232. _Frontispiece to Hobbes's Leviathan._--There are curious
circumstances about this frontispiece which some of your readers may
explain. The figure of Leviathan represents the upper part of a man with
a crown on his head, a sword in his right hand, and a crozier in his
left, the body and arms being made up of small human figures in various
dresses. In the common editions the face has a manifest resemblance to
Cromwell (the work was published in 1651), although it wears, as I have
said, a regal crown. But in the copy belonging to Trinity College
Library, the face appears to be intended for Charles I. The engraving of
this copy is very much worse than the other, and is not worked into the
same careful detail by the artist, though the outline is the same: and
the text of the book is a separate and worse impression, though the
errata are the same with the other copies, as well as the date. How
Hobbes himself, or any other person, should come to print the Leviathan
in this manner, it seems difficult to explain.
I have also a small French translation of Hobbes, _De Corpore Politico_,
dated 1652, which has a similar figure for a frontispiece, but with an
upright sword in the right, and a balance in the left, hand.