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press as a man not regarded, miserably ended his days, together with the Greek empire. His dead body was shortly after found by the Turks among the slain, and known by his rich apparel, whose head being cut off, was forthwith presented to the Turkish tyrant, by whose commandment it was afterward thrust upon the point of a lance, and in great derision carried about as a trophy of his victory, first in the camp, and afterwards up and down the city.

The Turks, encouraged with the flight of the Christians, presently advanced their ensigns upon the top of the uttermost wall, crying Victory; and by the breach entered as if it had been a great flood, which, having once found a breach in the bank, overfloweth, and beareth down all before it; so the Turks, when they had won the utter wall, entered the city by the same gate that was opened for Justinianus, and by a breach which they had before made with their great artillery, and without mercy cutting in pieces all that came in their way, without further resistance became lords of that most famous and imperial city. . . . In this fury of the barbarians perished many thousands of men, women, and children, without respect of age, sex, or condition. Many, for safeguard of their lives, fled into the temple of Sophia, where they were all without pity slain, except some few reserved by the barbarous victors to purposes more grievous than death itself. The rich and beautiful ornaments and jewels of that most sumptuous and magnificent church (the stately building of Justinianus the emperor) were, in the turning of a hand, plucked down and carried away by the Turks; and the church itself, built for God to be honoured in, for the present converted into a stable for their horses, or a place for the execution of their abominable and unspeakable filthiness; the image of the crucifix was also by them taken down, and a Turk's cap put upon the head thereof, and so set up and shot at with their arrows, and afterwards, in great derision, carried about in their camp, as it had been in procession, with drums playing before it, railing and spitting at it, and calling it the God of the Christians, which I note not so much done in contempt of the image, as in despite of Christ and the Christian religion.

ARTHUR WILSON-SIR RICHARD BAKER.

ARTHUR WILSON, another historian, flourished somewhat later, having been born in 1596. He was secretary to Robert, Earl of Essex, the parliamentary general in the civil wars; and afterwards became steward to the Earl of Warwick. He died in 1652, leaving in manuscript a work on The Life and Reign of James I., which was published in the following year. A comedy of his, entitled The Inconstant Lady, was printed at Oxford in 1814.

We shall conclude our survey of the historical writers of this period by devoting a few words to SIR RICHARD BAKER, who lived from 1568 to 1645, and whose Chronicle' was long popular in England, particularly among country gentlemen. Addison makes it the favourite book of Sir Roger de Coverley. Baker was knighted by James I. in 1603, and in 1620 became high-sheriff for Oxfordshire, in which he possessed considerable property. Afterwards having imprudently engaged for the payment of debts contracted by his wife's family, he became insolvent, and spent several years in the Fleet prison, where he died in 1645. While in durance, he wrote Meditations and Disquisitions on portions of Scripture, translated Balzac's Letters and Malvezzi's Discourses on Tacitus, and composed two pieces in defence of the theatre. His principal work, however, was that already referred to, entitled A Chronicle of the Kings of England, from the time of the Romans' Government unto the Death of King James. This work, which appeared in 1641,

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the author complacently declares to be 'collected with so great care and diligence, that if all other of our chronicles were lost, this only would be sufficient to inform posterity of all passages memorable or worthy to be known.' Notwithstanding such high pretensions, the Chronicle' was afterwards proved by Thomas Blount, in Animadversions' published in 1672, to contain many gross errors; and although an edition printed in 1730 is said to be purged of these to a considerable extent, yet the work must continue to be regarded as an injudicious performance, unworthy of much reliance. The style of Baker, which is superior to his matter, is described, in a letter written to him by his former college friend Sir Henry Wotton, as full of sweet raptures and of researching conceits; nothing borrowed, nothing vulgar, and yet all flowing from you, I know not how, with a certain equal facility.'

