the Parliamentarians. It is supposed that the ridicule attending his disastrous expedition hastened his death, which took place at Paris in 1641. He was one of the finest gentlemen of his time, and both his poems and prose works, notably his 'Discourse of Religion,' addressed to Lord Dorset, have great merit.* His ballad on a wedding,' occasioned by the marriage of Robert Boyle, first Earl of Orrery, with Lady Margaret Howard, daughter of the first Earl of Suffolk, has one verse which has been often quoted :— 'Her feet beneath her petticoat, It is impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that which exists between the lives and works of Suckling, the soldier and the man of fashion, and of George Crabbe, the son of the exciseman at Aldeburgh, who was at one time employed in piling up butter-casks on Slaughden Quay, and at another was apprenticed to a surgeon at Woodbridge. He took a gloomy view of life, and in the short tales contained in the Village' and the Parish Register,' strips off with a relentless hand the vague poetic fancies with which imagination sometimes surrounds the lot of the poor. His work on Nature is as minute and accurate as that of a Dutch painter, and within the narrow limits to which it was confined had a great effect in stimulating the love both of nature and of man, which towards the end of the last century began to awaken in English literature. Bloomfield has already been mentioned in connection with his birthplace; his poems of rural life are far more cheerful than Crabbe's, and combine both humour and pathos. Nor must we omit a passing allusion to John Bale, a native of the little village of Cove, near Dunwich, and Bishop of Ossory, who wrote the first biography of English writers in two folio volumes, and to John Stele, Rector of Hadleigh, and afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, who wrote in his youth, 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' the first true English play, represented in Christ's College, c. 1565, with its well-known drinking-song, beginning :— 'I love no roste but a nut-brown toste.' But these rambling pages must be brought to a conclusion, * See Granger's 'Biographical History of England.' Vol. 164.-No. 328. 2 F though though much still remains to be told: in truth, the history of any county is of inexhaustible interest. We must not linger by the moated hall at Helmingham, where the drawbridge is still drawn up every night, and which is still held by the Tollemaches, of whom the old rhyme runs :— "When William the Conqueror reigned with great fame, nor at Henham, where the fine old Elizabethan mansion, the seat of the De la Poles and of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was burnt down a hundred years ago, but where the oak still stands in which Sir John Rous, the Loyalist, was concealed by his wife from the pursuit of the Roundheads; nor at Cockfield, where the unfortunate Lady Katherine Grey, sister to Lady Jane, died a prisoner for the unpardonable crime (in Queen Elizabeth's eyes) of having married Lord Hertford. Not even Sir Symonds d'Ewes must tempt us to linger at Stowlangtoft, though his 'short way' in the House of Commons of moving that a certain Member (Serjeant Armstrong) 'do now hold his peace' would be of great use at the present day; and there is something very attractive in his quaint autobiography, in which his legal and antiquarian proclivities mingle strangely with his courtship, when he boasts that the lady possessed the smallest foot in England; and then announces that 'his very study of records grew more delightful and pleasant than ever before, as he often met with several particulars of moment which concerned some of those families to which she was heir, both of their bloods and coat armour.' Sir Symonds d'Ewes was one of those invaluable Dryasdusts of whom Carlyle speaks so contemptuously, but without whose patient and laborious researches no history could be written. He was the first person who made collections for the history of the county of Suffolk, and his papers are preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. It is much to be hoped that a Nicholls or an Ormerod may yet arise to make use of these, and the many other materials which exist for the history of a county so rich in interest. The instinct which prompts us all to wish to know something of the great events connected with places and districts with which we are personally acquainted is one well worthy of cultivation, and, without wishing to return to the Heptarchy, which would almost seem to be the tendency of some of the leading statesmen of the day, it will be a sad day for England when a Suffolk or a Devonshire or a Northamptonshire man ceases to take a pride in his own county. ART. ART. V.- Hobbes. By George Croom Robertson, Grote Professor of Mind and Logic in University College, London. Edinburgh and London, 1886. IF F no man is a hero to his valet, his prestige recovers itself in the hands of his biographer. Mr. Robertson, impressed with the prowess of Hobbes in the department over which he so ably presides in University College, London, would rescue the philosopher from the obscurity into which he has fallen. The public are already indebted to Mr. Robertson for an exhaustive paper on Hobbes in the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.' The present volume contains nothing new, though we are informed the materials have been largely recruited from a close examination of the Hardwick MSS. But these documents, frequently exploited for the same purpose, have been left very much in the condition of a squeezed orange. Since Aubrey's narrative, we are able to avouch from a personal inspection, that not a shred of fact can be extracted from them of the slightest interest to the public. Mr. Robertson, therefore, in the absence of more attractive materials, has to fall back upon the philosopher's works, of which he enters into a detailed analysis. But too close a survey of greatness somewhat detracts from its height; this is notably so with Hobbes, whose elaborate workmanship rather oddly contrasts with the flimsy basis upon which his philosophic structure has been raised. To undertake a close inspection of the work must infallibly lead to his disparagement. Mr. Robertson's labours, therefore, are calculated to produce the opposite effect to his aims. If the late Sir William Molesworth injured Hobbes's reputation by editing every tract the philosopher ever