ceptions of the imagination, but for their utility; and these will be erected in the spirit of refinement. It will still love to keep alive the memory of great and good men in monuments of marble; it will still love to copy the face of nature, although it will no longer seek to shadow forth its highest conceptions in outward forms, and the province of art will be limited to the human and the natural.

J. Q. D.

ART. III. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Edited by Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH, Bart. 5 vols. London: John Bohn. 1839–40.

It is now for the first time, that the writings of Thomas Hobbes have been gathered together. They formed a part of the swarm of political speculations, that were called forth in the unsettled times of the Protectorate; and in the general apathy that succeeded the retoration of Charles II., they were huddled into the grave, where their contemporaries were buried. We know not what future treasures may be dragged from the mass that is there concealed. It was only a few years ago, that a lost treatise of Milton was brought to light by the accidental discovery of a king's librarian; and by a series of more searching inquiries, the remains of that great literature may be dragged forth limb by limb, till it be completely restored to the mighty niche which the chasm of the times has left for it. We cannot

believe, that in the interval of civil war, all thought was deadened. In a time when the most trifling mind must have dropped its baubles in the contemplation of the solemn subjects before it, those great spirits, who ushered in and brooded over the revolution, must have been awake to the demands of the cause in which they were embarked. The principles on which they acted required promulgation. They had raised no party clamor, like that which opened the French Revolution; they relied on no popular watchword for success; they had been for a century the despised and the persecuted among their countrymen, and it was only by the justification of the startling tenets which they advanced, that they could hope that the seed which they spread

would be fruitful. There may have been grotesque names attached to the earlier essays of the parliament's supporters, and their style may have been unnecessarily uncouth; but the nervousness with which they handled their sword, was fitted to the difficulties it was to conquer. It was a war of thought from the commencement; a war which was begun by the foolish exposition of James the First, of his divine right, and which was followed by its extraordinary refutation by Milton. It was a war of thought to the end; and the royal sufferer, who was called on to put a stop to the usurpations of his race by his own sacrifice, finished his career by that memorable disquisition on kingly authority, which showed, be it authentic or not, that his principles were as dangerous to the state, as had been maintained by his fiercest adversaries. We look in vain at the light epigrams and the profane odes, at the courtly sermons and the heavy epics of the restoration, for symptoms of the spirit which had left such mighty traces of its working. That splendid argument, which had been erected by Chillingworth in defence of the Protestant Establishment, was not likely to be imitated by the bishops who followed him, when they found that the Protestant king was himself very much inclined towards the errors of papacy. John Baxter was openly prosecuted for blasphemy, and Barrow's sermons were passed by as trifles, since they afforded food neither to the lover of prelacy, nor the lover of punning.

Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588; but it was not until the close of the reign of Charles the First, that he became distinguished as a writer. There was something wrong in the construction of the government; and in the interval which succeeded between the first civil difficulties, and the king's execution, the ingenious theorists of the day had ample time for speculation as to the cause of the present disarrangement, and for plans as to its immediate remedy. That there was a defect in the old economy, that the king had too much authority for the safety of the commonwealth, too little for his own; that the whole system was jarring, and required remodelling, was admitted on all sides. There were very few, who were prepared to take the stand, that the royal supremacy should be strengthened, and that the measures, which had been pursued of late by the Court for the humiliation of the Commons, should be carried to their consummation. Mr. Hyde, who afterwards became the strongest, and most honorable pillar of the fallen dynasty, stood firmly with the parliament in its first troubles; and with Lord Falkland, rallied VOL. XXIX. 3D S. VOL. XI. NO. III.

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and held together that little band, who consulted at the same time the liberties of the commonwealth, and the honor of their king. But the desperate ambition of Charles allowed no halfservice. He threw himself into the thick of the fray, and when it became a matter of life and death between him and his enemies, he called upon the friends of monarchy and of the Church to rally around him as the citadel of their safety. There was a wisdom in the course, which corresponded with the consummate discretion which he had before shown in the pursuit of his arbitrary measures; for had he not raised the question of personal safety, had he not changed the issue from reform to revolution, he would have been obliged to concede with the awkwardness of unsympathized necessity the jewels of the prerogative, which he afterwards showed could only be wrested from him by the executioner. Mr. Hobbes was connected with the royalists by blood and by interest; and, though he found that the might of the nation was raised against him, so that he was obliged to lose the benefit both of country and of property if he adhered to his ancient predilections, he followed the court into exile, and there first published the work, with which his name has been most connected.

