HOBBES, THOMAS (1588-1679), English philosopher, second son of Thomas Hobbes, was born at Westport (now part of Malmesbury, Wiltshire) on the 5th of April 1588. His father, vicar of Charlton and Westport, an illiterate and choleric man, quarrelled, it is said, with a brother clergyman at the church door, and was forced to decamp, leaving his three children to the care of an elder brother Francis, a flourishing glover at Malmesbury. Thomas Hobbes was put to school at Westport church at the age of four, passed to the Malmesbury school at eight, and was taught again in Westport later at a private school kept by a young man named Robert Latimer, fresh from Oxford and "a good Grecian." He had begun Latin and Greek early, and under Latimer made such progress as to be able to translate the _Medea_ of Euripides into Latin iambic verse before he was fourteen. About the age of fifteen he was sent to Oxford and entered at Magdalen Hall. During his residence, the first principal of Magdalen Hall, John Hussee, was succeeded by John Wilkinson, who ruled in the interest of the Calvinistic party in the university. Thus early was he brought into contact with the aggressive Puritan spirit. Apart from this, Hobbes owed little to his university training, which was based on the scholastic logic then prevalent. We have from himself a lively record of his student life (_Vit. carm. exp._ p. lxxxv.), which, though penned in extreme old age, may be taken as trustworthy. He tells how, when he had slowly taken in the doctrine of logical figures and moods, he put it aside and would prove things only in his own way; how he then heard about bodies as consisting of matter and form, as throwing off species of themselves for perception, and as moved by sympathies and antipathies, with much else of a like sort, all beyond his comprehension; and how he therefore turned to his old books again, fed his mind on maps and charts of earth and sky, traced the sun in his path, followed Drake and Cavendish girdling the main, and gazed with delight upon pictured haunts of men and wonders of unknown lands. Very characteristic is the interest in men and things, and the disposition to cut through questions in the schools after a trenchant fashion of his own. He was little attracted by the scholastic learning, though it would be wrong to take his words as evidence of a precocious insight into its weakness. The truth probably is that he took no interest in studies which there was no risk in neglecting, and thought as little of rejecting as of accepting the traditional doctrines. He adds that he took his degree at the proper time; but in fact, upon any computation and from whatever cause, he remained at Magdalen Hall five, instead of the required four, years, not being admitted as bachelor till the 5th of February 1608. Translation of Thucydides.