He has done more; for in his De Corpore Politico, he declares his belief of all the fundamental points of Christianity, part i. c. 4, p. 116. Ed. 1652. But he was an open enemy to those “who presume, out of Scripture, by their own interpretation, to raise any doctrine to the understanding, concerning those things which are incomprehensible;” and he refers to St. Paul, who gives a good rule “to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.”—Rom. xii. 3.