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

SIR HENRY WOTTON, of whom some account has already been given, was himself one of the conspicuous characters of this period, both as a writer and a politician. While resident abroad, he embodied the result of his inquiries into political affairs in a work called The State of Christendom; or a most Exact and Curious Discovery of many Secret Passages and Hidden Mysteries of the Times. This, however, was not printed till after his death. In 1624, while provost of Eton college, he published Elements of Architecture, then the best work on that subject, and the materials of which were no doubt collected chiefly in Italy. His latter years were spent in planning several works, which, from the pecuniary difficulties in which he found himself involved, were never executed. The Reliquia Wottoniana, a posthumous publication, is a collection of his miscellaneous pieces, including lives, letters, poems, and characters. These display considerable liveliness of fancy and intellec tual acuteness, though tainted with the pedantry of the times. Several of them are here extracted :

[What Education Embraces.]

First, there must proceed a way how to discern the natural inclinations and capacities of children. Secondly, next must ensue the culture and furnishment of the mind. Thirdly, the moulding of behaviour and decent forms. Fourthly, the tempering of affections. Fifthly, the quickening and exciting of observations and practical judgment. Sixthly, and the last in order, but the principal in value, being that which must knit and consolidate all the rest, is the timely instilling of conscientious principles and seeds of religion.

Every Nature is not a Fit Stock to Graft a Scholar on.

undertakes to show what complexion is fit for every The Spaniard that wrote The Trial of Wits,' profession. I will not disable any for proving a scholar, nor yet dissemble that I have seen many happily forced upon that course, to which by nature they seemed much indisposed. Sometimes the possibility of preferment prevailing with the credulous, expectation of less expense with the covetous, opinion of ease with the fond, and assurance of remoteness with the unkind parents, have moved them, without discretion, to engage their children in adventures of learning, by whose return they have received but small contentment: but they who are deceived in their first designs deserve less to be condemned, as such who (after sufficient trial) persist in their wilfulness are no way to be pitied. I have known some who have been acquainted (by the complaints of

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tory of the Civil Wars from 1640 to 1660, was finished in 1679, but did not appear till after his death, an event which took place in December of that year, when he had attained the age of ninety-two.

Hobbes is described by Lord Clarendon as one for whom he had always had a great esteem, as a man who, besides his eminent parts of learning and knowledge, hath been always looked upon as a man of probity and a life free from scandal.' It was a saying of Charles II., in reference to the opposition which the doctrines of Hobbes met from the clergy, that he was a bear, against whom the church played their young dogs, in order to exercise them.' In his latter years he became morose and impatient of contradiction, both by reason of his growing infirmities, and from indulging too much in solitude, by which his natural arrogance and contempt for the opinions of other men were greatly increased. He at no time read extensively: Homer, Virgil, Thucydides, and Euclid, were his favourite authors; and he used to say, that, if he had read as much as other men, he should have been as ignorant as they.' Owing to the timidity of his disposition, he was continually apprehensive about his personal safety, insomuch that he could not endure to be left in an empty house. From the same motive, probably, it was, that, notwithstanding his notorious heterodoxy, he maintained an external adherence to the established church, and in his works sometimes assented to theological views which undoubtedly he did not hold. Though he has been stigmatised as an atheist, the charge is groundless, as may be inferred from what he says, in his Treatise on Human Nature,' concerning

[God.]

