HIVE HOBBES. 



705 



wrote a work with the following title Historia de 

 Jos Vandos de los Zegris y Abencerrages, Caballeros 

 Moros de Grenada ; de las civiles Guerras c/ue hubo 

 en ella, y Batallas particulares que hubo en la Vega 

 entre Moros y Christianas, hasta que el Rey D. Fer- 

 nando V. la gano. Sacada de un Libra Arabigo, 

 cuyo Autor de Vista fuc tin Moro, llamado Haben 

 Hamin, Natural de Grenada ; y traducida en Cas- 

 tellano por Gines Perez de Hita. It is now generally 

 conceded, that this work is not a translation. It 

 has been attacked on account of the romantic stories 

 it contains ; but it remains popular, and furnished 

 Florian most of the materials for his Gonsalve de 

 Cordoue. 



HIVE. See Bee. 



HO (river, canal) ; a Chinese word ; as, Hoang-Ho 

 (yellow river) ; Yrt-Ho (royal canal). 



HOBART TOWN; the capital of Van Diemen's 

 Land ; on the south side of the island, in Buckingham 

 county; lat. 42 54' S.; Ion. 147 22' E.; on the 

 right bank of the Derwent, twelve miles above its 

 entrance into Sullivan's cove. It has a picturesque 

 situation at the foot of Table or Wellington moun- 

 tain, which is upwards of 4000 feet high. The town 

 is extensive, regularly laid out, and has eleven streets, 

 a church, a government-house, a jail, barracks, and 

 several handsome brick houses, though most of the 

 houses are of wood. The climate is healthy and 

 temperate. It is the chief town of an English settle- 

 ment on the Derwent, which contained, in 1818, 

 2804 inhabitants, of whom 1348 were convicts ; hi 

 1829, 5700. There were, in 1829, four newspapers 

 published in this place, and a quarterly pamphlet 

 called Austral- Asiatic Review. See Diemen's Land, 

 Van. 



HOBBES, THOMAS ; a celebrated moral and poli- 

 tical writer and philosopher of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. He was born April 5, 1588, within the 

 borough of Malmesbury in Wiltshire. In 1603, he 

 became a student of Magdalen hall, Oxford. In 

 1610, he set out on a tour with the son of lord 

 Hardwicke (afterwards earl of Devonshire), through 

 France and Italy ; and, after his return to England, 

 he resided several years in the Devonshire family, as 

 secretary to lord Hardwicke. During this period, 

 Hobbes became acquainted with lord Bacon (some of 

 whose works he translated into Latin), lord Herbert 

 of Cherbury, and Ben Jonson. The first performance 

 which he published was a translation of the history 

 of Thucydides. On a subsequent visit to the con- 

 tinent, he became acquainted with Gassendi, at Paris, 

 and Galileo, at Pisa. In 1637, he returned to 

 England, and resided much at Chatsworth till 1641, 

 when, alarmed at the probability of political com- 

 motions, he went to Paris. He staid abroad some 

 years, and, during that time, published most of his 

 works. In 1642 first appeared his treatise De Give, 

 afterwards published in England, with the title of 

 Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and 

 Society, or a Dissertation concerning Man in his 

 several Habitudes and Respects as a Member of 

 Society, first Secular, and then Sacred. His writings 

 on the mathematics are not important. Yet he was 

 employed to teach prince Charles (afterwards Charles 

 II.) the elements of mathematical philosophy. In 1650 

 was published, in London, a small treatise by Hobbes, 

 entitled Human Nature; and another, De Corpore 

 Politico, or Elements of the Law. But the most 

 remarkable of his works is his Leviathan, or the 

 Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, ec- 

 clesiastical and civil (printed in London, 1651, folio). 

 This greatly alarmed the ecclesiastics of those days, 

 and drew on the author much literary hostility. 

 Returning to England, he was well received by the i 

 Devonshire family, in which he passed the remainder 



of his life. He continued to employ his pen on 

 philosophical topics; and, in 1654, lie published a 

 Letter upon Liberty and Necessity. In 1658 ap- 

 peared his Dissertation on Man, which completed 

 his philosophical system, a work containing some 

 singular notions relative to the moral and intellectual 

 faculties of the human species. After the restoration, 

 Hobbes was favourably received by the king, who 

 promised him his protection, and settled on him a 

 pension of 100 a year out of his privy purse. He 

 was visited by Cosmo de' Medici, then prince, and 

 afterwards duke of Tuscany, and by other foreigners 

 of distinction. In 1666, his Leviathan was censured 

 in parliament, and a bill was introduced into the 

 house of commons, to provide for the punishment of 

 atheism and profaneness, which gave him great un- 

 easiness. On this occasion he composed a learned 

 and ingenious work, entitled a Historical Narration 

 concerning Heresy and the punishment thereof, to 

 show that he was not legally chargeable with heresy 

 in writing and publishing his Leviathan. Among the 

 principal literary labours of his later years, were 

 translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, in verse, 

 which passed through three editions within ten years, 

 though utterly destitute of poetical merit. His De- 

 cameron Physiologicum, or Ten Dialogues of Natural 

 Philosophy, was published in 1678 ; as was also a 

 Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of 

 the Common Law of England; and, in 1679, he 

 consigned to the care of a bookseller, his Behemoth, 

 or a History of the Civil Wars from 1640 to 1660, 

 which did not appear till after his death. That event 

 took place Dec. 4, 1679, at Hardwicke, a seat of 

 the earl of Devonshire, in Derbyshire. 



Few authors have encountered more opposition 

 than the philosopher of Malmesbury. The imputa- 

 tion of irreligion was brought against him by his lite- 

 rary antagonists, and the charge has been renewed 

 even in our' own times. He has been unjustly charg- 

 ed with atheism ; but it cannot be denied that there 

 are few persons whose works, owing to the extra- 

 ordinary abilities of the writer, and the singularity 

 of his notions, the dogmatical manner in which they 

 are delivered, and the agreeableness of the style, 

 have had more influence in spreading infidelity anil 

 irreligion, though none of them are directly levelled 

 against revealed religion. The merit of Hobbes 

 consists in having successfully applied the inductive 

 method of reasoning, recommended by Bacon, to the 

 investigation of mental philosophy. In his search 

 after truth, he is startled by no consequences to which 

 the inquiry may lead, his object being to ascertain the 

 boundaries of knowledge, and to show where the im- 

 perfection of human intellect renders our creed a 

 matter of conventional authority. He admits the 

 being of a God, but asserts that incorporeal substances 

 are nonentities. Religion, he says, originated from 

 the fear of power invisible, imagined by the 

 mind of man. He also asserts the materiality and 

 mortality of the human soul, or rather treats the dis- 

 tinction between soul and body as an error. He 

 states the Pentateuch, and other sacred histories of 

 the Jews, to be no older than the time of Ezra, and 

 that the Christian Scriptures were not received by 

 the church as of divine authority till the settlement 

 of the canon by the council of Laodicea, A. D. 364. 

 Both with respect to religion and government, he 

 ascribes great weight to the will of the civil magis- 

 trate. And his sentiments on this point, together 

 with his doctrine that a state of nature must be a 

 state of perpetual hostility, in which brute force must 

 upersede law and every other principle of action, 

 have perhaps been most generally objected to. Yet 

 his claim of obedience to existing authorities is quali- 

 fied by the assertion that it is no longer due than 



