These were the pitched battles; but many skirmishes occasionally took place. Hobbes was even driven to a ruse de guerre. When he found his mathematical character in the utmost peril, there appeared a pamphlet, entitled “Lux Mathematica, &c., or, Mathematical Light struck out from the clashings between Dr. John Wallis, Professor of Geometry in the celebrated University of Oxford (celeberrima Academia), and Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury; augmented with many and shining rays of the Author, R. R.” 1672.
Here the victories of Hobbes are trumpeted forth, but the fact is, that R. R. should have been T. H. It was Hobbes’s own composition! R. R. stood for Roseti Repertor, that is, the Finder of the Rosary, one of the titles of Hobbes’s mathematical discoveries. Wallis asserts that this R. R. may still serve, for it may answer his own book, “Roseti Refutator, or, the Refuter of the Rosary.”
Poor Hobbes gave up the contest reluctantly; if, indeed, the controversy may not be said to have lasted all his life. He acknowledges he was writing to no purpose; and that the medicine was obliged to yield to the disease.
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Sed nil profeci, magnis authoribus Error Fultus erat, cessit sic Medicina malo. |
He seems to have gone down to the grave, in spite of all the reasonings of the geometricians on this side of it, with a firm conviction that its superficies had both depth and thickness.[386] Such were the fruits of a great genius, entering into a province out of his own territories; and, though a most energetic reasoner, so little skilful in these new studies, that he could never know when he was confuted and refuted.[387]
JONSON AND DECKER.
Ben Jonson appears to have carried his military spirit into the literary republic—his gross convivialities, with anecdotes of the prevalent taste in that age for drinking-bouts—his “Poetaster” a sort of Dunciad, besides a personal attack on the frequenters of the theatres, with anecdotes—his Apologetical Dialogue, which was not allowed to be repeated—characters of Decker and of Marston—Decker’s Satiromastix, a parody on Jonson’s “Poetaster”—Ben exhibited under the character of “Horace Junior”—specimens of that literary satire; its dignified remonstrance, and the honourable applause bestowed on the great bard—some foibles in the literary habits of Ben, alluded to by Decker—Jonson’s noble reply to his detractors and rivals.