have discovered the quadrature of the circle, and dogmatically upheld his claim in the face of the clearest refutation. In this controversy, personal feeling, according to the custom of the time, appeared without disguise. Hobbes having published a sarcastic piece, entitled Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics in Oxford, Wallis retorted by administering, in 1656, Due Correction for Mr Hobbes, or School-Discipline for not Saying his Lessons Right. Here his language to the philosopher is in the following unceremonious strain-It seems, Mr Hobbes, that you have a mind to say your lesson, and that the mathematic professors of Oxford should hear you. You are too old to learn, though you have as much need as those that be younger, and yet will think much to be whipt. What moved you to say your lessons in English, when the books against which you do chiefly intend them were written in Latin? Was it chiefly for the perfecting your natural rhetoric, whenever you thought it convenient to repair to Billingsgate? You found that the oysterwomen could not teach you to rail in Latin. Now you can, upon all occasion, or without occasion, give the titles of fool, beast, ass, dog, &c., which I take to be but barking; and they are no better than a man might have at Billingsgate for a box o' the ear. You tell us, "though the beasts that think our railing to be roaring, have for a time admired us, yet, now you have showed them our ears, they will be less affrighted." Sir, those persons needed not a sight of your ears, but could tell by the voice what kind of creature brayed in your books: you dared not have said this to their faces.' When Charles II. came to the throne, he conferred on Hobbes an annual pension of one hundred pounds; but notwithstanding this and other marks of the royal favour, much odium continued to prevail against him and his doctrines. The Leviathan' and 'De Cive' were censured in parliament in 1666, and also drew forth many printed replies. Among the authors of these, the most distinguished was Lord Clarendon, who, in 1676, published A Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors to Church and State, in Mr Hobbes's Book, entitled Leviathan. Two years previously, Hobbes had entered a new field of literature, by publishing a metrical version of four books of Homer's Odyssey, which was so well received, that, in 1675, he sent forth a translation of the remainder of that poem, and also of the whole Iliad. Here, according to Pope, Hobbes has given us a correct explanation of the sense in general; but for particulars and circumstances, he continually lops them, and often omits the most beautiful. He sometimes omits whole similes and sentences, and is now and then guilty of mistakes, into which no writer of his learning could have fallen but through carelessness. His poetry, as well as Ogilby's, is too mean for criticism. Nevertheless, the work became so popular, that three large editions were required within less than ten years. Hobbes was more successful as a translator in prose than in poetry; his version of the Greek historian Thucydides (which had appeared in 1629, and was the first work that he published) being still regarded as the best English translation of that author. Its faithfulness to the original is so great, that it frequently degenerates into servility. This work, he says, was undertaken by him from an honest desire of preventing, if pos-lity that the same may happen to us; for the evil sible, those disturbances in which he was apprehen- that happeneth to an innocent man may happen to sive that his country would be involved, by showing, every man. But when we see a man suffer for great in the history of the Peloponnesian war, the fatal crimes, which we cannot easily think will fall upon consequences of intestine troubles.' At Chatsworth, ourselves, the pity is the less. And therefore men are to which he retired in 1674 to spend the remainder apt to pity those whom they love; for whom they of his days, he continued to compose various works, love they think worthy of good, and therefore not the principal of which, entitled Behemoth, or a His-worthy of calamity. Thence it is also, that men pity

*

Forasmuch as God Almighty is incomprehensible, it followeth that we can have no conception or image of the Deity; and, consequently, all his attributes signify our inability and defect of power to conceive anything concerning his nature, and not any conception of the same, except only this, That there is a include a power of their producing, before they were God. For the effects, we acknowledge naturally, do produced; and that power presupposeth something existent that hath such power: and the thing so existing with power to produce, if it were not eternal, must needs have been produced by somewhat before it, and that, again, by something else before that, till we come to an eternal (that is to say, the first) Power of all Powers, and first Cause of all Causes: and this is it which all men conceive by the name of GOD, implying eternity, incomprehensibility, and omnipotency. And thus all that will consider may know that God is, though not what he is: even a man that is born blind, though it be not possible for him to have any imagination what kind of thing fire is, yet he cannot but know that something there is that men call fire, because it warmeth him.

[Pity and Indignation.]

Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity. But when it lighteth on such as we think have not deserved the same, the compassion is greater, because then there appeareth more probabi

the vices of some persons at the first sight only, out of love to their aspect. The contrary of pity is hardness of heart, proceeding either from slowness of imagination, or some extreme great opinion of their own exemption from the like calamity, or from hatred of all or most men.

Indignation is that grief which consisteth in the conception of good success happening to them whom they think unworthy thereof. Seeing, therefore, men think all those unworthy whom they hate, they think them not only unworthy of the good fortune they have, but also of their own virtues. And of all the passions of the mind, these two, indignation and pity, are most raised and increased by eloquence; for the aggravation of the calamity, an extenuation of the fault, augmenteth pity; and the extenuation of the worth of the person, together with the magnifying of his success, which are the parts of an orator, are able to turn these two passions into fury.

[Emulation and Envy.]

Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him.

[Laughter.]

