THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 



253 



expression sounds strange in these days, but is 

 strictly accurate — he was occupied with official 

 business till it was time to go to the House of 

 Commons, when he was, perhaps, already fagged 

 and jaded with work. 



Very different was Fox's mode of life during 

 the session. At noon, or one o'clock, his friends 

 would call on their chief and find him in bed, or 

 lounging about in his night-shirt, looking ex- 

 tremely unkempt, and (if the truth must be told) 

 dirty. A conversation would follow, plans 

 would be arranged, and, by-and-by, his toilet 

 done, and a cup of tea swallowed, Fox would 

 stroll down, fresh and vigorous, toward St. Ste- 

 phen's, to speak as no orator ever spoke since 

 Demosthenes. 



Tobacco has not till lately been so common a 

 weakness of the great as the fermented juice of 

 the grape ; but famous smokers would still make 

 a mighty and revered company. Among the ear- 

 liest of Britain's worthies whose devotion to the 

 weed was excessive, may he cited Hobbes. In Dr. 

 Rennet's " Memoirs of the Cavendish Family " 

 will be found a very interesting account of the 

 way in which the author of the " Leviathan " 

 loved to spend his day. "His professed rule of 

 health was to dedicate the morning to his exer- 

 cise, and the afternoon to his studies. At his 

 first rising, therefore, he walked out and climbed 

 any hill within his reaching ; or, if the weather was 

 not dry, he fatigued himself within-doors by some 

 exercise or other, to be in a sweat. . . . After 

 this he took a comfortable breakfast, and then 

 went round the lodgings to wait upon the earl, 

 the countess, and the children, and any consider- 

 able strangers, paying some short addresses to 

 all of them. [He was then living with Lord 

 Devonshire, sometimes at Chatsworth, and some- 

 times at Hardwicke.] He kept these rounds till 

 about twelve o'clock, when he had a little dinner 

 provided for him, which tie ate always by him- 

 self without ceremony. Soon after dinner he re- 

 tired to his study, and had his candle, with ten 

 or twelve pipes of tobacco, laid by him ; then, 

 shutting his door, he fell to smoking, thinking, 

 and writing, for several hours." 



Whatever may have been the abstract merits 

 of Hobbes's regimen, it appears to have agreed 

 with him, for he lived over ninety-one years. 

 The worst effect of the ten or twelve daily pipes 

 was probably to intensify the natural irritability 

 of his disposition ; for the soothing influence of 

 tobacco is only temporary, while its permanent 

 effect is the opposite of calming. S) at least 

 more than one distinguished physician has 



averred. That Hobbes was terribly peevish in 

 his old age there can be no doubt. We read that 

 " he did not easily brook contradiction." And, 

 to put it mildly, he had a somewhat excessive opin- 

 ion of his own powers. It was one of his boasts, 

 for instance, that, " though physics were a new 

 science, yet civil philosophy was still newer, 

 since it could not be styled older than his book 

 ' De Cive.' " One hardly remembers a more con- 

 ceited observation, unless it be Cobbett's advice 

 to young people as to the best books for them to 

 read : " Read my books. This does, it will doubt- 

 less be said, smell of the shop. No matter. Ex- 

 perience has taught me," etc. Among Cobbett's 

 weaknesses seems to have been a love of ale ; or, 

 perhaps it would be more accurate to say, a be- 

 lief that ale was preordained by the celestial pow- 

 ers as the natural and fit liquor for Britons to 

 quaff. The drinking of tea, which was becoming 

 common with every order of society in his time, 

 moved him to the fiercest indignation, as it had 

 in a former generation excited the fears of Dun- 

 can Forbes, who conceived that the brewing in- 

 terest would be ruined by the general adoption 

 of the new beverage. The lord president of the 

 Court of Session is reported to have rigorously 

 forbidden the consumption of tea by his own 

 servants — even to have dismissed a housemaid 

 who was taken pot-handed in the act. Duncan 

 Forbes little dreamed that the day would come 

 when statesmen would be loudly urged to sup- 

 port the tea interest and discourage the beer 

 interest. To return for a moment to Cobbett, it 

 would be unjust not to acknowledge that he was 

 himself of exemplary sobriety in an exceedingly 

 tipsy age. Indeed, he recommends pure water as 

 well as ale. But these two were, he thought, the 

 only rational drinks. His opinion may remind 

 some of Sydney Smith's statement that, when he 

 went to reside in Somersetshire, the servants he 

 had brought with him from Yorkshire seemed to 

 think the making of cider a tempting of Provi- 

 dence, which had clearly intended malt, and not 

 apples, as the legitimate produce out of which 

 man should find the means of intoxication. 



After all, there were some grave reasons for 

 Cobbett's objection to the habitual consumption 

 of tea and coffee (he denominated them both un- 

 der the generic term of " slops ") ; more than one 

 writer on the science of diet being of opinion that 

 Nature destined them rather as medicines than as 

 daily beverages. Both the one and the other 

 have been the weakness of hundreds to whose 

 intellects the world owes some of its choicest 

 treasures. Sir James Mackintosh went so far as 



