Studies in the History of Political Philosophy Before and After Rousseau

painful limp, he still contrived to enjoy tramps of twelve or fifteen miles over Grisedale Pass or Shap Fells or on the Yorkshire Moors. But the effort led to over-strain of the heart. Gardening was perhaps the next favourite hobby: the growing of carnations in his Manchester garden was a source of pleasure and pride; his flowers must be sweet scented; for a kitchen garden he had no use, and rejoiced if he found flowers ousting vegetables in a friend's garden. Towards the end of his life he returned to an old lovethe piano (a piano was one of the parting gifts of his friends at Leeds), though he never acquired much facility. He was not an indiscriminate reader of novels, but to his old favourites, such as Quatrevingt-treize and Guy Mannering, he returned again and again. He enjoyed reading aloud, and read with much dramatic force. He had other interests of a less intellectual kind. Though he never cared for games, he developed a keen pleasure in watching football matches, and the exhibitions of strong men' had a curious fascination for him: he was a great admirer of Sandow.

In September 1913 Vaughan moved to Manchester, attracted partly by the John Rylands Library. The outbreak of the War stirred his passionate patriotism to its depths. Like many of the older men he became restless and dissatisfied with the daily round, and eager to give some more immediate service to the country. When he had got the Rousseau off his hands, he migrated to London and worked for a year (1915–16) in the War Trade Intelligence Department, where his knowledge of languages was of much value. His health suffered: from this time may be dated his chronic bronchitis. After this he gave his time and strength to help the Northern Universities in emergencies, giving courses of lectures at Liverpool during one winter, and at Leeds during another. In the University of Manchester he voluntarily gave two courses of lectures in the English Department, 1919-20; the next session he accepted an appointment as special lecturer in that department, and in 1921-22, again voluntarily, he held regular conferences with a group of students who were preparing theses on politico-literary topics. He was also, as usual, doing a great deal of examining. He received the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from the Universities of Liverpool (1913), Leeds (1914), Manchester (1919), and Wales (1921).

In 1917 he published a translation of Rousseau's Paix Perpétuelle, with an introduction which forms a valuable contribution to the history of the idea of the League of Nations, and in 1918 an edition of the Contrat Social, with a clear and closely reasoned introduction and admirable notes: the value of this as a text-book for the study of political theory has already been widely recognised.

He further gave a number of miscellaneous lectures to various

branches of the English Association and other bodies.1 He took a hand in the struggle for Woman Suffrage, to which he was an ardent, if somewhat late, convert. He was an active member of the Press Committee of the Manchester University, and a Governor of the John Rylands Library. As though this were not enough, he must needs form the plan of a new work on Literary Influences on the French Revolution,' and began collecting materials for it.

All this and some, but not all of it, was inevitable-sadly interfered with the History of Political Philosophy. The entries in his diaries enable us to follow the course of his writing. Vaughan, as his diary shows, was working at Hobbes in 1916 on Sundays and Thursdays (the days he was not at the W.T.I.D.), and a version of this chapter was finished on the 17th August 1916. During 1917 the work was not touched till the 26th December, and then the whole was begun again on a new plan, as it appears in the first volume of this edition. The chapters on medieval political theory, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, etc., are scrapped, and the present short introduction substituted. Hobbes is again taken up and re-written on the new plan between the 25th April and the 14th June. Then follow the other chapters, each of which is re-written, not merely revised from the earlier versions-a rough copy being made first and a fair copy afterwards. This goes on till the 2nd January 1922, when the fair copy of Hume was finished. The next day Vaughan was at work on Helvétius; and he was writing steadily on Bentham from the 20th January to the 19th April, when the diary comes to an abrupt end. Fair copies of these two last articles were not made, and the rough copies discovered among his papers are incomplete.

From this time he was an invalid, suffering from over-strain of the heart, dropsy and intestinal troubles, some of which, as he laughingly said, formed a new bond of sympathy' between him and his patron saint,' Jean Jacques. He bore his afflictions with unfailing patience. After all,' he wrote, with some exaggeration, 'I have had the good fortune to enjoy unbroken health for nearly seventy years. And if I have only enough now left to go on with my work, I shall be perfectly content.' His chief anxiety was for his housekeeper, who nursed him with devoted care. 'I am longing (on the 17th August) for the time when I can get away for a change and release her from at any rate the heaviest part of the burden.' He became much worse early in September. But save when he was suffering from attacks of unbearable pain, which mercifully ended in unconsciousness, his mind was as vigorous

1 The last lecture which he gave was one to the British Institute of Adult Education on 'The Place of Modern Languages in Adult Education,' in Manchester, March 1922.

and his memory as retentive as ever. Some ten days before his death, he remarked that one of the doctors reminded him of the line Physician art thou?-one, all eyes'; and as his visitor did not understand the allusion, he repeated the greater part of Wordsworth's A Poet's Epitaph.' In conversation with another friend about the same time, he quoted with a smile the humorous concluding line of Vergil's third Eclogue:

Claudite iam rivos, pueri: sat prata biberunt.

The quotation not only threw fresh light on the subject under discussion, it was also strangely fitting to be a last recollection of a great teacher: the fields which his genius had watered had been richly fed. The end came on the 8th October 1922.

Vaughan did not in his lifetime receive the public recognition which he deserved. He certainly did not seek it. His influence on his pupils was profound, and through them is spreading farther and wider. His books are well known and highly valued by teachers of English literature. And it may be expected that some at any rate of his work on political theory will make itself felt more and more in thought and action, as the years go on.

Knihy