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His great political career dates from that day. It is unique among the careers of British statesmen of the first rank, for it was passed almost wholly in opposition. Except for a few months in 1782 and 1783, and again for a few months before his death in 1806, he was out of office. If he was absolutely sincere in the statement he made to his friend Fitzpatrick, in a letter of the 3rd of February 1778, his life was all he could have wished. "I am," he wrote, "certainly ambitious by nature, but I really have, or think I have, totally subdued that passion. I have still as much vanity as ever, which is a happier passion by far, because great reputation I think I may acquire and keep, great situation I never can acquire, nor if acquired keep, without making sacrifices that I never will make." His words show that he judged himself and read the future accurately. Yet it was certainly a cause of bitter disappointment to him that he had to stand by while the country was in his opinion not only misgoverned, but led to ruin. His reputation as an orator and a political critic, which was great from the first and grew as he lived, most assuredly did not console him for his impotence as a statesman. Of the causes which rendered his brilliant capacity useless for the purpose of obtaining practical success the most important, perhaps the only one of real importance, was his personal character. Lord John Russell (afterwards Earl Russell), his friendly biographer, has to confess that Fox might have joined in the confession of Mirabeau: "The public cause suffers for the immoralities of my youth." His reputation as a rake and gambler was so well established at the very beginning of his career that when he was dismissed from office in 1774 there was a general belief among the vulgar that he had been detected in actual theft. His perfect openness, the notoriety of his bankruptcies and of the seizure of his books and furniture in execution, kept him before the world as a model of dissipation. In 1776, when he was leading the resistance to Lord North's colonial policy, he "neither abandoned gaming nor his rakish life. He was seldom in bed before five in the morning nor out of it before two at noon." At the most important crisis of his life in 1783, he almost made an ostentation of disorder and of indifference not only to appearances, but even to decency. Horace Walpole has drawn a picture of him at that time which Lord Holland, Fox's beloved and admiring nephew, speaking from his early recollections of his uncle, confesses has "some justification." Coming from such an authority the certificate may be held to confirm the substantial accuracy of Walpole. "Fox lodged in St James's Street, and as soon as he rose, which was very late, had a levée of his followers and of the gaming club at Brooks's--all his disciples. His bristly black person, and shagged breast quite open and rarely purified by any ablutions, was wrapped in a foul linen nightgown and his bushy hair dishevelled. In these cynic weeds and with Epicurean good humour did he dictate his politics, and in this school did the heir of the empire attend his lessons and imbibe them." That this cynic manner, and Epicurean speech, were only the outside of a manly and generous nature was well known to the personal friends of Fox, and is now universally allowed. But by the bulk of his contemporaries, who could not fail to see the weaknesses he ostentatiously displayed, Fox was, not unnaturally, suspected as being immoral and untrustworthy. Therefore when he came into collision with the will of the king he failed to secure the confidence of the nation which was his only support. Nor ought any critical admirer of Fox to deny that George III. was not wholly wrong when he said that the great orator "was totally destitute of discretion and sound judgment." Fox made many mistakes, due in some cases to vehemence of temperament, and in others only to be ascribed to want of sagacity. That he fought unpopular causes is a very insufficient explanation of his failure as a practical statesman. He could have profited by the reaction which followed popular excitement but for his bad reputation and his want of discretion. Entry: FOX

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 6 "Foraminifera" to "Fox, Edward"     1910-1911

