ntleman burned
for a heretique; which he hearing, feared that his papers
might be searched by their order, and he told me he had burned
part of them."--p. 612. When Aubrey requested Waller to write
verses on Hobbes, the poet said that he was afraid of the
Churchmen. Aubrey tells us--"I have often heard him say that
he was not afraid of _Sprights_, but afraid of being knocked
on the head for five or ten pounds which rogues might think he
had in his chamber." This reason given by Hobbes for his
frequent alarms was an evasive reply for too curious and
talkative an inquirer. Hobbes has not concealed the cause of
his terror in his metrical life--

"Tunc venit in mentem mihi Dorislaus et Ascham,
Tanquam proscripto terror ubique aderat."

Dr. Dorislaus and Ascham had fallen under the daggers of
proscription. [The former was assassinated in Holland, whither
he had fled for safety.]

[366] It is said that Hobbes completely recanted all his opinions; and
proceeded so far as to declare that the opinions he had
published in his "Leviathan," were not his real sentiments,
and that he neither maintained them in public nor in private.
Wood gives this title to a work of his--"An Apology for
Himself and his Writings," but without date. Some have
suspected that this Apology, if it ever existed, was not his
own composition. Yet why not? Hobbes, no doubt, thought that
"The Leviathan" would outlast any recantation; and, after all,
that a recantation is by no means a refutation!--recantations
usually prove the force of authority, rather than the force of
conviction. I am much pleased with a Dr. Pocklington, who hit
the etymology of the word _recantation_ with the spirit.
Accused and censured, for a penance he was to make a
recantation, which he began thus:--"If _canto_ be to sing,
_recanto_ is to sing again:" so that he _re-chanted_ his
offensive principles by his _recantation_!

I suspect that the apology Wood alludes to was only a
republication of Hobbes's Address to the King, prefixed to the
"Seven Philosophical Problems," 1662, where he openly disavows
his opinions, and makes an apology for the "Leviathan." It is
curious enough to observ