Note FU — THE 'LIVES' (continued 6)
Reading edition
(P. 341.) Aubrey, writing to Wood, on Feb. 3, 1672/3, enlarges on this treatise: Wood MS. F. 39, fol. 196v:—
'The old gent. (T. Hobbes) is strangely vigorous, for his understanding, still; and every morning walkes abroad to meditate.
'He haz writt a treatise concerning lawe, which 8 or 9 yeares since I much importuned him to doe, and, in order to it, gave him the Lord Chancellor Bacon's Maximes of the Lawe. Now every one will doe him the right to acknowledge he is rare for definitions, and the lawyers building on old-fashiond maximes (some right, some wrong) must need fall into severall paralogismes. Upon this consideration I was earnest with him to consider these things. To which he was unwilling, telling me he doubted he should not have dayes enough left to doe it.
'He drives on, in this, the king's prerogative high. Judge <Sir Matthew> Hales, who is no great courtier, has read it and much mislikes it, and is his enemy. Judge Vaughan has read it and much commends it.'