CLARENDON HOBBES EDITORIAL BOARD Non. MALCOLM QuNTIN SKINNER Kerri Tomas Bibliographical adviser Davip McKirrenick SCHEME OF VOLUMES 1: Blements of Law 2: De cive 3,4, 5: Leviathan 6, 7: Correspondence 8: Autobiographical and occasional writings 9: Writings on rhetoric and literature x0: Behemoth 11; Writings on common law and hereditary right 12: Writings on religion, heresy, and church history x3! Writings on liberty and necessity 4p 15: Anti-White (with ‘Objections’ to Descartes) 16, 17: De corpore (with related manuscripts) 18: Later writings on physics +0: Writings on optics (including De homing) 20, 2r, 22: Writings on mathematics 23 Translations of Thucydides ‘24, 25: Translations of Homer 26: Cavendish related writings 27: Index | 1 THOMAS HOBBES LEVIATHAN EDITED BY NOEL MALCOLM VOLUME 1 EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION CLARENDON PRESS - OXFORDUNIV oss rst Gareadon Set ox2 6, ‘United Kingdon Orford Univers Presa depart the Univers of Onin IefrterstheUnvesiy's cbjae af exllens nest schoashin sad eficaton by pling woeivide Oot ote Wadena ‘Over Universi Pessinthe UK ann cra oh cote Noe Makin ots ‘The moratighsofthe auras een ss Firstediton pushin 2012 Ingress 1 Alig reserve, No prof this pebliaionmay be reproduced, ord in freien owed a he rye meas ihe pis prion nwsing of One Univer eyo excl peed ty any Beno or anderterms agra thespreptcepuprap ics, ‘ht orion. Engi concerning reprodocton use eeoe othe ‘ove sould Beste the Rights Dparneny, Oxford Unvry Pc athe addhesabore Yon mst not eth work nan other frm and you mustimpose ts same conon oan seq ‘Bish Litrary CalgsingiaPaication Data Datenralibe Litrary of Congress Cataloging in Pbtication Data Datasvaible 130. 978--19-40263-6(VoL 1) 1303978 0-16-g50264-5(VOL. 2) IN G78-0-19 ghoabs-o( V6.3) san g7S-o-1eoata a (ect) "ypesein Erhardt by Peter Kabel Ted, Lancaster Printed i Great Britain ‘onacd free paper byCPIGroap (CR) Led, Croydon, cho ge ‘Links to thrd party websites are provided by Oxford in and faith ed for infoeacon onl. Oxirdeiciaim any responstlity fr the aerials ‘contained i any hid party website reference inthis ok SH YBPGR= 3 3K G24 $3- CONTENTS VOLUME 1 Preface A Note on Dates and References List of Abbreviations List of Figures GENERAL INTRODUCTIO! ‘THE WRITING OF LEVIATHAN Chronology Changes and Developments in Hobbes's Argument Royalist Political Debate Religious Issues Intended Readership Late Adjustments: (i) Independency Late Adjustments: (ii) Obedience to the New Régime Hobbes's Retrospective Accounts ‘The Contemporaneous French Translation ‘The Year of Publication SOME FEATURES OF THE ENGLISH LEVIATHAN ‘Materials used in the Composition of Leviathan ‘The Title ‘The Engraved Title Page ‘The Table of the Sciences FROM THE ENGLISH LEVIATHAN TO THE LATIN Critical Responses, 1651-1668 ‘Some Individual Responses ‘Vernacular Translations ‘The Latin Translation and the Question of Priority ‘Changes in the Latin Translation xvi xvii ror ror 1g 128 141 146 146 158 162 175LL ¥ vi contents cone “ TEXTUAL INTRODUCTION ones ‘THE ENGLISH LEVIATHAN 97 Abbreviations and Convensions used in this Edition xi “The Manuseript 197 iy ‘The Head Edition 209 ‘The Epistle Dedicatory : ‘The Bear Edition 226 ‘The Contents of the Chapters : ‘The Ornaments Edition 258 ‘The Introduction ‘THE LATIN LEVIATHAN 272 ana A Manuscript 22 Gea: 22 ‘The 1668 Edition 274 Gies 26 ‘The 1670 Edition 287 eee 3 ‘The Undated Issue of the 1670 Edition 295 ‘erie 8 ‘The 1676 and 1678 Issues of the 1670 Edition 205 pee 64 ‘The Pardoe Advertisement of 1682 302 piece 7 ‘THE PRESENT EDITION 303 Chapter 7 98 Previous Modern Editions 303 Chapter 8 + Basic Features of the Present Edition 308 Chapter 9 ao ‘The Recording of Textual Variants 412 Chapter 10 te ‘The Promotion of ‘Textual Variants 34 Chapter 11 ao Conventions used in the Presentation of Manuscript Material 18 Chapter 12 i ‘The Translation Apparatus 318 Chapter 13 ‘The Explanatory Notes 321 Chapter 14 iD A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF Chapter 15 a ‘THE EDITIONS USED IN THE PRESENT EDITION 326 cee The English Leviathan 326 PART 2 ‘The Latin Leviathan : 328 Chapter 17 oo 2 List of Manuscripts 333 chaperte 284 Bibliography. 4337 Chapter 19 306 Index 367 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 34 Chapter 22 a8Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 PART 3 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter go Chapter gr Chapter 42 Chapter 43 PART 4 Chepter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 AReview, and Conclusion contents VOLUME 3 376 398 4d 452 482 498 520 554 576 586 610 634 650 682 698 730 736 760 774 928 956 1012 1052 1104 1132 conTeNTS APPENDIX Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Index to the Latin Leviathan Register of In-Press Variants (English) Register of Literal Faults (English) Ambiguous End-of-Line Hyphenations (English) Register of In-Press Variants (Latin) Register of Literal Faults (Latin) Index of Biblical Citations General Index ix 1ig2 1190 1226 T24g 1293 1298 1303 1305 1306 1311 1323| each nn ss PREFACE ‘Thomas Hobbes's Leviathon has long been regarded, correctly, as one of the most important works of political philosophy written in the West. So it is somewhat surprising that there has been, hitherto, no adequate critical edi- tion of it. Where the English Leviathan is concerned, readers have not been too badly served by those modern editors who have reproduced the text of the first edition, since that edition must indeed be the starting-point for the construction of the text; but on many points of detail, a critical edition has to discriminate between variants in different copies of the first edition, and must modify the readings of that edition in the light of the manuscript, the second edition, and, occasionally, the need for textual emendation. That is ‘what is attempted in the present edition. As for the Latin text of Leviathan, this has been much more poorly served by modern scholarship: