n 1647, the
appointment of mathematical tutor to the Prince of Wales, afterwards
Charles II., who was then in that city. The views expressed in his works,
however, brought him into such unpopularity that the Prince found it
expedient to break the connection, and H. returned to England. In 1653 he
resumed his relations with the Devonshire family, living, however, in
London in habits of intimacy with Selden, Cowley, and Dr. Harvey. On the
Restoration the King conferred upon him a pension of L100, but like most
of the Royal benefactions of the day, it was but irregularly paid. His
later years were spent in the family of his patron, chiefly at
Chatsworth, where he continued his literary activity until his death,
which occurred in 1679, in his 91st year. H. was one of the most
prominent Englishmen of his day, and has continued to influence
philosophical thought more or less ever since, generally, however, by
evoking opposition. His fundamental proposition is that all human action
is ultimately based upon selfishness (more or less enlightened), allowing
no place to the moral or social sentiments. Similarly in his political
writings man is viewed as a purely selfish being who must be held in
restraint by the strong hand of authority. His chief philosophical works
are _De Corpore Politico_, already mentioned, _pub._ in 1640;
_Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society_, originally
in Latin, translated into English in 1650; _Leviathan, or the Matter,
Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil_ (1651);
_Treatise on Human Nature_ (1650); and _Letters upon Liberty and
Necessity_ (1654). Generally speaking, all his works led him into
controversy, one of his principal opponents being Clarendon. The _Letters
upon Liberty and Necessity_, which is one of the ablest of them, and
indeed one of the ablest ever written on the subject, brought him into
collision with Bramhall, Bishop of Londonderry, whom he completely
overthrew. He was not, however, so successful in his mathematical
controversies, one of the chief of which was on the Quadrature of the
Circle. Here his antagonist was the famous mathematician Wallis, who was
able easily to demonstrate his errors. In 1672, when 84, H. wrote his
autobiography in Latin verse, and in the same year translated 4 books of
the _Odyssey_, which were so well received that he completed the
remaining books, and also translated the whole of the _Iliad_. Though
accurate as lit