published, Mr. Robertson brings him into still further discredit by presenting the tinsel as genuine ore from the mine of true philosophy. No man ever published so much as Hobbes, and wrote so little. The titles of his works remind one of those theatrical supernumeraries who, by constantly crossing the stage in changed habiliments, contrive to represent a large army. His 'De Cive' was published in 1642. A few years later this work, cut into two halves, reappeared under the guise of 'Human Nature' and 'De Corpore Politico,' or the 'Elements of Law, Moral and Politic' -an adaptation of the title applied to his first treatise on the same subject. His optical tracts, first separately issued, and portions of his 'Human Nature,' stitched together without any other connection than the binding, appeared in 1658 under the title of 'De Homine.' In the 'De Corpore Politico' is repeated the Christian commonwealth of the Leviathan,' which in turn 2 F 2 contains contains all he had previously published in the 'De Cive.' His geometrical speculations, which first appeared in strange conjunction with his logic and first philosophy in the 'De Corpore,' were afterwards ushered into the world as revelations of startling significance. Indeed Hobbes, by presenting his old works under new combinations, contrived every two or three years to explode some literary cracker in the ear of the public. This frequent repetition of himself was, to some extent, brought about by his attempt to produce a complete system of philosophy under a tripartite division, the members of which included each other. The coping-stone of Hobbes's system was 'The Citizen ;' 'Man' formed the central part, while the treatise on Body supplied a foundation for the entire structure. It was, therefore, competent for Hobbes, under each of these divisions, to write about every part of the material universe, and he largely availed himself of the privilege of doseing his readers several times over with the same subject. The branches of his system, first completed without reference to each other, were afterwards forced into coherence. Everything was taken up as caprice or the pressure of social affairs dictated. The tumults which led to the outbreak of 1642 impelled him to write his 'Citizen.' His 'De Corpore' was not even designed til ten years afterwards. That the building was grotesque, that the parts of the structure set at defiance all the laws of organic unity, need not excite wonder. For Hobbes raised the dome before he thought of the foundations. Both biographer and editor seem to have thought that because Hobbes was proficient in mental analysis, his performances in other departments of knowledge are equally worthy of transmittal to posterity. But this resembles the vulgar notion, that because a man is an adept at the German flute, his performances on the clarionet must be equally worthy of public attention. Hobbes's labours in the field of mental philosophy only occupy a very small section of his works, as the subject itself filled up only a nook of his mind. The great brunt of his efforts, in fact the best part of his life, was spent upon the elaboration of physical, mathematical, and political theories at war with common sense. The results of his ethical and theological speculations were equally inane. Hobbes neglected the sphere of mental science, in which he was most competent to shine, for others in which he cut a ludicrous figure, and his admirers have repeated the mistake by cherishing his failures with the same fervency with which they proclaim his success. Hobbes was an acute logician. But by his assumption of wrong principles the very force and energy of his reasoning only carried him further from from the truth. His mathematical and physical treatises have been long swept into the limbo of absurdities. The limpid purity of his style, however, the keenness of his intellect, and his dogmatic vigour of expression, have leavened his political errors with a salt which still preserves them from corruption. The giant in mental became a dwarf in material philosophy. There is no European writer whose works so fully exhibit the weakness as well as the strength of the human intellect. The facilities for culture accorded to Hobbes are enjoyed by few, and he certainly was not remiss in turning them to account. The spirit of the old monks of Malmesbury, where he first saw the light (5th April, 1588), seems early to have stirred in his veins. His father, the rector of the place, initiated him betimes into the mysteries of Greek Iambics. In his fourteenth year he entered Magdalen College, Oxford. Hobbes took his Bachelor's degree in the usual course, and upon the recommendation of the President of Magdalen became tutor at the early age of twenty to young Cavendish, eldest son of the Earl of Devonshire. This step might have taught Hobbes the uses of an aristocracy, for by the beneficence of that family he was enabled in tumultuous times to continue his studies in quiet for upwards of two generations. With his pupil, Hobbes travelled through France and Italy, loitering for months in continental capitals to learn the manners as well as the language of men by social intercourse with their chiefs. On their return to England, Hobbes took up his residence with the family at Chatsworth, and employed his leisure upon the translation of Thucydides. This, his first literary effort, was undertaken to expose the follies of the Athenian democracy, as a check to the revolutionary spirit at that time arising in England. The old Earl of Devonshire died in March 1625. Hardly three years after, the young Earl followed his father. Hobbes, deprived first of his patron, then of his pupil and companion, accepted the invitation of Sir Gervase Clifton to accompany his son to the Continent, whence after a sojourn of some eighteen months he was recalled by the Dowager Countess of Devonshire to undertake the education of the young Earl, then a lad of thirteen. With the son of his former pupil he paid his third visit to France and Italy, where he made the acquaintance of Galileo, and applied himself to the study of the Mechanical Philosophy, which he subsequently regarded as the mainspring of the universe. In 1634 we find Hobbes studying Physics in Paris with Gassendi, and coming to the same conclusion as the monk, that thought was as much a mechanical process as digestion. In 1637 he returned with the young Earl to England, then torn by civil commotions. To support the Royal |