Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/493

 VIII. NOTES. THE QUARTERLY REVIEW ON HOBBES. THE following " Letter to the Editor" appeared in The Athenceum of June 4th. It may have some interest for the narrower circle of philosophical readers, even apart from the light it throws upon the current ethics of anonymous writing. The first sentence has reference to some previous letters that had appeared about other articles in the same number of the Quarterly. University College, May 26, 1887. If your readers have not yet had enough of the April Quarterly, there is something for them to hear about still another article in it. Circum- stances have till now prevented me from seeing the article ' Hobbes of Malmesbury,' occasion or pretext for which is found in a little volume con- tributed by me to Black wood's ' Philosophical Classics for English Eeaders '. The Keviewer passes an extremely contemptuous judgment on every part of Hobbes's philosophical performance, though he is rather apt, on taking up the different parts in turn, to make light of each by contrast with some other which he forgets that he has already denounced. It is not a well-in- formed judgment, and there is a want of shading and discrimination in the invective that reminds one of nothing so much as the handiwork of some of the poorer theological assailants of the philosopher in his own time. However, it is not to the Reviewer's judgment, in either matter or manner, that I desire to draw a little attention, but to the astonishing inconsequence of statement and inadvertence to plain fact which he has been suffered to exhibit through thirty pages of an authoritative literary organ. The Reviewer has neglected no device for the overawing of his readers. Knowing, or having read on purpose, something even of Hobbes's physical lucubrations, he can give you an array of citations in foot-notes to other works than Leviathan. He not only can mention those MSS. in the British Museum that are referred to in the volume before him, but can himself quote from another with which Sir Matthew Hale " came to the rescue " against Hobbes which was a remarkable thing to do with an un- published MS. ; forgetting, however, elsewhere (p. 423, 11. 6-8) to put quota- tion-marks about the one smart saying in his article, taken almost verbatim from the worthy Chief Justice. In particular, he is so much at home with the MSS. at Hard wick Hall as to be able to announce that these documents, through being " frequently exploited," " have been left very much in the condition of a sucked orange " nay, " to avouch from a personal inspection that, since Aubrey's narrative, not a shred of fact can be extracted from them of the slightest interest to the public ". After a magisterial declara- tion like this, set in the forefront of the article, what is left for the common reader but humbly to accept all that follows upon it ? Now it would be going too far to say that there is a misstatement in every one of the Reviewer's narrative sentences throughout the article, but it is probably under the mark to say that there are two misstatements for every three sentences. That is a serious charge to bring against the Quarterly, which has so often stood up (as again, elsewhere, in this very- number) for precision of historical statement. I cannot, of course, prove it in detail here, but I make the charge, in its general form, on my personal responsibility, and I proceed, with your leave, to give some specimens of the Reviewers work taken at random, after first convicting him upon one