A true prodigy of genius was this John Hall; for not only he could warm into admiration our literary antiquary, but the greater philosopher Hobbes, not prone to flattery, has left a memorial of this impassioned and precocious being. “Had not his debauches and intemperance diverted him from the more severe studies, he had made an extraordinary person; for no man had ever done so great things at his age.”
[1] Three or four of these Essays have been reprinted in “The Restituta,” vol. iii. The original book is very rare.
[2] See Ellis’ “Specimens.”
[3] I found the origin of this eloquent and factious performance in an account of John Hall, prefixed to his translation of “Hierocles on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras:” it proceeds from a friend—John Davies of Kidwelly. The treatise of Hall, in its original edition, is so rare, that no copy has been found at the British Museum, nor in the King’s Library; it was, however, reprinted at the time in London.
[4] A piece of great learning, entitled ‘The Height of Eloquence,’ written in Greek, by Dionysius Longinus, rendered into English from the original, by John Hall, Esq., London, 1652, 8vo.—Brüggeman’s English Transactions.
COMMONWEALTH.
When the term Commonwealth deeply occupied the minds of men, they had formed no settled notions about the thing itself; the term became equivocal, of such wide signification that it was misunderstood and misapplied, and always ambiguous; and a confusion of words led many writers into a confusion of notions.