Sir,
Your most humble servant,
Tho. Hobbes.
1672[1623], London,
Febr. 1st.
ii. Thomas Hobbes to John Aubrey.
[1624]Noble Sir,
I am very glad to hear you are well and continue your favours towards me.
'Tis a long time since I have been able to write my selfe, and am now so weake that it is a paine to me to dictate.
But yet I cannot choose but thanke you for this letter of Jan. 25th which I receaved not till the last of ffebruary. I was assured a good while since that Dr. Wallis his learning is no where esteemed but in the Universities by such as have engaged themselves in the defence of his geometry and are now ashamed to recant it. And I wonder not if Dr. Wallis, or any other, that have studyed mathematicks onely to gaine preferment, when his ignorance is discovered, convert his study to jugling and to the gaining of a reputation of conjuring, decyphering, and such arts[1625] as are in the booke[1626] you sent me.
As for the matter it selfe, I meane the teaching of a man borne deafe and dumbe to speake, I thinke it impossible. But I doe not count him deafe and indocible that can heare a word spoken as loud as is possible at the very entrance to his eare, for of this I am assured that a man borne absolutely deafe must of necessity be made to heare before he can be made to speake, much lesse to understand. And he that could make him heare (being a great and common good) would well deserve both to be honoured and to be enriched. He that could make him speake a few words onely deserved nothing. But he that brags of this and cannot doe it, deserves to be whipt.
Sir, I am most heartily
Your most faithfull and most humble servant,
Thomas Hobbes.
Hardwick,
March the 5th, 1677[1627].
[1628]To my most honored frend Mr. John Awbry, esqre, to be left for him at Mr. Crooke's, a bookseller, at the Green Dragon without Temple barre, London.