(Vol. iv., pp. 314. 487.)
I am surprised that your correspondent H. A. B., who appears by his
expressions to be an admirer of the _Leviathan_, should think the
frontispiece an absurd conceit, very unworthy of its author. The design
may be regarded, I think, as a very remarkable embodiment of the thought
expressed in the passage where the term _Leviathan_ is first used. The
civil body or commonwealth, derived from the union of individuals, is
represented by Hobbes as the origin of all rights and duties. And this
combination of men is (_Leviathan_, p. 87.) something more than consent
and concord. It is the real unity of them all in one and the same
person. The multitude, so united in one person, is called a
_Commonwealth_. "This is the generation," he says, "of that great
_Leviathan_, or, to speak more reverently" (that is, with the reverence
due to it), "of that _mortal God_ to which we owe (under the _Immortal
God_) our peace and defence." This "mortal God," thus constituted, may
very fitly be represented by the giant image, made up of thousands of
individual forms, wielding the mighty sword and the magnificent crosier,
and spreading its arms, with an air of sovereignty, over castles and
churches, rivers and ports, fields and villages. The emblems then
represent, as H. A. B. observes, the manifestations of civil and of
ecclesiastical power; and the parallelisms there exhibited appear to me
to be curious: the castle, with a piece of ordnance discharged from the
walls; the church, with a figure of Faith on its roof; the coronet and
the mitre; the cannon, the thunderbolt of war; and the spiritual
fulmination, represented by the mythological thunderbolts; the arms of
Logic, Syllogism, and Dilemma, and the like; and the arms of war, pikes,
and swords, and muskets; and finally, the judiciary tribunal, and the
tribunal of the battle field, the _ultima ratio regum_.
The frontispiece in the edition of 1651 is a much better print than that
of 1750; and in the former, I think, the resemblance to Cromwell is
undeniable. In this edition, the tablet at the bottom has the words,
"London: _Printed for Andrew Crooke_, 1651." In the edition of 1750
there are on the tablet the words, "_Written by Thos. Hobbs_, 1651," as
C. J. W. states.