"Mr. Hobbes has been always far from provoking any man, though, when
he is provoked, you find his pen as sharp as yours. All you have said
is error and railing; that is, _stinking wind_, such as a jade lets
fly when he is too hard girt upon a full belly. I have done. I have
considered you now, but will not again, whatsoever preferment any of
your friends shall procure you."
These were the pitched battles; but many skirmishes occasionally took
place. Hobbes was even driven to a _ruse de guerre_. When he found his
mathematical character in the utmost peril, there appeared a pamphlet,
entitled "Lux Mathematica, &c., or, Mathematical Light struck out from
the clashings between Dr. John Wallis, Professor of Geometry in the
celebrated University of Oxford (celeberrima Academia), and Thomas
Hobbes, of Malmesbury; augmented with many and shining rays of the
Author, R. R." 1672.
Here the victories of Hobbes are trumpeted forth, but the fact is,
that R. R. should have been T. H. It was Hobbes's own composition!
R. R. stood for _Roseti Repertor_, that is, the Finder of the Rosary,
one of the titles of Hobbes's mathematical discoveries. Wallis asserts
that this R. R. may still serve, for it may answer his own book,
"Roseti Refutator, or, the Refuter of the Rosary."
Poor Hobbes gave up the contest reluctantly; if, indeed, the
controversy may not be said to have lasted all his life. He
acknowledges he was writing to no purpose; and that the medicine was
obliged to yield to the disease.
Sed nil profeci, magnis authoribus Error
Fultus erat, cessit sic Medicina malo.
He seems to have gone down to the grave, in spite of all the
reasonings of the geometricians on this side of it, with a firm
conviction that its superficies had both depth and thickness.[386]
Such were the fruits of a great genius, entering into a province out
of his own territories; and, though a most energetic reasoner, so
little skilful in these new studies, that he could never know when he
was confuted and refuted.[387]