9. The question of what is an infringement of copyright has been the subject of much discussion. It was decided under the statute of 1709 that a repetition from memory was not a publication so as to be an infringement of copyright. In the case of _Reade_ v. _Conquest_, 1861, 9 C.B., the same view was taken. The defendant had dramatized the plaintiff's novel _It's Never too Late to Mend_, and the piece was performed at his theatre. This was held to be no breach of copyright; but the circulation of copies of a drama, so taken from a copyright novel, whether gratuitously or for sale, is not allowed. Then again it is often a difficult question to decide whether the alleged piratical copyright does more than make that fair use of the original author's materials which the law permits. It is not every act of borrowing literary matter from another which is piracy, and the difficulty is to draw the line between what is fair and what is unfair. Lord Eldon put the question thus,--whether the second publication is a legitimate use of the other in the fair exercise of a mental operation deserving the character of an original work. Another test proposed is "whether you find on the part of the defendant an _animus furandi_--an intention to take for the purpose of saving himself labour." No one, it has been said, has a right to take, whether with or without acknowledgment, a material and substantial portion of another's work, his arguments, his illustrations, his authorities, for the purpose of making or improving a rival publication. When the materials are open to all, an author may acquire copyright in his selection or arrangement of them. Several cases have arisen on this point between the publishers of rival directories. Here it has been held that the subsequent compiler is bound to do for himself what the original compiler had done. When the materials are thus _in medio_, as the phrase is, it is considered a fair test of piracy to examine whether the mistakes of both works are the same. If they are, piracy will be inferred. Translations stand to each other in the same relation as books constructed of materials in common. The _animus furandi_, mentioned above as a test of piracy, does not imply deliberate intention to steal; it may be quite compatible with ignorance even of the copyright work. Abridgments, moreover, of original works appear to be favoured by the courts--when the act of abridgment is itself an act of the understanding, "employed in carrying a large work into a smaller compass, and rendering it less expensive." Lord Hatherley, however, in _Tinsley_ v. _Lacy_, 1863, 1 H. & M. 747, incidentally expressed his disapproval of this feeling--holding that the courts had gone far enough in this direction, and that it was difficult to acquiesce in the reason sometimes given that the compiler of an abridgment is a benefactor to mankind by assisting in the diffusion of knowledge. A mere selection or compilation, so as to bring the materials into smaller space, will not be a bona fide abridgment; "there must be real substantial condensation, and intellectual labour, and judgment bestowed thereon" (Justice Story). A publication professing to be _A Christmas Ghost Story, Reoriginated from the Original by Charles Dickens, Esq., and Analytically Condensed expressly for this Work_, was found (_Dickens_ v. _Lee_, 1844, 8 Jur. 183) to be an invasion of Charles Dickens's copyright in the original. Entry: 9

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 3 "Convention" to "Copyright"     1910-1911

