into exile, but had remained in England, taking the
risks.--HOBBES, who had been in Paris since 1641, to be out of the
bustle of the English confusions, but who had come into central
connexion with the Stuart cause there by his appointment in 1646 to
be tutor to young Charles, had been obliged to leave that connexion,
ostensibly at least, in 1651 or 1652. The occasion is said to have
been the publication of his _Leviathan_. That famous book of
1651, like its two predecessors of 1650, _Human Nature_ and
_De Corpore Politico_, he had found it convenient to publish in
London, where the Commonwealth authorities do not seem to have made
the least objection. But by this time Hobbes's infidelity, or
Atheism, or Hobbism, or whatever it was, had become a dreadful
notoriety in the world; and, when Hobbes presented a fine copy of his
great book to Charles II., that pious young prince had been
instructed by the Royalist divines about him that it would not do to
countenance either Mr. Hobbes or his books any longer. Charles
retained privately all his own real regard for his old tutor, and
Hobbes perfectly understood that; but the hint had been taken. Back
in England at last, and permitted to live in the house of his old
pupil and patron, the Earl of Devonshire, where his only annoyance
was the society of the Earl's chaplain, Jasper Mayne, he had found
the Protectorate comfortable enough for all his purposes, and had
been publishing new books under it, including his pungent
disputations with ex-Bishop Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity and
with Wallis of Oxford on Mathematics.[1]--Hobbes's friend DAVENANT
had for some time been less lucky. _His_ return to England had
been involuntary. He had been captured at sea in 1650 on his way to
Virginia (Vol. IV. p. 193), had been a prisoner in the Isle of Wight
and in the Tower and in danger of trial for his life, and had been
released only by strong intercession in his favour, in which Milton
is thought to have helped. This result, however, had reconciled him,
and Davenant too had become one of the subjects of the Protectorate.
Nay he had struck out an ingenious mode of livelihood for himself
under Cromwell, somewhat in his old line of business. "At that time,"
says Wood, "tragedies and comedies being esteemed very scandalous by
the Presbyterians, and therefore by them silenced, he contrived a way
to set up an Italian Opera, to be performed by declamations and
music; and, that they might be pe