BERGOMI, typis Comini Venturæ, 1608.
This edition extends to 608 pages, in double columns, besides the preliminary matter, consisting of four articles, of which the first in this edition is the last in the genuine copy of 1607,—a circumstance mentioned by Clement as peculiar to the Altdorff edition; but here the signatures run to pages in eights, whereas the Altdorff edition "qu'ne remplit qu'un alphabet, et seize feuilles."
I have never seen a copy of the Ratisbon edition.
B. B.
Replies to Minor Queries.
Hobbes's "Leviathan" (Vol. iv., p. 314.).
—The meaning of the frontispiece to the first edition of this work, is, I imagine, sufficiently obvious. The large figure representing a commonwealth holds in his right hand a sword, in his left a pastoral crook. He is the emblem of a commonwealth "ecclesiastical and civil" (as the title of the book shows us). Ranged down one side of the page, under the sword-bearing arm, are the weapons and resources which the State possesses. Down the other side of the page, under the protection of the pastoral staff, is the corresponding armament of the Church. Thus, a castle and a church, a crown and a mitre, a cannon and spiritual thunderbolts, a trophy of guns and spears, &c., and one of dilemmas (represented by a pair of bull's horns), syllogisms (made like a three-pronged fork), and the like; these, ending with a battle on one side, a convention of bishops on the other, show the power which (as Hobbes would have it) each arm of the commonwealth should be able to have at its command. The whole picture is at best an absurd conceit, and very unworthy of the author of the Leviathan.
H. A. B.
The best edition of Hobbes's works was printed 1750. The print of Leviathan in it is neither like Charles nor Cromwell, of whom I have old and good prints, and many. The print has at the bottom of it "Written by Thos. Hobbs, 1651."
C. J. W.