In the same year Hobbes was recommended by Wilkinson as tutor to the son of William Cavendish, baron of Hardwick (afterwards 2nd earl of Devonshire), and thus began a lifelong connexion with a great and powerful family. Twice it was loosened--once, for a short time, after twenty years, and again, for a longer period, during the Civil War--but it never was broken. Hobbes spoke of the first years of his tutorship as the happiest of his life. Young Cavendish was hardly younger than Hobbes, and had been married, a few months before, at the instance of the king, to Christiana, the only daughter of Edward, Lord Bruce of Kinloss, though by reason of the bride's age, which was only twelve years, the pair had no establishment for some time. Hobbes was his companion rather than tutor (before becoming secretary); and, growing greatly attached to each other, they were sent abroad together on the grand tour in 1610. During this journey, the duration of which cannot be precisely stated, Hobbes acquired some knowledge of French and Italian, and also made the important discovery that the scholastic philosophy which he had learned in Oxford was almost universally neglected in favour of the scientific and critical methods of Galileo, Kepler and Montaigne. Unable at first to cope with their unfamiliar ideas, he determined to become a scholar, and until 1628 was engaged in a careful study of Greek and Latin authors, the outcome of which was his great translation of Thucydides. But when he had finished his work he kept it lying by him for years, being no longer so sure of finding appreciative readers; and when he did send it forth, in 1628, he was fain to be content with "the few and better sort."[1] That he was finally determined to publication by the political troubles of the year 1628 may be regarded as certain, not only from his own express declaration at a later time (_Vit. carm. exp._), but also from unmistakable hints in the account of the life and work of his author prefixed to the translation on its appearance. This was the year of the Petition of Right, extorted from the king in the third parliament he had tried within three years of his accession; and, in view of Hobbes's later activity, it is significant that he came forward just then, at the mature age of forty, with his version of the story of the Athenian democracy as the first production of his pen. Nothing else is known of his doings before 1628, except that through his connexion with young Cavendish he had relations with literary men of note like Ben Jonson, and also with Bacon and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. If he never had any sympathy with Herbert's intuitionalist principles in philosophy, he was no less eager, as he afterwards showed, than Herbert to rationalize in matters of religious doctrine, so that he may be called the second of the English deists, as Herbert has been called the first. With Bacon he was so intimate (Aubrey's _Lives_, pp. 222, 602) that some writers have described him as