Steele was doomed even to lose the friendship of Addison amid political discords; but on that occasion Steele showed that his taste for literature could not be injured by political animosity. It was at the close of Addison's life, and on occasion of the Peerage Bill, Steele published "The Plebeian," a cry against enlarging the aristocracy. Addison replied with "The Old Whig," Steele rejoined without alluding to the person of his opponent. But "The Old Whig" could not restrain his political feelings, and contemptuously described "little Dicky, whose trade it was to write pamphlets." should take care of them;" got into the House "not to be arrested ;”— "his set speeches there, which he designs to get extempore to speak in the House." For his literary character we are told that "Steele was a jay who borrowed a feather from the peacock, another from the bullfinch, and another from the magpye; so that Dick is made up of borrowed colours; he borrowed his humour from Estcourt, criticism of Addison, his poetry of Pope, and his politics of Ridpath; so that his qualifications as a man of genius, like Mr. Ts, as a member of Parliament, lie in thirteen parishes." Such are the pillows made up for genius to rest its head on! Wagstaffe has sometimes delicate humour; Steele, who often wrote in haste, necessarily wrote incorrectly. Steele had this sentence : "And ALL, as one man, will join in a common indignation against ALL who would perplex our obedience :" on which our pleasant critic remarks-"Whatever contradiction there is, as some suppose, in all joining against all, our author has good authority for what he says; and it may be proved, in spite of Euclid or Sir Isaac, that everything consists of two alls, that these alls are capable of being divided and subdivided into as many alls as you please, and so ad infinitum. The following lines may serve for an illustration :

'Three children sliding on the ice

Upon a summer's day;
As it fell out, they all fell in;
The rest they ran away.'

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"Though this polite author does not directly say there are two alls, yet he implies as much; for I would ask any reasonable man what can be understood by the rest they ran away, but the other all we have been speaking of? The world may see that I can exhibit the beauties, as well as quarrel with the faults, of his composition, but I hope he will not value himself on his hasty productions."

Poor Steele, with the best humour, bore these perpetual attacks, not, however, without an occasional groan, just enough to record his feelings. In one of his wild, yet well-meant projects, of the invention of "a Fish-pool, or Vessel for Importing Fish Alive," 1718, he complains of calumnies and impertinent observations on him, and seems to lay some to the account of his knighthood:-"While he was pursuing what he believed might conduce to the common good, he gave the syllables Richard Steele to the publick, to be used and treated as they should think fit; he must go on in the same indifference, and allow the Town their usual liberty with his name, which I find they think they have much more room to sport with than formerly, as it is lengthened with the monosyllable SIR."

FF

Steele replied with his usual warmth; but indignant at the charge of "vassalage," he says, "I will end this paper, by firing every free breast with that noble exhortation of the tragedian

Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights,

The generous plan of power deliver'd down

From age to age, &c.

Thus delicately he detects the anonymous author, and thus energetically commends, while he reproves him!

Hooke (a Catholic), after he had written his "Roman History," published "Observations on Vertot, Middleton, &c., on the Roman Senate," in which he particularly treated Dr. Middleton with a disrespect for which the subject gave no occasion: this was attributed to the Doctor's offensive letter from Rome. Spelman, in replying to this concealed motive of the Catholic, reprehends him with equal humour and bitterness for his desire of roasting a Protestant parson.

