mastered as he did the still life of woods and hedges, or mills and pools. Nor can we believe that he obtained this mastery otherwise than by constantly dwelling in the same neighbourhood, say in Guelders or on the Dutch Westphalian border, where day after day he might study the branching and foliage of trees and underwood embowering cottages and mills, under every variety of light, in every shade of transparency, in all changes produced by the seasons. Though his landscapes are severely and moderately toned, generally in an olive key, and often attuned to a puritanical grey or russet, they surprise us, not only by the variety of their leafage, but by the finish of their detail as well as the boldness of their touch. With astonishing subtlety light is shown penetrating cloud, and illuminating, sometimes transiently, sometimes steadily, different portions of the ground, shining through leaves upon other leaves, and multiplying in an endless way the transparency of the picture. If the chance be given him he mirrors all these things in the still pool near a cottage, the reaches of a sluggish river, or the swirl of the stream that feeds a busy mill. The same spot will furnish him with several pictures. One mill gives him repeated opportunities of charming our eye; and this wonderful artist, who is only second to Ruysdael because he had not Ruysdael’s versatility and did not extend his study equally to downs and rocky eminences, or torrents and estuaries—this is the man who lived penuriously, died poor, and left no trace in the artistic annals of his country! It has been said that Hobbema did not paint his own figures, but transferred that duty to Adrian van de Velde, Lingelbach, Barendt Gael, and Abraham Storck. As to this much is conjecture.
The best of Hobbema’s dated pictures are those of the years 1663 to 1667. Of the former, several in the galleries of Brussels and St Petersburg, and one in the Holford collection, are celebrated. Of 1665 fine specimens are at Grosvenor House and the Wallace collection. Of seven pieces in the National Gallery, including the “Avenue at Middelharnis,” which some assign to 1689, and the “Ruins of Brederode Castle,” two are dated 1667. A sample of the last of these years is also in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. Amongst the masterpieces in private hands in England may be noticed two landscapes in Buckingham Palace, two at Bridgewater House, and one belonging to Mr Walter of Bearwood. On the continent are a “Wooded Landscape” in the Berlin gallery, a “Forest” belonging to the duchess of Sagan in Paris, and a “Glade” in the Louvre. There are other fine Hobbemas in the Antwerp Museum, the Arenberg gallery at Brussels, and the Belvedere at Vienna. (J. A. C.)
HOBBES, THOMAS (1588–1679), English philosopher, second
son of Thomas Hobbes, was born at Westport (now part of
Malmesbury, Wiltshire) on the 5th of April 1588. His father,
vicar of Charlton and Westport, an illiterate and choleric man,
quarrelled, it is said, with a brother clergyman at the church door,
and was forced to decamp, leaving his three children to the care
of an elder brother Francis, a flourishing glover at Malmesbury.
Thomas Hobbes was put to school at Westport church at the age
of four, passed to the Malmesbury school at eight, and was
taught again in Westport later at a private school kept by a
young man named Robert Latimer, fresh from Oxford and “a
good Grecian.” He had begun Latin and Greek early, and under
Latimer made such progress as to be able to translate the Medea
of Euripides into Latin iambic verse before he was fourteen.
About the age of fifteen he was sent to Oxford and entered at
Magdalen Hall. During his residence, the first principal of
Magdalen Hall, John Hussee, was succeeded by John Wilkinson,
who ruled in the interest of the Calvinistic party in the university.
Thus early was he brought into contact with the aggressive
Puritan spirit. Apart from this, Hobbes owed little to his university
training, which was based on the scholastic logic then
prevalent. We have from himself a lively record of his student
life (Vit. carm. exp. p. lxxxv.), which, though penned in extreme
old age, may be taken as trustworthy. He tells how, when he had
slowly taken in the doctrine of logical figures and moods, he put
it aside and would prove things only in his own way; how he
then heard about bodies as consisting of matter and form, as
throwing off species of themselves for perception, and as moved
by sympathies and antipathies, with much else of a like sort, all
beyond his comprehension; and how he therefore turned to his
old books again, fed his mind on maps and charts of earth and
sky, traced the sun in his path, followed Drake and Cavendish
girdling the main, and gazed with delight upon pictured haunts of
men and wonders of unknown lands. Very characteristic is the
interest in men and things, and the disposition to cut through
questions in the schools after a trenchant fashion of his own.
