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HOBBES 



HOCCLEVE 



Prince Charles in 1647, and the latter always con- 

 tinued to take a friendly interest in his old pre- 

 ceptor ; but on the publication of Leviathan the 

 author was informed that the young king refused 

 to see him. With constitutional timidity he once 

 more took refuge in flight. He returned to Eng- 

 land in the end of 1651, and sent in his sub- 

 mission to the government of the Commonwealth, 

 it being one of the principles with which Leviathan 

 concludes that an ordinary citizen has a right to 

 turn to a new power that can give protection, how- 

 ever little he may approve of the circumstances of 

 its origin. Hobbes settled in London to work out 

 the remaining parts of his scheme. The De Corpore 

 appeared in 1655, and the De Homine, a rather 

 perfunctory revision of the old Human Nature 

 (with expansion on the side of optical theory), in 

 1658. From 1654 onwards Hobbes was engaged 

 in almost perpetual controversy, first with Bram- 

 hall on liberty and necessity, and then with Ward, 

 Wallis, and Boyle in defence of his own hopelessly 

 indefensible mathematical ideas, which involved 

 the quadrature of the circle and similar absurdities. 

 The second controversy dragged over a quarter of a 

 century, Hobbes's last blow being delivered after 

 he had completed his ninetieth year. After the 

 Restoration Charles granted him a pension of 

 100, and is said to have been always delighted 

 with the old man's wit and repartees, but the 

 bishops and the church party looked with no favour 

 upon the author of Leviathan. A series of attacks 

 upon the book began to appear, and it was con- 

 demned by the House of Commons in 1666. Three 

 of his later works Behemoth, The Common Laws, 

 and a metrical Historia Ecclesiastica, all written 

 about 1670 he was obliged to leave unpublished 

 ( though Behemoth issued surreptitiously from the 

 press just before his death). A collected edition 

 of his Latin works in 1668 had to appear at 

 Amsterdam. At the age of eighty-four Hobbes 

 amused himself by writing an autobiography in 

 Latin verse, and within the next three years he 

 completed a verse translation of the Iliad and the 

 Odyssey. In 1675 he left London, and the rest of 

 his days were spent at Hardwick and Chatsworth, 

 the two Derbyshire seats of the Devonshire family. 

 He died at Hardwick on the 4th December 1679, in 

 his ninety-second year. 



Hobbes stands between Bacon and Locke as the 

 second in order of time of the great English philo- 

 sophers, but he stands apart from both. It is by 

 his contributions to scientific psychology, to ethics, 

 and to political theory that he takes rank as an 

 original thinker. In the present century attention 

 has been drawn afresh to his acute psychological 

 analyses by James Mill and the English association- 

 ists. His ethical theory, based on pure selfishness 

 on the one hand and the arbitrary prescription 

 of a sovereign power on the other, determined 

 negatively the whole course of ethical speculation 

 in England for a hundred years. Cumberland, Cud- 

 worth, and Clarke, and in a somewhat less degree 

 Shaftesbury and Butler, are in the first instance 

 critics and opponents of Hobbes. His political 

 absolutism, however, is the most famous part of 

 his speculations. The state of nature, he argues, 

 is a state of war and insecurity (homo homini 

 lupus}. Moved by a desire to escape from the 

 intolerable evils of such a condition, human beings 

 enter into a species of contract by which they 

 surrender their individual rights, and constitute a 

 state under an absolute sovereignty. The sovereign 

 power need not be monarchical (though Hobbes's 

 individual preference is for that form of govern- 

 ment), but, whatever form it assume, it is absolute 

 and irresponsible. It was far from the intention of 

 Hobbes to justify tyranny, but Leviathan was to 

 him like 'a mortal god,' the only guarantee for 



security and settled government. The theory was 

 substantially adopted by Spinoza ; and, stripped of 

 their accidental features, Hobbes's ethico-political 

 ideas had great influence upon the philosophical 

 Radicals of the 19th century. No account of 

 Hobbes would be complete which omitted to- 

 mention his admirably clear and trenchant style. 

 A collected edition of his works was published by 

 Sir W. Molesworth in 16 vols. (1839-45). The best 

 account of his life and his place in the history 

 of thought is to be found in Professor Croom 

 Robertson's Hobbes ( Blackwood's ' Philosophical 

 Classics,' 1886). 



Hobby. See FALCON. 



Hobhouse, JOHN CAM, the friend of Byron, 

 was born in 1786, and was educated at West- 

 minster and Trinity College, Cambridge. His 

 Journey through Albania with Lord Byron he 

 published in 1813. An advanced Liberal in poli- 

 tics, he stood for Westminster in 1818 without 

 success, but was returned by a large majority in 

 1820, and sat later for both Nottingham and 

 Harwich. Successively Irish Secretary, First 

 Commissioner of Woods and Forests, and Presi- 

 dent of the Board of Control, he succeeded to Ids 

 father's baronetcy in 1831, was created Baron 

 Broughton in 1851, and died without male heirs, 

 3d June 1869, when the peerage became extinct,, 

 while the baronetcy passed to his nephew. 



Ho'bokeil, a city in New Jersey, on the west 

 bank of the Hudson River, adjacent to Jersey city, 

 and opposite New York, with which it is connected 

 by several steam -ferries. It is the terminus of the- 

 Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, 

 and has a large shipping trade, especially in coal j 

 iron-castings and lead-pencils are among the prin- 

 cipal manufactures ; and three lines of European 

 steamships start from the port. The Stevens In- 

 stitute of Technology here is one of the chief 

 schools of its kind in the United States. Pop, 

 (1880) 30,999 ; ( 1890) 43,648 ; ( 1900) 59,364. The 

 name of this city commemorates in the New World 

 a village to the south-west of Antwerp, with a new 

 fort and new docks. 



Hobsoil-Jobson, a term given by English 

 soldiers in India to the Moharram festival ; being 

 a corruption of the Shiite cry (see SHIITES), Ya 

 Hasan ! Ya Hosain. The name was adopted for 

 the Anglo-Indian glossary by Colonel Yule and Mr 

 Burnell (1886). 



Hoccleve, or OCCLEVE, THOMAS (probably so- 

 named from the village of Hocclough in Northum- 

 berland), an English poet of whom but little is 

 known save that he was born about 1368, was a 

 clerk in the Exchequer, and was writing verse so- 

 late as 1448. His chief work is a free, and it must 

 be confessed tedious, version of the De Regimine 

 Principum of ^Egidius Romanus, over five thousand 

 lines in length, and written in Chaucer's seven -line 

 stanza. A prologue, about one-third of the whole 

 in length, begins the work, and here the author 

 tells us a good deal about himself and his troubles. 

 The most interesting passage is that in which he 

 speaks out his grief for the death of his great master 

 Chaucer, the ' floure of eloquence ' and ' mirrour of 

 f ructuous entendement. ' The poem was edited by 

 T. Wright for the Roxburghe Club in 1860. Many 

 other poems are ascribed to Hoccleve, some still un- 

 printed. Some of these are stories from the Gesta, 

 Romanorum, as that of Jonathas, son of King 

 Darius, and the wicked woman, whicli was 

 modernised by W. Browne and printed in his Shep- 

 heards Pipe (1614), where he pays his original a 

 most graceful poetical compliment far beyond his 

 deserts. His Minor Poems and his Compleint have 

 been edited by Dr Furnivall for the Early English 

 Text Society. 