Our taste, rather than our passions, is here concerned; but the moral sense still more so. The malice of faction has long produced this literary calamity; yet great minds have not always degraded themselves; not always resisted the impulse of their finer feelings, by hardening them into insensibility, or goading them in the fury of a misplaced revenge. How delightful it is to observe Marvell, the Presbyterian and Republican wit, with that generous temper that instantly discovers the alliance of genius, warmly applauding the great work of Butler, which covered his own party with odium and ridicule. "He is one of an excellent wit," says Marvell," and whoever dislikes the choice of his subject, cannot but commend the performance."*

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Clarendon's profound genius could not expand into the same liberal feelings. He highly commends May for his learning, his wit and language, and for his Supplement to Lucan, which he considered as one of the best epic poems in the English language;" but this great spirit sadly winces in the soreness of his feelings when he alludes to May's "History of the Parliament; then we discover that this late "ingenious person" performed his part "so meanly, that he seems to have lost his wit when he left his honesty." Behold the political criticism in literature! However we may incline to respect the feelings of Clarendon, this will not save his judgment nor

* "Rehearsal Transprosed," p. 45.

his candour. We read May now, as well as Clarendon; nor is the work of May that of a man who "had lost his wits," nor is it "meanly performed." Warburton, a keen critic of the writers of that unhappy and that glorious age for both parties, has pronounced this "History" to be "a just composition, according to the rules of history; written with much judgment, penetration, manliness, and spirit, and with a candour that will greatly increase your esteem, when you understand that he wrote by order of his masters the Parliament."

Thus have authors and their works endured the violations of party feelings; a calamity in our national literature which has produced much false and unjust criticism. The better spirit of the present times will maintain a safer and a more honourable principle,-the true objects of LITERATURE, the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, stand entirely unconnected with POLITICS and RELIGION, let this be the imprescriptible right of an author. In our free country unhappily they have not been separated-they run together, and in the ocean of human opinions, the salt and bitterness of these mightier waves have infected the clear waters from the springs of the Muses. I once read of a certain river that ran through the sea without mixing with it, preserving its crystalline purity and all its sweetness during its course; so that it tasted the same at the Line as at the Poles. This stream indeed is only to be found in the geography of an old romance; literature should be this magical stream!

*The late Gilbert Wakefield is an instance where the political and theological opinions of a recluse student tainted his pure literary works. Condemned as an enraged Jacobin by those who were Unitarians in politics, and rejected because he was a Unitarian in religion by the orthodox, poor Wakefield's literary labours were usually reduced to the value of waste-paper. We smile, but half in sorrow, in reading a letter, where he says, "I meditate a beginning, during the winter, of my criticisms on all the ancient Greek and Latin authors, by small piecemeals, on the cheapest possible paper, and at the least possible expense of printing. As I can never do more than barely indemnify myself, I shall print only 250 copies." He half-ruined himself by his splendid edition of Lucretius, which could never obtain even common patronage from the opulent friends of classical literature. Since his death it has been reprinted, and is no doubt now a marketable article for the bookseller; so that if some authors are not successful for themselves, it is a comfort to think how useful, in a variety of shapes, they are made so to others. Even Gilbert's "contracted scheme of publi cation" he was compelled to abandon ! Yet the classic erudition of Wakefield was confessed, and is still remembered. No one will doubt that we have lost a valuable addition to our critical stores by this literary persecution, were it only in the present instance; but examples are too numerous!

HOBBES, AND HIS QUARRELS;

INCLUDING

AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS CHARACTER.

WHY HOBBES disguised his sentiments-why his philosophy degraded him— of the sect of the HOBBISTS-his LEVIATHAN; its principles adapted to existing circumstances-the author's difficulties on its first appearancethe system originated in his fears, and was a contrivance to secure the peace of the nation—its duplicity and studied ambiguity illustrated by many facts-the advocate of the national religion-accused of atheismHOBBE's religion-his temper too often tried-attacked by opposite parties-Bishop FELL'S ungenerous conduct-makes HOBBES regret that juries do not consider the quarrels of authors of any moment-the mysterious panic which accompanied him through life-its probable cause he pretends to recant his opinions-he is speculatively bold, and practically timorous-an extravagant specimen of the anti-social philosophy--the SELFISM of HOBBES-his high sense of his works, in regard to foreigners and posterity-his montrous egotism-his devotion to his literary pursuits-the despotic principle of the LEVIATHAN of an innocent tendency-the fate of systems of opinions.