He was little attracted by the scholastic learning, though it
would be wrong to take his words as evidence of a precocious
insight into its weakness. The truth probably is that he took no
interest in studies which there was no risk in neglecting, and
thought as little of rejecting as of accepting the traditional
doctrines. He adds that he took his degree at the proper time;
but in fact, upon any computation and from whatever cause, he
remained at Magdalen Hall five, instead of the required four,
years, not being admitted as bachelor till the 5th of February
1608.
In the same year Hobbes was recommended by Wilkinson as tutor to the son of William Cavendish, baron of Hardwick (afterwards 2nd earl of Devonshire), and thus began a lifelong connexion with a great and powerful family. Twice it was loosened—once, for a short time, after twenty years, and again, for a longer period, during the Civil War—but it never was broken. Hobbes spoke of the first years of his tutorship as the happiest of his life. Young Cavendish was hardly younger than Hobbes, and had been married, a few months before, at the instance of the king, to Christiana, the only daughter of Edward, Lord Bruce of Kinloss, though by reason of the bride’s age, which was only twelve years, the pair had no establishment for some time. Hobbes was his companion rather than tutor (before becoming secretary); and, growing greatly attached to each other, they were sent abroad together on the grand tour in 1610. During this journey, the duration of which cannot be precisely stated, Hobbes acquired some knowledge of French and Italian, and also made the important discovery that the scholastic philosophy which he had learned in Oxford was almost universally neglected in favour of the scientific and critical methods of Galileo, Kepler and Montaigne. Unable at first to cope with their unfamiliar ideas, he determined to become a scholar, and until 1628 was engaged in a careful study of Greek and Latin authors, the outcome of which was his great translation of Thucydides. But Translation of Thucydides. when he had finished his work he kept it lying by him for years, being no longer so sure of finding appreciative readers; and when he did send it forth, in 1628, he was fain to be content with “the few and better sort.”[1] That he was finally determined to publication by the political troubles of the year 1628 may be regarded as certain, not only from his own express declaration at a later time (Vit. carm. exp.), but also from unmistakable hints in the account of the life and work of his author prefixed to the translation on its appearance. This was the year of the Petition of Right, extorted from the king in the third parliament he had tried within three years of his accession; and, in view of Hobbes’s later activity, it is significant that he came forward just then, at the mature age of forty, with his version of the story of the Athenian democracy as the first production of his pen. Nothing else is known of his doings
- ↑ The translation, under the title Eight Books of the Peloponnesian War, written by Thucydides the son of Olorus, interpreted with faith and diligence immediately out of the Greek by Thomas Hobbes, secretary to the late Earl of Devonshire, appeared in 1628 (or 1629), after the death of the earl, to whom touching reference is made in the dedication. It reappeared in 1634, with the date of the dedication altered, as if then newly written. Though Hobbes claims to have performed his work “with much more diligence than elegance,” his version is remarkable as a piece of English writing, but is by no means accurate. It fills vols. viii. and ix. in Molesworth’s collection (11 vols., including index vol.) of Hobbes’s English Works (London, Bohn, 1839–1845). The volumes of this collection will here be cited as E. W. Molesworth’s collection of the Latin Opera philosophica (5 vols., 1839–1845) will be cited as L.W. The five hundred and odd Latin hexameters under the title De mirabilibus Pecci (L.W. v. 323–340), giving an account of a short excursion from Chatsworth to view the seven wonders of the Derbyshire Peak, were written before 1628 (in 1626 or 1627), though not published till 1636. It was a New Year’s present to his patron, who gave him £5 in return. A later edition, in 1678, included an English version by another hand.
