Hobson was not this kind of man. He had his horse-letting business in Cambridge, where, indeed, he had forty saddle-nags always ready, "fit for travelling, with boots, bridle, and whip, to furnish the gentlemen at once, without going from college to college to borrow"; but he continued throughout his long life to go personally with his waggon, and died January 1st, 1631, in his eighty-sixth year, of the irksome and unaccustomed inaction imposed upon him by the authorities, who forbade him to ply to London while one of the periodical outbreaks of plague was raging in the capital. Dependable in business as Hobson was, he prospered exceedingly, and amassed a very considerable fortune, "a much greater fortune," says one, "than a thousand men of genius and learning, educated at the University, ever acquired, or were capable of acquiring." This is not a little hard on the learned and the gifted, by whose favour and goodwill he prospered so amazingly. For, be it known, he was not merely and solely a carrier; but the carrier, especially licensed by the University, and thus a monopolist. Those were the days before a Government monopoly of the post was established, and one of Hobson's particular functions was the conveying of the mails. He was thus a very serious and responsible person.
You cannot conceive Hobson "carrying on" like the typical "jolly waggoner." Look at the portrait of him, taken from a fresco painted on a wall of his old house of call, the Bull, in Bishopsgate Street. A very grave and staid old man it shows us; looking out upon the world with cold and calculating eyes, deep-set beneath knitted brows, and with a long and money-loving, yet cautious, nose. His hand is unwillingly extracting a guinea from a well-filled money-bag, and you may clearly see from his expression of countenance how much rather he would be putting one in.
Yet in his last years he appeared in the guise of a benefactor to the town of Cambridge, for in 1628 he gave to town and University the land on which was built the so-called "Spinning House," or, more correctly, "Hobson's Workhouse," where poor people who had no trade might be taught some honest one, and all stubborn rogues and beggars be compelled to earn their livelihood. A bequest providing for the maintenance of the water-conduit in the Market Place kept his memory green for many a long year afterwards. It remained a prominent object in the centre of the town until 1856, when it was removed; but the little watercourses that of old used to run along the kennels of Cambridge streets still serve to keep the place clean and sweet.
HOBSON.
[From a Painting in Cambridge Guildhall.]
It cannot be too strongly insisted upon that Hobson, although he fared the road personally, and attended to every petty detail of his carrying business, was both a very wealthy and a very important personage. The second condition is not necessarily a corollary of the first. But Hobson bulked large in the Cambridge of his time. Indeed, as much may be gathered from the mass of literature written around his name. In his lifetime even, some compiler of a Commercial Letter Writer, for instructing youths ignorant of affairs, could find no more apt and taking title than that of Hobson's Horse Load of Letters, or Precedents for Epistles of Business; and poets and verse-writers, from Milton downwards, wrote many epitaphs and eulogies on him. Milton, who had gone up to Christ's College in 1624, was twenty-three years of age when Hobson died, and wrote two humorous epitaphs on him, more akin to the manner of Tom Hood than the majestic periods usually associated in the mind with the style commonly called "Miltonic.". "Quibbling epitaphs" an eighteenth century critic has called them. But you shall judge—
"On the University Carrier, who sickened in the time of the Vacancy, being forbid to go to London by reason of the Plague.
Here lies old Hobson: Death hath broke his girt,
And here, alas! hath laid him in the dirt;
Or else, the ways being foul, twenty to one
He's here stuck in a slough and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter that, if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down;
For he had any time this ten years full
Dodged with him betwixt Cambridge and the Bull;
And, surely, Death could never have prevailed,
Had not his weekly course of carriage failed;
But, lately, finding him so long at home,
And thinking now his journey's end was come,
And that he had taken up his latest inn,
In the kind office of a Chamberlain
Showed him his room where he must lodge that night,
Pulled off his boots, and took away the light:
If any ask for him, it shall be said,
'Hobson hath supped, and's newly gone to bed.'"
The subject seems to have been an engrossing one to the youthful poet, for he harked back to it in the following variant:—
"Here lieth one who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;
So hung his destiny, never to rot
While he might still jog on and keep his trot,
Made of sphere-metal, never to decay
Until his revolution was at stay!
Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion numbered out his time;
And, like an engine moved with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceased, he ended straight.
Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm
Too long vacation hastened on his term;
Merely to drive the time away he sickened,
Fainted and died, nor would with ale be quickened.
'Nay,' quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretched,
'If I may not carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetched;
But vow' (though the cross Doctors all stood hearers)
'For one carrier put down, to make six bearers.'
Ease was his chief disease, and, to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light;
His leisure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome;
That even to his last breath, (there be that say't,)
As he were pressed to death, he cried 'More weight!'
But, had his doings lasted as they were,
He had been an immortal Carrier.
Obedient to the moon, he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Linked to the mutual flowing of the seas;
Yet, strange to think, his wain was his increase;
His letters are delivered all and gone;
Only remains this superscription."