THE history of the philosopher of Malmesbury exhibits a large picture of literary controversy, where we may observe how a persecuting spirit in the times drives the greatest men to take refuge in the meanest arts of subterfuge. Compelled to disguise their sentiments, they will not, however, suppress them; and hence all their ambiguous proceedings, all that ridicule and irony, and even recantation, with which ingenious minds, when forced to their employ, have never failed to try the patience, or the sagacity, of intolerance.*

The

* Shaftesbury has thrown out, on this head, some important truths :"If men are forbid to speak their minds seriously, they will do it ironically. If they find it dangerous to do so, they will then redouble their disguise, involve themselves into mysteriousness, and talk so as hardly to be understood. The persecuting spirit has raised the bantering one. higher the slavery, the more exquisite the buffoonery."-Vol. i. p. 71. The subject of our present inquiry is a very remarkable instance of "involving himself into mysteriousness." To this cause we owe the strong raillery of Marvell; the cloudy "Oracles of Reason" of Blount; and the formidable, though gross burlesque, of Hickeringill, the rector of All

The character of Hobbes will, however, serve a higher moral design. The force of his intellect, the originality of his views, and the keenest sagacity of observation, place him. in the first order of minds; but he has mortified, and then degraded man into a mere selfish animal. From a cause we shall discover, he never looked on human nature but in terror or in contempt. The inevitable consequence of that mode of thinking, or that system of philosophy, is to make the philosopher the abject creature he has himself imagined; and it is then he libels the species from his own individual experience.* Saints, in Colchester. "Of him (says the editor of his collected works, 1716), the greatest writers of our times trembled at his pen ; and as great a genius as Sir Roger L'Estrange's was, it submitted to his superior way of reasoning"-that is, to a most extraordinary burlesque spirit in polities and religion. But even he who made others tremble felt the terrors he inflicted; for he complains that "some who have thought his pen too sharp and smart, those who have been galled, sore men where the skin's off, have long lain to catch for somewhat to accuse me-upon such touchy subjects, a man had need have the dexterity to split a hair, to handle them pertinently, usefully, and yet safely and warily."-Such men, however, cannot avoid their fate: they will be persecuted, however they succeed in "splitting a hair;" and it is then they have recourse to the most absurd subterfuges, to which our Hobbes was compelled. Thus also it happened to Woolston, who wrote in a ludicrous way "Blasphemies" against the miracles of Christ; calling them "tales and rodomontados." He rested

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his defence on this subterfuge, that "it was meant to place the Christian religion on a better footing," &c. But the Court answered, that "if the author of a treasonable libel should write at the conclusion, God save the king it would not excuse him."

*The moral axiom of Solon "KNOW THYSELF" (Nosce teipsum), applied by the ancient sage as a corrective for our own pride and vanity, Hobbes contracts into a narrow principle, when, in his introduction to "The Leviathan," he would infer that, by this self-inspection, we are enabled to determine on the thoughts and passions of other men; and thus he would make the taste, the feelings, the experience of the individual decide for all mankind. This simple error has produced all the dogmas of cynicism; for the cynic is one whose insulated feelings, being all of the selfish kind, can imagine no other stirrer of even our best affections, and strains even our loftiest virtues into pitiful motives. Two noble authors, men of the most dignified feelings, have protested against this principle. Lord Shaftesbury keenly touches the characters of Hobbes and Rochester :"Sudden courage, says our modern philosopher (Hobbes), is anger. If so, courage, considered as constant, and belonging to a character, must, in his account, be defined constant anger, or anger constantly recurring. All men, says a witty poet (Rochester), would be cowards, if they durst: that the poet and the philosopher both were cowards, may be yielded, perhaps, without dispute ! they may have spoken the best of their knowledge."SHAFTESBURY, vol. i. p. 119.

With an heroic spirit, that virtuous statesman, Lord Clarendon, rejects the degrading notion of Hobbes. When he looked into his own breast, he