No English author in that age was more celebrated, both abroad and at home, than Hobbes: in our time, he is much neglected; a lively instance how precarious all reputations founded on reasoning and philosophy. A pleasant comedy, which paints the manners of the age, and exposes a faithful picture of nature, is a durable work, and is transmitted to the latest posterity. But a system, whether physical or metaphysical, commonly owes its success to its novelty; and is no sooner canvassed with impartiality than its weakness is discovered. Hobbes’s politics are fitted only to promote tyranny, and his ethics to encourage licentiousness. Though an enemy to religion, he partakes nothing of the spirit of scepticism; but is as positive and dogmatical as if human reason, and his reason in particular, could attain a thorough conviction in these subjects. Clearness and propriety of style are the chief excellencies of Hobbes’s writings. In his own person, he is represented to have been a man of virtue; a character nowise surprising, notwithstanding his libertine system of ethics. Timidity is the principal fault with which he is reproached; he lived to an extreme old age, yet could never reconcile himself to the thoughts of death. The boldness of his opinions and sentiments form a remarkable contrast to this part of his character. He died in 1679, aged ninety-one.
Harrington’s Oceana was well adapted to that age, when the plans of imaginary republics were the daily subjects of debate and conversation; and even in our time, it is justly admired as a work of genius and invention. The idea however, of a perfect and immortal commonwealth, will always be found as chimerical as that of a perfect and immortal man. The style of this author wants ease and fluency; but the good matter which his work contains, makes compensation. He died in 1677, aged sixty-six.
Harvey is entitled to the glory of having made, by reasoning alone, without any mixture of accident, a capital discovery in one of the most important branches of science. He had also the happiness of establishing at once his theory on the most solid and convincing proofs; and posterity has added little to the arguments suggested by his industry and ingenuity. His treatise of the circulation of the blood is further embellished by that warmth and spirit which so naturally accompany the genius of invention. This great man was much favored by Charles I., who gave him the liberty of using all the deer in the royal forests for perfecting his discoveries on the generation of animals. It was remarked, that no physician in Europe, who had reached forty years of age, ever, to the end of his life, adopted Harvey’s doctrine of the circulation of the blood; and that his practice in London diminished extremely, from the reproach drawn upon him by that great and signal discovery. So slow is the progress of truth in every science, even when not opposed by factious or superstitious prejudices. He died in 1657, aged seventy-nine.
This age affords great materials for history; but did not produce any accomplished historian. Clarendon, however, will always be esteemed an entertaining writer, even independent of our curiosity to know the facts which he relates. His style is prolix and redundant, and suffocates us by the length of its periods: but it discovers imagination and sentiment, and pleases us at the same time that we disapprove of it. He is more partial in appearance than in reality for he seems perpetually anxious to apologize for the king; but his apologies are often well grounded. He is less partial in his relation of facts, than in his account of characters: he was too honest a man to falsify the former; his affections were easily capable, unknown to himself, of disguising the latter. An air of probity and goodness runs through the whole work; as these qualities did in reality embellish the whole life of the author. He died in 1674, aged sixty-six.
These are the chief performances which engage the attention of posterity. Those numberless productions with which the press then abounded; the cant of the pulpit, the declamations of party, the subtilties of theology, all these have long ago sunk in silence and oblivion. Even a writer such as Selden, whose learning was his chief excellency, or Chillingworth, an acute disputant against the Papists, will scarcely be ranked among the classics of our language or country.
NOTES
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[ NOTE A, p. 15. By a speech of Sir Simon D’Ewes, in the first year of the long parliament, it clearly appears, that the nation never had, even to that time, been rightly informed concerning the transactions of the Spanish negotiation, and still believed the court of Madrid to have been altogether insincere in their professions. What reason, upon that supposition, had they to blame either the prince or Buckingham for their conduct, or for the narrative delivered to the parliament? This is a capital fact, and ought to be well attended to. D’Ewes’s speech is in Nalson, vol. ii. p. 368. No author or historian of that age mentions the discovery of Buckingham’s impostures as a cause of disgust in the parliament. Whitlocke (p. 1) only says, that the commons began to suspect, that it had been spleen in Buckingham, not zeal for public good, which had induced him to break the Spanish match; a clear proof that his falsehood was not suspected. Wilson (p. 780) says, that Buckingham lost his popularity after Bristol arrived, not because that nobleman discovered to the world the falsehood of his narrative, but because he proved that Buckingham, while in Spain, had professed himself a Papist; which is false, and which was never said by Bristol. In all the debates which remain, not the least hint is ever given that any falsehood was suspected in the narrative. I shall further add, that even if the parliament had discovered the deceit in Buckingham’s narrative, this ought not to have altered their political measures, or made them refuse supply to the king. They had supposed it practicable to wrest the Palatinate by arms from the house of Austria; they had represented it as prudent to expend the blood and treasure of the nation in such an enterprise; they had believed that the king of Spain never had any sincere intention of restoring that principality. It is certain that he had not now any such intention; and though there was reason to suspect, that this alteration in his views had proceeded from the ill conduct of Buckingham, yet past errors could not be retrieved; and the nation was undoubtedly in the same situation which the parliament had ever supposed, when they so much harassed their sovereign by their impatient, importunate, and even undutiful solicitations. To which we may add, that Charles himself was certainly deceived by Buckingham when he corroborated his favorite’s narrative by his testimony. Party historians are somewhat inconsistent in their representations of these transactions. They represent the Spaniards as totally insincere, that they may reproach James with credulity in being so long deceived by them. They represent them as sincere, that they may reproach the king, the prince, and the duke with falsehood in their narrative to the parliament. The truth is, they were insincere at first; but the reasons, proceeding from bigotry, were not suspected by James, and were at last overcome, They became sincere; but the prince, deceived by the many unavoidable causes of delay, believed that they were still deceiving him.]