Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub
[graphic][subsumed]

THOMAS HOBBES of Malmesbury, as he delighted to call himself-in Latin, Thomas Hobbius, or sometimes Hobbesius-was born in that ancient town on the 5th of April, which happened to be Good Friday, in the year 1588. He came in a hurry into this breathing world, in which he was destined to live so long, and to fill so large a space in the eye both of his contemporaries and of posterity. A fright into which his mother was thrown by a rumour of the arrival of the Spanish Armada brought on a premature delivery. Her name was Middleton. His father, whose Christian name was the same with his own, was vicar of Charlton and Westport, a parish lying immediately beyond one of the gates of the town of Malmesbury; but he was far from being a learned theologian; the sum of his qualifications, it is recorded, amounting to being able to read the printed homilies to his congregation in a satisfactory enough way. Besides Thomas, the vicar and his wife had an elder son,

[graphic][merged small]

Edmund, and a daughter. Thomas, according to a narrative of his own life, in Latin hexameters and pen tameters, which he addressed, in 1672, to his friend Hieronymus Verdusius, spent his first four years in learning to speak; his next four in learning to read, to cipher, and to write a little he was then, at eight years of age, sent to the grammar-school of his native town, taught by Mr. Robert Latimer, under whom he made such considerable progress that, before leaving school, he had produced a version of the Medea of Euripides in Latin Iambics. Hobbes's grammar-school days, therefore, extended from 1596 to 1602. His master, Latimer, was at this time a young man of nineteen or twenty, fresh from college. John Aubrey, the antiquary, who was born in the neighbourhood of Malmesbury thirty-seven years after Hobbes, was educated by the same teacher, who had, by this time, however, become rector of the adjoining parish of Leigh-de-la Mere. "I remember," says Aubrey, in his Life of Harvey, "my old schoolmaster, Mr. Latimer, at seventy, wore a dudgeon, with a knife and bodkin, as also my old grandfather Lyte, and Alderman Whitson, of Bristow, which, I suppose, was the common fashion in their young days." In his Life of Hobbes, Aubrey further writes as follows:"This summer 1634, (I remember it was in venison season, July or August) Mr. T. H. [Thomas Hobbes] came into his native country to visit his friends, and amongst others he came to see his old schoolmaster, Mr. Robert Latimer, at Leighde-la-Mere, when I was then a little youth, at school in the church, newly entered into my grammar by him. Here was the first place and time that I ever had the honour to see this worthy learned man, who was then pleased to take notice of me, and the next day came and visited my relations. He was a proper man, brisk, and in very good equipage [equipment]; his hair was then quite black. He staid at Malmesbury and in the neighbourhood a week or better; 'twas the last time that ever he was in Wiltshire." Latimer, it appears, died in the beginning of November in this same year-so that Aubrey was one of his last scholars, as Hobbes had been one of

his first. The philosopher and the antiquary afterwards became great friends.*

In the beginning of the year 1603, Hobbes was sent to Oxford, and entered of Magdalen Hall. Here he remained for five years, taking his Bachelor's degree in 1607. He was supported, while at the university, by an uncle, Francis Hobbes, an elder brother of his father, who was a glover in Malmesbury, and held the office of Alderman, or chief magistrate of the town, and who afterwards left him in his will a little piece of landed property (modicum fundum), the same which, in his poetical autobiography he tells us that he gave away to his brother, and describes as small in extent but of good soil, and fitted to bear excellent crops of wheat. Aubrey says that it was worth sixteen or eighteen pounds a-year. In 1608, on the recommendation of Mr. John Wilkinson, the Principal of Magdalen Hall, he was taken into the family of William Lord Cavendish of Hardwick, who, ten years after this, was created Earl of Devonshire; the common accounts say as tutor to his son, the Hon. William Cavendish, afterwards second earl, who had also just left the university, and was of about the same age with Hobbes. In point of fact, as we learn from Aubrey's honest narrative, Hobbes was engaged as page to the young man, "and rode a hunting and hawking with him, and kept his privy purse." If it was ever intended that the one should direct the other's studies, that part of the arrangement would seem to have soon fallen into neglect. In the prose sketch of his life in Latin, which is understood to have been written by himself, it is stated that Hobbes spent almost the whole of the year 1609 with young Cavendish in the capital, and, at the end of it, found that he had lost the greater part both of his Greek and Latin. Aubrey's account is that, by the way of life he led, as page, pursekeeper, and companion in hunting and hawk

*See "Letters from the Bodleian," 2 vols. 8vo Lon. 1813; vol. ii. pp. 382, and 593-637; and Mr. Britton's interesting and valuable "Memoirs of John Aubrey,"published by the Wiltshire Topographical Society, 4to. Lon. 1845; pp. 27, 28.

« AnteriorContinuar »