xiv Editor's Preface 



Marquis had raised, and with so many difficulties preserved, 

 was in a moment cast away and destroyed, so transported him 

 with passion and despair, that he could not compose himself 

 to think of beginning the work again, and involving himself 

 in the same undelightful condition of life, from which he might 

 now be free. He hoped his past meritorious actions might 

 outweigh his present abandoning the thought of future action ; 

 and so without further consideration, as hath been said, he 

 transported himself out of the kingdom.' 1 



Very similar is the judgment passed on Newcastle by 

 another contemporary, Sir Philip Warwick. ' He was a 

 gentleman of grandeur, generosity, loyalty, and steady and 

 forward courage ; but his edge had too much of the razor in 

 it : for he had a tincture of a romantic spirit, and had the 

 misfortune to have somewhat of the poet in him : so as he 

 chose Sir William Davenant, an eminent good poet, and loyal 

 gentleman, to be lieutenant-general of his ordnance. This 

 inclination of his own and such kind of witty society (to be 

 modest in the expression of it) diverted many counsels, and 

 lost many opportunities, which the nature of that affair this 

 great man had now entered into required.' 2 



The very defects which, according to these two authorities, 

 prevented Newcastle from being a successful general, have 

 given him an additional claim to the remembrance of posterity. 

 His own writings, and his patronage of other writers, combine 

 to secure him a niche in the literature of his age. 



Newcastle's intimacy with Hobbes is attested by the stories 

 which the Duchess tells in order to illustrate her husband's 

 ' natural understanding and observation ' (p. 106). Their 

 acquaintance began long before they were fellow-exiles, as 

 the letters from Hobbes to Newcastle, written between 1634 

 and 1637, sufficiently attest. These letters, now preserved 

 at Welbeck, were published in 1893 in the Report of the His- 

 torical Manuscripts Commission on the Duke of Portland's 

 Papers (vol ii, pp. 124-30). The intimacy owed its origin 

 to Newcastle's interest in science and philosophy. Hobbes 

 communicated to Newcastle his observations and experi- 

 ments about light, motion, and other scientific questions, 

 and his opinions about books. In one letter he mentions the 

 publication of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's De Veritate, ' a 



1 Rebellion, viii, 82, 85, 87. 2 Memoirs, p. 235. 



