refore by such motion heat was to be
acquired, and moisture expelled; after this he took a breakfast, and
then went round the lodgings to wait upon the earl, the countess, and
the children, and any considerable strangers, paying some short
addresses to them all. He kept these rounds till about 12 o'clock,
when he had a little dinner provided for him, which he eat always by
himself without ceremony. Soon after dinner he retired into his study,
and had his candle, with ten or twelve pipes of tobacco laid by him,
then shutting the door he fell to smoaking and thinking, and writing
for several hours.'

He retained a friend or two at court to protect him if occasion should
require; and used to say, it was lawful to make use of evil instruments
to do ourselves good. 'If I were cast (said he) into a deep pit, and
the Devil should put down his cloven foot, I should take hold of it to
be drawn out by it.'

Towards the end of his life he read very few books, and the earl of
Clarendon says, that he had never read much but thought a great deal;
and Hobbs himself used to observe, that if he had read as much as
other philosophers, he should have been as ignorant as they. If any
company came to visit him, he would be free of his discourse, and
behave with pleasantry, till he was pressed, or contradicted, and then
he had the infirmities of being short and peevish, and referring them
to his writings, for better satisfaction. His friends who had the
liberty of introducing strangers to him, made these terms with them
before admission, that they should not dispute with the old man, or
contradict him.

In October 1666, when proceedings against him were depending, with a
bill against atheism and profaneness, he was at Chatsworth, and
appeared extremely disturbed at the news of it, fearing the messengers
would come for him, and the earl of Devonshire would deliver him up,
the two houses of Parliament commit him to the bishops, and they
decree him a heretic. This terror upon his spirits greatly disturbed
him. He often confessed to those about him, that he meant no harm, was
no obstinate man, and was ready to make any satisfaction; for his
prevailing principle and resolution was, to suffer for no cause
whatever.

Under these apprehensions of danger, he drew up, in 1680, an
historical naration of heresy, and the punishments thereof,
endeavouring to prove that there was no authority to determine heresy,
or to punish it, when he wrote the Le