There is a passion that hath no name; but the sign of it is that distortion of the countenance which we call laughter, which is always joy: but what joy, what we think, and wherein we triumph when we laugh, is not hitherto declared by any. That it consisteth in wit, or, as they call it, in the jest, experience confuteth; for men laugh at mischances and indecencies, wherein there lieth no wit nor jest at all. And forasmuch as the same thing is no more ridiculous when it groweth stale or usual, whatsoever it be that moveth laughter, it must be new and unexpected. Men laugh often (especially such as are greedy of applause from everything they do well) at their own actions performed never so little beyond their own expectations; as also at their own jests: and in this case it is manifest that the passion of laughter proceedeth from a sudden conception of some ability in himself that laugheth. Also, men laugh at the infirmities of others, by comparison wherewith their own abilities are set off and illustrated. Also

men laugh at jests, the wit whereof always consisteth in the elegant discovering and conveying to our minds some absurdity of another; and in this case also the passion of laughter proceeded from the sudden imagination of our own odds and eminency; for what is else the recommending of ourselves to our own good opinion, by comparison with another's man's infirmity or absurdity? For when a jest is broken upon ourselves, or friends, of whose dishonour we participate, we never laugh thereat. I may therefore conclude, that the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly; for men laugh at the follies of themselves past, when they come suddenly to remembrance, except they bring with them any present dishonour. It is no wonder, therefore, that men take heinously to be laughed at or derided; that is, triumphed over. Laughing without offence, must be at absurdities and infirmities abstracted from persons, and when all the company may laugh together; for laughing to one's self putteth all the rest into jealousy, and examination of themselves. Besides, it is vain glory, and an argument of little worth, to think the infirmity of another sufficient matter for his triumph.

[Love of Knowledge.]

Forasmuch as all knowledge beginneth from experience, therefore also new experience is the beginning of new knowledge, and the increase of experience the beginning of the increase of knowledge. Whatsoever, therefore, happeneth new to a man, giveth him matter of hope of knowing somewhat that he knew not before. And this hope and expectation of future knowledge from anything that happeneth new and strange, is that passion which we commonly call admiration; and the same considered as appetite, is called curiosity, which is appetite of knowledge. As in the discerning of faculties, man leaveth all community with beasts at the faculty of imposing names, so also doth he surmount their nature at this passion of curiosity. For when a beast seeth anything new and strange to him, he considereth it so far only as to discern whether it be likely to serve his turn or hurt him, and accordingly approacheth nearer to it, or fleeth from it: whereas man, who in most events remembereth in what manner they were caused and begun, looketh for the cause and beginning of everything that ariseth new unto him. And from this passion of admiration and curiosity, have arisen not only the invention of names, but also supposition of such causes of all things as they thought might produce them. And, from this beginning is derived all philosophy, as astronomy from the admiration of the course of heaven; natural philosophy from the strange effects of the elements and other bodies. And from the degrees of curiosity proceed also the degrees of knowledge amongst men; for, to a man in the chase of riches or authority (which in respect of knowledge are but sensuality), it is a diversity of little pleasure, whether it be the motion of the sun or the earth that maketh the day; or to enter into other contemplations of any strange accident, otherwise than whether it conduce or not to the end he pursueth. Because curiosity is delight, therefore also novelty is so; but especially that novelty from which a man conceiveth an opinion, true or false, of bettering his own estate; for, in such case, they stand affected with the hope that all gamesters have while the cards are shuffling.

The following passages are extracted from Hobbes's works on

The Necessity of the Will.

that is to say, whether he can write or forbear, speak The question is not, whether a man be a free agent, will to write, and the will to forbear, come upon him or be silent, according to his will; but whether the according to his will, or according to anything else in his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I to be an absurd speech. can do if I will; but to say, I can will if I will, I take

[In answer to Bishop Bramhall's assertion, that the doctrine of free will is the belief of all mankind, which we have not learned from our tutors, but is imprinted in our hearts by nature'] It is true, very few have learned from tutors, that a man is not free to will; nor do they find it much in books. That they find in books, that which the poets chaunt in the theatres, and the shepherds on the mountains, that which the pastors teach in the churches, and the doctors in the universities, and that which the common people in the markets and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto, is the same that I assent unto; namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will; but whether he hath freedom to will, is a question which it seems neither the bishop nor they ever thought on. * * A wooden top that is lashed by the boys, and runs about, sometimes to one wall, sometimes to another, sometimes spinning, sometimes

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