When we look over the Leviathan at the present day, we are at a loss to conceive the reasons why it should have been so solemnly censured by the royalists themselves, and so warmly espoused by their antagonists. It was written by a banished adherent of the fallen cause, and it was written with a good faith and ability, which were then most needed. That it served its purpose is undoubted; for it was spread by the emissaries of the exiled family throughout the kingdom, and left behind it invariably the marks of its progress; and yet, before Charles the Second was warm in his father's seat, the parliament deliberately voted the work itself to be tinged with heresy, and its influence to be of a dangerous and doubtful complexion. The philosophers of the day, with characteristic consistency, seized upon it as giving, from the very fact of its condemnation, the most suitable exposition of their tenets, and Mr. Hobbes found himself in a little while in the singular position of being supported, on the one hand, by those whom he had spent his energies in attacking, and of being attacked by those, to whom he had been constantly allied. We have heard, that when Lord Kenyon summed up the offences of a printer, who was indicted before him of seditious and irreligious publications, he concluded the cata

logue of confessors and martyrs, whom he maintained had been traduced by the culprit before him, with that of Julian, who, from his peculiar sanctity, had been called the apostle. We fancy that the apostate Emperor would hardly have been more surprised at his posthumous canonization, than was Mr. Hobbes at the distinctions, to which he was hoisted. He found himself, after a lifetime spent in the assiduous cultivation of the old establishments of Great Britain, suddenly saluted with the title of radical reformer, and crowned and chaired by the mob as the most liberal philosopher of the many, who were then shaking by their sneers not only established government, but individual faith. Sir William Molesworth has credited to him the last tribute that was wanting to complete his honors, and has ushered him into the world in a fresh covering, christened with an attractive title, and dedicated with particular complaisance to his fellow-radical, Mr. Grote.

It is our object at present merely to glance at some of the doctrines which are developed in the Leviathan. They are curious, as affording a complete view of the evidences on which an absolute monarchy may be supported, and they are important, as giving an illustration of the views of those, who now usher them to the public with so much pomp. We do not, of course, assert that the leaders of the radical party are responsible for the sentiments of the treatise which they have just brought forward. However they may adopt a few of its positions, they must certainly be very far from maintaining the conclusions, which are drawn from them. Their object is the liberalization of the government under which they live, but we must remember that, holy as may be their enterprise, they may, from desperation or from insincerity, bring into its ranks alliances, which may be more plausible than advantageous.

The great object of speculation, at the time when the Leviathan was written, was the formation of a commonwealth, which should answer those ends, which the previous government had failed to meet. The country had been flooded with tracts, which told, in notes of different tone perhaps, but of the same import, that the only just basis, on which a government could be erected, was the consent of the people; and that, consequently, the only method of correcting the vices of the present establishment, would be by the application of a more popular remedy than that which the king's mercy afforded. It was for the purpose of the establishment of a contrary position, that Mr

Hobbes first appeared before the public. His treatise" de cive," which was afterwards swollen into the Leviathan, set forth with the avowed object of maintaining the natural and divine right of the established institutions of society. They were based upon a compact between people and sovereign, which could never be revoked; they were sanctioned by divine consent, and it became, therefore, the part of a Christian subject, to resign his civil and religious liberty into the hands of the authority, which his ancestors, by a distant exercise of an exaggerated power, had unguardedly created. Social harmony, it was argued, is necessary to the happiness of mankind; but in the state of war and rapine, in which we are by nature thrown, it requires the exercise of a complete and omnipotent authority to restrain the spirit of discord, and to establish in its place the peace and quiet, which are essential to the welfare of the community.

The whole stress of the position must lie in the assumption, that war is the attitude into which we are by nature cast. For if it be conceded that the dispositions of mankind undeniably are so desperately and consummately wicked, that they are unable to live together without absolute hostility, it will easily follow, that it will be for the advantage of the community, that they should be forcibly restrained from obtaining access to each other for the consummation of their belligerent designs. Some difficulty might, indeed, occur in the selection of a suitable person to act as keeper and overseer, from a body whose dispositions are by assumption equally depraved; but, since the mischief, which any single individual, though the worst among them, could occasion, would be much less serious than that which would be achieved by their united energies, it would be better to crown even such a one with absolute supremacy, rather than let loose without restraint the warring elements around him.

In the summing up, which takes place at the commencement of the thirteenth section of the first book, the assumption is laid down in its full force.

"So that, in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; second, diffidence; thirdly, glory.

"The first maketh a man invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, chil

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