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158 observes, that, “if we will speak properly and punctually, antiquity rather consists in the old age, than in the infancy or youth of the world.” I need scarcely add, that some of the foregoing sentences are almost literal transcripts of Bacon’s words.

The philosophical fame of Bacon in his own country may be dated from the establishment of the Royal Society of London; by the founders of which, as appears from their colleague, Dr Sprat, he was held in so high estimation, that it was once proposed to prefix to the history of their labours some of Bacon’s writings, as the best comment on the views with which they were undertaken. Sprat himself, and his illustrious friend Cowley, were among the number of Bacon’s earliest eulogists; the latter, in an Ode to the Royal Society, too well known to require any notice here; the former, in a very splendid passage of his History, from which I shall borrow a few sentences, as a conclusion and ornament to this note.

“For, is it not wonderful, that he who had run through all the degrees of that profession, which usually takes up men’s whole time; who had studied, and practised, and governed the common law; who had always lived in the crowd, and borne the greatest burden of civil business; should yet find leisure enough for these retired studies, to excel all those men, who separate themselves for this very purpose? He was a man of strong, clear, and powerful imaginations; his genius was searching and inimitable; and of this I need give no other proof than his style itself; which as, for the most part, it describes men’s minds, as well as pictures do their bodies, so it did his above all men living. The course of it vigorous and majestical; the wit bold and familiar; the comparisons fetched out of the way, and yet the more easy: In all expressing a soul equally skilled in men and nature.”

, p. 62.

The paradoxical bias of Hobbes’s understanding is never so conspicuous as when he engages in physical or in mathematical discussions. On such occasions, he expresses himself with even more than his usual confidence and arrogance. Of the Royal Society (the Virtuosi, as he calls them, that meet at Gresham College) he writes thus: “” And elsewhere: “” In his English publications, he indulges in a vein of coarse scurrility, of which his own words alone can convey any idea. “So go your ways,” says he, addressing himself to Dr Wallis and Dr Seth Ward, two of the most eminent mathematicians then in England, “you uncivil ecclesiastics, inhuman divines, de-doctors of morality, unasinous colleagues, egregious pair of Issachars, most wretched indices and vindices academiarum; and remember Vespasian’s law, that it is unlawful to give ill language first, but civil and lawful to return it.”

, p. 64.

With respect to the Leviathan, a very curious anecdote is mentioned by Lord Clarendon. “When I returned,” says he, “from Spain by Paris, Mr Hobbes frequently came to me, and told me that his