We may now follow out the more troublesome conflict, or rather series of conflicts, in which Hobbes became entangled from the time of publishing his _De corpore_ in 1655, and which checkered all his remaining years. In _Leviathan_ he had vehemently assailed the system of the universities, as originally founded for the support of the papal against the civil authority, and as still working social mischief by adherence to the old learning. The attack was duly noted at Oxford, where under the Commonwealth a new spirit of scientific activity had begun to stir. In 1654 Seth Ward (1617-1689), the Savilian professor of astronomy, replying in his _Vindiciae academiarum_ to some other assaults (especially against John Webster's _Examen of Academies_) on the academic system, retorted upon Hobbes that, so far from the universities being now what he had known them in his youth, he would find his geometrical pieces, when they appeared, better understood there than he should like. This was said in reference to the boasts in which Hobbes seems to have been freely indulging of having squared the circle and accomplished other such feats; and, when a year later the _De corpore_ (_L.W._ i.) finally appeared, it was seen how the thrust had gone home. In the chapter (xx.) of that work where Hobbes dealt with the famous problem whose solution he thought he had found, there were left expressions against Vindex (Ward) at a time when the solutions still seemed to him good; but the solutions themselves, as printed, were allowed to be all in different ways halting, as he naively confessed he had discovered only when he had been driven by the insults of malevolent men to examine them more closely with the help of his friends. A strange conclusion this, and reached by a path not less strange, as was now to be disclosed by a relentless hand. Ward's colleague, the more famous John Wallis (q.v.), Savilian professor of geometry from 1649, had been privy to the challenge thrown out in 1654, and it was arranged that they should critically dispose of the _De corpore_ between them. Ward was to occupy himself with the philosophical and physical sections, which he did in leisurely fashion, bringing out his criticism in the course of next year (_In Th. Hobbii philosophiam exercitatio epistolica_). Wallis was to confine himself to the mathematical chapters, and set to work at once with characteristic energy. Obtaining an unbound copy of the _De corpore_, he saw by the mutilated appearance of the sheets that Hobbes had repeatedly altered his demonstrations before he issued them at last in their actual form, grotesque as it was, rather than delay the book longer. Obtaining also a copy of the work as it had been printed before Hobbes had any doubt of the validity of his solutions, Wallis was able to track his whole course from the time of Ward's provocation--his passage from exultation to doubt, from doubt to confessed impotence, yet still without abandoning the old assumption of confident strength; and all his turnings and windings were now laid bare in one of the most trenchant pieces of controversial writing ever penned. Wallis's _Elenchus geometriae Hobbianae_, published in 1655 about three months after the _De corpore_, contained also an elaborate criticism of Hobbes's whole attempt to relay the foundations of mathematical science in its place within the general body of reasoned knowledge--a criticism which, if it failed to allow for the merit of the conception, exposed only too effectually the utter inadequacy of the result. Taking up mathematics when not only his mind was already formed but his thoughts were crystallizing into a philosophical system, Hobbes had, in fact, never put himself to school and sought to work up gradually to the best knowledge of the time, but had been more anxious from the first to become himself an innovator with whatever insufficient means. The consequence was that, when not spending himself in vain attempts to solve the impossible problems that have always waylaid the fancy of self-sufficient beginners, he took an interest only in the elements of geometry, and never had any notion of the full scope of mathematical science, undergoing as it then was (and not least at the hands of Wallis) the extraordinary development which made it before the end of the century the potent instrument of physical discovery which it became in the hands of Newton. He was even unable, in dealing with the elementary conceptions of geometry, to work out with any consistency the few original thoughts he had, and thus became the easy sport of Wallis. At his advanced age, however, and with the sense he had of his powers, he was not likely to be brought to a better mind by so insulting an opponent. He did indeed, before allowing an English translation of the _De corpore_ (_E.W._ i.) to appear in 1656, take care to remove some of the worst mistakes exposed by Wallis, and, while leaving out all the references to Vindex, now profess to make, in altered form, a series of mere "attempts" at quadrature; but he was far from yielding the ground to the enemy. With the translation,[14] in the spring of 1656, he had ready _Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics, one of Geometry, the other of Astronomy, in the University of Oxford_ (_E.W._ vii. 181-356), in which, after reasserting his view of the principles of geometry in opposition to Euclid's, he proceeded to repel Wallis's objections with no lack of dialectical skill, and with an unreserve equal to Wallis's own. He did not scruple, in the ardour of conflict, even to maintain positions that he had resigned in the translation, and he was not afraid to assume the offensive by a counter criticism of three of Wallis's works then published. When he had thus disposed of the "Paralogisms" of his more formidable antagonist in the first five lessons, he ended with a lesson on "Manners" to the two professors together, and set himself gravely at the close to show that he too could be abusive. In this particular part of his task, it must be allowed, he succeeded very well; his criticism of Wallis's works, especially the great treatise _Arithmetica infinitorum_ (1655), only showed how little able he was to enter into the meaning of the modern analysis. Wallis, on his side, was not less ready to keep up the game in English than he had been to begin it in Latin. Swift as before to strike, in three months' time he had deftly turned his own word against the would-be master by administering _Due Correction for Mr Hobbes, or School Discipline for not saying his Lessons right_, in a piece that differed from the _Elenchus_ only in being more biting and unrestrained. Having an easy task in defending himself against Hobbes's trivial criticism, he seized the opportunity given him by the English translation of the _De corpore_ to track Hobbes again step by step over the whole course, and now to confront him with his incredible inconsistencies multiplied by every new utterance. But it was no longer a fight over mathematical questions only. Wallis having been betrayed originally by his fatal cleverness into the pettiest carping at words, Hobbes had retorted in kind, and then it became a high duty in the other to defend his Latin with great parade of learning and give fresh provocation. One of Wallis's rough sallies in this kind suggested to Hobbes the title of the next rejoinder with which, in 1657, he sought to close the unseemly wrangle. Arguing in the _Lessons_ that a mathematical point must have quantity, though this were not reckoned, he had explained the Greek word [Greek: stigmê], used for a point, to mean a visible mark made with a hot iron; whereupon he was charged by Wallis with gross ignorance for confounding [Greek: stigmê] and [Greek: stigma]. Hence the title of his new piece: [Greek: Stigmai ageômetrias, agroikias, antipoliteias, amatheias], or _Marks of the Absurd Geometry, Rural Language, Scottish Church Politics, and Barbarisms of John Wallis, Professor of Geometry and Doctor of Divinity_ (_E.W._ vii. 357-400). He now attacked more in detail but not more happily than before Wallis's great work, while hardly attempting any further defence of his own positions; also he repelled with some force and dignity the insults that had been heaped upon him, and fought the verbal points, but could not leave the field without making political insinuations against his adversary, quite irrelevant in themselves and only noteworthy as evidence of his own resignation to Cromwell's rule. The thrusts were easily and nimbly parried by Wallis in a reply (_Hobbiani puncti dispunctio_, 1657) occupied mainly with the verbal questions. Irritating as it was, it did not avail to shake Hobbes's determination to remain silent; and thus at last there was peace for a time. Entry: HOBBES

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 5 "Hinduism" to "Home, Earls of"     1910-1911