This fact has been recorded in one of the pamphlets of Richard Baxter, who, however, was no well-wisher to our philosopher. “Additional Notes on the life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale,” 1682, p. 40.
“Athen. Oxon.,” vol. ii. p. 665, ed. 1721. No one, however, knew better than Hobbes the vanity and uselessness of words: in one place he compares them to “a spider’s web; for, by contexture of words, tender and delicate wits are insnared and stopped, but strong wits break easily through them.” The pointed sentence with which Warburton closes his preface to Shakspeare, is Hobbes’s—that “words are the counters of the wise, and the money of fools.”
Aubrey has minutely preserved for us the manner in which Hobbes composed his “Leviathan:” it is very curious for literary students. “He walked much, and contemplated; and he had in the head of his cane a pen and inkhorn, and carried always a note-book in his pocket; and as soon as a thought darted, he presently entered it into his book, or otherwise might have lost it. He had drawn the design of the book into chapters, &c., and he knew whereabouts it would come in. Thus that book was made.”—Vol. ii. p. 607. Aubrey, the little Boswell of his day, has recorded another literary peculiarity, which some authors do not assuredly sufficiently use. Hobbes said that he sometimes would set his thoughts upon researching and contemplating, always with this proviso: “that he very much and deeply considered one thing at a time—for a week, or sometimes a fortnight.”
A small annuity from the Devonshire family, and a small pension from Charles II., exceeded the wants of his philosophic life. If he chose to compute his income, Hobbes says facetiously of himself, in French sols or Spanish maravedis, he could persuade himself that Crœsus or Crassus were by no means richer than himself; and when he alludes to his property, he considers wisdom to be his real wealth:—
| “An quàm dives, id est, quàm sapiens fuerim?” |
He gave up his patrimonial estate to his brother, not wanting it himself; but he tells the tale himself, and adds, that though small in extent, it was rich in its crops. Anthony Wood, with unusual delight, opens the character of Hobbes: “Though he hath an ill name from some, and good from others, yet he was a person endowed with an excellent philosophical soul, was a contemner of riches, money, envy, the world, &c.; a severe lover of justice, and endowed with great morals; cheerful, open, and free of his discourse, yet without offence to any, which he endeavoured always to avoid.” What an enchanting picture of the old man in the green vigour of his age has Cowley sent down to us!