to a learned person, Dr. Wallis," 1662.

It is an extraordinary production. His lofty indignation retorts on
the feeble irony of his antagonist with keen and caustic accusations;
and the green strength of youth was still seen in the old man whose
head was covered with snows.

From this spirited apology for himself I shall give some passages.
Hobbes thus replied to Dr. Wallis, who affected to consider the old
man as a fit object for commiseration.

"You would make him contemptible, and move Mr. Boyle to pity him. This
is a way of railing too much beaten to be thought witty: besides, 'tis
no argument of your contempt to spend upon him so many angry lines, as
would have furnished you with a dozen of sermons. If you had in good
earnest despised him, you would have let him alone, as he does Dr.
Ward, Mr. Baxter, Pike, and others, that have reviled him as you do.
As for his reputation beyond the seas, it fades not yet; and because,
perhaps, you have no means to know it, I will cite you a passage of an
epistle written by a learned Frenchman to an eminent person in
France, in a volume of epistles." Hobbes quotes the passage at length,
in which his name appears joined with Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and
Gassendi.

In reply to Wallis' sarcastic suggestion that an idle person should
collect together Hobbes's arrogant and supercilious speeches
applauding himself, under one title, _Hobbius de se_, he says--

"Let your idle person do it; Mr. Hobbes shall acknowledge them under
his hand, and be commended for it, and you scorned. A certain Roman
senator having propounded something in the assembly of the people,
which they, misliking, made a noise at, boldly bade them hold their
peace, and told them he knew better what was good for the commonwealth
than all they; and his words are transmitted to us as an argument of
his virtue; _so much do truth and vanity alter the complexion of
self-praise_. You can have very little skill in morality, that cannot
see the justice of commending a man's self, as well as of anything
else, in his own defence; and it was want of prudence in you to
constrain him to a thing that would so much displease you.

"When you make his _age_ a reproach to him, and show no cause that
might impair the faculties of his mind, but only age, I admire how you
saw not that you reproached all old men in the world as much as him,
and warranted all young men, at a certain time which they themselves
shall define, to call