Note 369 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 4)

The story his antagonist (Dr. Wallis) relates is perfectly in character. Hobbes, to show the Countess of Devonshire his attachment to life, declared that “were he master of all the world to dispose of, he would give it to live one day.” “But you have so many friends to oblige, had you the world to dispose of!” “Shall I be the better for that when I am dead?” “No,” repeated the sublime cynic, “I would give the whole world to live one day.” He asserted that “it was lawful to make use of ill instruments to do ourselves good,” and illustrated it thus:—“Were I cast into a deep pit, and the devil should put down his cloven foot, I would take hold of it to be drawn out by it.” It must be allowed this is a philosophy which has a chance of being long popular; but it is not that of another order of human beings! Hobbes would not, like Curtius, have leaped into a “deep pit” for his country; or, to drop the fable, have died for it in the field or on the scaffold, like the Falklands, the Sidneys, the Montroses—all the heroic brotherhood of genius! One of his last expressions, when informed of the approaches of death, was—“I shall be glad to find a hole to creep out of the world at.” Everything was seen in a little way by this great man, who, having reasoned himself into an abject being, “licked the dust” through life.