Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/41

Rh illuminating, sometimes transiently, sometimes steadily, different portions of the ground, shining through leaves upon other leavee, and multiplying in an endless way the transparency of the picture. If the chance be given him he mirrors all these things in the still pool near a cottage, the reaches of a sluggish river, or the swirl of the stream that feeds a busy mill. The same spot will furnish him with several pictures. One mill gives him repeated oppor tunities of charming our eye ; and this wonderful artist, who is only second to Kuysdael because he had not Ruysdael s versatility and did not extend his study equally to downs and rocky eminences, or torrents and estuaries this is the man who lived penuriously, died poor, and left no trace in the artistic annals of his country ! It has been said that Hobbema did not paint his own figures, but transferred that duty to Adrian van de Velde, Lingelbach, Barendt Gael, and Abraham Storck. As to this much is conjecture.

1em  HOBBES, (–1679), was born at Westport, adjoining (now forming part of) Malmesbury, in North Wilts, on Good Friday, the 5th of April, brought prematurely into the world through his mother s fright at the rumours of the coming Spanish Armada. His father was vicar of Charlton and Westport, an illiterate and choleric man, who is said to have got into trouble later on by quarrelling with a rival at the church door, and been forced to decamp, leaving his three children (of whom Thomas was second) to the charitable care of an elder brother, a flourishing glover in Malmesbury. Hobbes was put to school at Westport church at the, passed to the Malmesbury school at , and was taught again in Westport later, at a private school kept by a young man named Robert Latimer, fresh from Oxford and &quot;a good Grecian.&quot; He had begun Latin and Greek early, and under Latimer made such progress as to be able to translate the Medea of Euripides into Latin iambic verse before he was. About the age of he was sent to Oxford by his uncle and entered at Magdalen Hall, which had just been put on an independent footing, after being first a grammar school in connexion with the great foundation of Magdalen College and then governed as a hall by one of the college fellows. While Hobbes was there as a student the first principal of Magdalen Hall, Dr John Hussee, gave way to a second, Dr John Wilkinson, who is noted as having ruled strongly in the interest of the Calvinistic party in the university ; and this fact, with other circumstances in the Oxford life of the time, makes it not improbable that the destined foe of the Puritan Revolution was thus early led to mark the aggressive Puritan spirit. For the rest, Oxford did no more to train Hobbcs s mind for his future philosophical work than the decayed scholastic regimen of the universities in that age was able to do for any other of the active spirits that then began in different countries to open the modern era of thought and inquiry. We have from himself a lively record of his experience and pursuits as a student ( Vit. carm. exp., p. Ixxxv.), which, though penned in extreme old age, may be taken as sufficiently trustworthy. In this he tells how he was set to learn &quot; Barbara, Celarent,&quot; but, when he had slowly taken in the doctrine of figures and moods, he put it aside and would prove things only in his own way how he then heard about bodies as consisting of matter and form, as throwing off species of themselves for perception, and as moved by sympathies and antipathies, with much else of a like sort, all beyond his comprehension ; and how he therefore turned to things more congenial, took up his old books again, fed his mind on maps and charts of earth and sky, traced the sun in his path, followed Drake and Cavendish girdling the main, and gazed with delight upon pictured haunts of men and wonders of unknown lands. Very characteristic in this account is the interest in men and things, and the disposition to cut through questions in the schools after a trenchant fashion of his own. We may also believe that he was little attracted by the scholastic learning, and only should err if we took his words as evidence of a precocious insight into its weakness. The truth probably is that, finding himself left at Oxford very much to his own devices, he took no particular interest in studies which there was no risk in neglecting, and thought as little of rejecting as of accepting the traditional doctrines. He adds that he took his degree at the proper time ; but in fact, u^ton any computation and from whatever cause, he remained at Magdalen Hall five, instead of the required four, years, not being admitted as bachelor till February 5,. In the, shortly after leaving the university, Hobbes was recommended by Wilkinson as tutor to the son of William Cavendish, baron of Hardwick, and thus began a connexion with a great and powerful family that ended only with his life. Twice it was loosened once, for a short time, after twenty, and again, for a longer period, during the Civil War but it never was broken, and during more than fifty , to the credit alike of him and his patrons, it was of the closest character. William Cavendish, second son of the famous &quot; Bess of Hardwick &quot; by the second of her four marriages, had just by the favour of King James obtained his barony, before being advanced, a few years later, to the earldom of Devonshire. His son, the heir to a name thus rising as well as to a great fortune, was hardly younger than Hobbes, and was indeed already married, a few before, at the instance of the king, who made up the match, to the only daughter of the Scottish Lord Bruce of Kinloss, though by reason of the bride s age, which was only twelve, the pair had no establishment for some time to come. In the circumstances Hobbes was companion rather than tutor (before becoming secretary) to young Cavendish ; and, growing soon greatly attached to each other, they were sent abroad together on the grand tour in. How long they were gone upon this journey, which lay through France, Germany, and Italy, is not known : but it was long enough to give 