system by giving his psychology. The treatise, however, published under that title in 1658 was a mere makeshift, containing some psychology less systematic than that which he had already published, and a Latin translation of some chapters on optics from an unpublished treatise written by him in 1646 (now in Harleian MS. 3360). Hobbes's labours had been interrupted, not only by the advance of age, but by a number of controversies which lasted the rest of his life. After the discussion in presence of the Marquis of Newcastle Hobbes had answered a written statement of Bramhall's position by a reply which remained in manuscript. He had allowed a translation to be made by a young Englishman for the satisfaction of a French friend. The translator had taken a copy, which he published in 1654 without Hobbes's privity, prefixing a letter in denunciation of priests and ministers. Bramhall, indignant at this proceeding, which he naturally ascribed to Hobbes, printed in 1655 all that had passed, including a long rejoinder to Hobbes's argument. Hobbes in 1656 published a reply to Bramhall, called ‘Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance,’ clearing himself of the personal charges, and replying with remarkable vigour upon the philosophical question. Bramhall replied in ‘Castigations of Hobbes's Animadversions’ in 1658, with an appendix called ‘The Catching of Leviathan the Great Whale.’ Hobbes did not carry on the argument, but in 1668 replied to the charges of atheism and blasphemy (of which he declared that he had now heard for the first time) in ‘An Answer to … Dr. Bramhall,’ not published till 1682. The argument upon necessity shows Hobbes at his best.
A more unfortunate dispute arose with the mathematicians. The group of scientific men who after the Restoration founded the Royal Society were already meeting at Oxford. Seth Ward [q. v.] was Savilian professor of astronomy during the protectorate, and in his ‘Vindiciæ Academicæ’ (1654) asserted against John Webster's ‘Examen of Academies’ that the university had now made advances in science which, as he added in an appendix, would enable it to judge the geometrical novelties of which Hobbes had already boasted. Hobbes, in his ‘De Corpore’ (1655), retorted upon Ward, and produced his solutions of some ancient puzzles, especially the squaring of the circle. Ward replied by an ‘Exercitatio’ upon Hobbes's philosophy a year later; but turned over the mathematical argument to another of the circle, the famous John Wallis, Savilian professor of geometry. Wallis's ‘Elenchus Geometriæ Hobbianæ’ showed unsparingly the manifold absurdities of Hobbes's solutions, and by an ingenious examination of an early copy of the book, exposed his hopeless attempts, made in consequence of Ward's remarks, to patch up the faulty demonstrations. Further replies and rejoinders followed, in which, while Wallis was clearly victorious as to the mathematical questions, the disputants rivalled each other in abuse and verbal quibbling. The controversy was renewed by Hobbes in 1660, by an examination in dialogue form of Wallis's mathematical works, which, failing to bring Wallis into the field, was succeeded by a solution of the duplication of the cube brought out anonymously by Hobbes in Paris. As soon as Wallis refuted this Hobbes acknowledged it, and reproduced it at the end of a ‘Dialogus Physicus, sive, de Natura Aeris,’ an attack upon Boyle's ‘New Experiments touching the Spring of the Air.’ Hobbes resented his exclusion from the founders of the Royal Society, and attributed their coldness to the malignity of Wallis. He made an unpleasant allusion to Wallis's achievement in his deciphering the king's papers taken after Naseby. Boyle answered Hobbes, and Wallis, out of regard (as he said) for Boyle, once more demolished Hobbes's mathematics in ‘Hobbius Heauton-timorumenos’ (1662). He ventured, however, to add that Hobbes had written the ‘Leviathan’ in support of Cromwell, to which Hobbes replied effectively in his ‘Considerations upon the Refutation, Loyalty, Manners, and Religion of Thomas Hobbes,’ 1662. In 1666 Hobbes once more took up the hopeless task of defending his own fantasies and attacking Wallis. Wallis published his last retort in 1672. Hobbes in 1674 again published some of his pretended solutions, and as late as 1678, at the age of ninety, fired his last shot in the ‘Decameron Physiologicum.’
Hobbes lived after the Restoration at his patron's houses in London and the country. Charles II, two or three days after his return to England, saw Hobbes in the Strand, and spoke kindly to him. Afterwards, while sitting to Samuel Cooper, the miniature-painter, the king amused himself by talking to Hobbes. Hobbes could match the courtiers at repartee, and the king would say, ‘Here comes the bear to be baited’ (Aubrey and Sorberiana, 1694, p. 109). Charles also gave him a pension of 100l., which was paid as irregularly as other pensions of the time (see Hobbes's Petition, E. vii. 471). The bishops and Clarendon, however, looked upon the author of the ‘Leviathan’ with suspicion. In 1666 a committee of the House of Commons, appointed to consider a bill against ‘Atheism and Profaneness,’ was empowered
