Hobbes, by 1655, had published his "De Corpore," and with that and "Leviathan," his most popular work, his philosophy of the Universe was before the public. He gives his natural history of religion, as (saving Christianity), the result of curiosity about First Causes, belief in ghosts (of which he is said to have been afraid), of superstitions about luck, and of priestly imposture designed to keep men in order. In politics he believes in an imaginary state of Nature, or anarchy, from which men, who are naturally equals, sought shelter in a contract, never to be broken, with a sovereign power, in fact with the State, though Hobbes prefers a single despot. The sovereign is supreme in religion as well as in secular matters, and Hobbes hates nothing more than the so-called "Kingdom of Christ" of the Presbyterian preachers, which really, he says, means their own domination. Hobbes's general doctrine, with its reservations and subterfuges, cannot be discussed here: it made enemies for him in every camp, religious and political, and now his unlucky mathematics were fallen upon, while he had an endless controversy with Bishop Bramhall on the Freedom of the Will. At the Restoration Charles II renewed his friendly intercourse with his old tutor, granting, him a pension, when Hobbes could get it paid. In 1666 he was threatened with a persecution for heresy, and went to church, but did not wait for the sermon. His "Behemoth," a history of the Civil War, was suppressed by the King, and was posthumously published. He translated the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" into very poor verse; he wrote his autobiography in Latin verse, and was still writing in 1679 when he died on 4 December. The style of Hobbes is lucid and succinct, without added ornaments. He had a clear idea of what he wanted to say, though inconsistencies appear as his mood varied, or as his argument led him into difficult places. His ideas provoked many replies which pervade English literature for long after his death; but such exercises in psychology and metaphysics belong rather to the history of philosophy than of literature. The doctrine of Hobbes is not optimistic. "When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is War, which provideth for every man, by victory or death." The idea is that expressed in a Greek poem "the Cypria," of about 750 B.C. Hobbes thought himself an authority on Epic poetry, among other things, and especially commended, in Davenant's "Gondibert," the really pleasing passage which describes the birth of love in the heart of Bertha. Hobbes expanded his ideas about the Epic in his translation of Homer. We do not know what he thought of "Paradise Lost". Izaak Walton.