extraordi- narily, there has been only one printing of it since 1841. The present edition seeks not only to present a reliable text of the Latin translation, but also to indicate all the significant changes made by Hobbes in that version, mark- ing the omissions of words or passages and translating the material that was added or altered, ‘Overall, the purpose of this edition is to present to readers, on each open- ing (Le, pair of facing pages), all the materials that they will need in order to study the entire development of the text, from the manuscript of the English Leviathan (which itself bears witness to an earlier manuscript, no longer ex- tant) to the second edition of the Latin. On each page, substantive textual variants are listed in an apparatus below the text; undemeath that apparatus, running across the opening, there is the series of notes translating the altered or added material in the Latin; and below that there are explanatory notes. ‘This last set of notes pays special attention to the meanings of terms used by Hobbes, while also identifying references, allusions, and so on, Here too, although not every reference made by Hobbes has yielded to investigation, the present edition does explicate a significant number of matters that have been passed over in silence in previous editions, Before the text itself, there stand two Introductions, General and Textual ‘The first of these secks to set the writing of Leviarhan in its biographical and political context; to analyse Hobbes’s use of sources; co explicate some special features of the English Leviathan (the title itself, the engraved title page, and the table of the sciences); to place the writing of the Latin versionsii PREFACE in its own biographical context (above all, the early reactions to the English text); and to describe the process of translation. It must be emphasized that, although the first chapter of this General Introduction does of course com ‘ment fo some extent on the substantive arguments presented in Leviathan, itis in no way intended as a general account of the meaning and significance of the work. Such an account would need to cover many aspects of Levia- ‘shan: its relation to natural law theory, the degree to which its political the ‘ory is founded on its psychological theory, and so on. This chapter of the General Introduction concentrates on the contenaporary political debate, in accordance with the policy of the Clarendon Faition, which requires edi- torial introductions to confine themselves, so far as possible, to factual and contextual matters. A full interpretation of the meaning and significance of ‘Hobbes’s arguments is not called for here—nor, given the richness of that subject on the one hand and the constraints of space on the other, would it be possible to present it while also discussing all the other matters that require explanation in these Introductions ‘The Textual Introduction gives an account of the nature of the various forms of the text (manuscript, English editions, Latin editions), paying spe- ial attention to the printing history of the English. This topic has required intensive investigation, since, without a full understanding of the printing history, i is not possible to say which changes in which editions might have originated from Hobbes himself. I have previously published three studies of this issues the Textual Introduction here summarizes the findings of those studies, while also adding some further points of detail, Tt also gives an ac count of the printing history of the Latin text which, itis hoped, clarifies ‘some points—especially where the different issues of the first and second editions are concerned —that have not been made clear before. ‘This edition has been many years in the making, and during those years Thave accumulated many debts of gratitude, Two fellow General Editors of the Clarendon Edition have been especially helpful and supportive: Quentin Skinner, whose path-breaking work on Hobbes changed the whole nature of modern scholarship in this field, and Keith Thomas, who has not only supported me with advice and encouragement but also read an entire draft version of the annotated English text, supplying many helpful comments and suggestions. At an early stage, Stephen Plaister went through the entire Latin text, marking and translating the added or altered passages for me, In the light of my subsequent work on the text, and because of some changes in my criteria for the noting of such material, I eventually decided to re peat the process, making my own translations, But as I did so, I was able to check my work against Stephen Plaister’s notes; sometimes his work saved aan me from errors or omissions, and on many occasions, when I had hit on what Tthought to be a particularly clegant solution to a problem, I found that he had hit on it first. I am very grateful to him for all the work he did, and for the patience with which We has waited, for so many years, to see the pub- lished edition. Similar thanks go also to Jan Moore, who did the primary col- lation of copies of the ‘Head? edition; in the course of my Tater work T have found a small number of further variants, which T have checked in the copies she collated, and T have also consulted a number of additional copies; but the bedrock of the collation consists of her painstaking work. Also at an early stage, Nigel Hope transcribed the Latin text and noted the changes between the first and second editions; this too has been immensely useful, (The work of Stephen Plaister, Jan Moore, and Nigel Hope was paid for by a British Academy grant, awarded to Quentin Skinner for the Clarendon Hobbes edi- tion; Iam very grateful both to him and to the British Academy.) The initial phase of work on this edition also benefited from the microfilms, photo- copies, and other materials assembled by the late Howard Warrender—the founder of the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Hobbes—who, at the time of his death, had started work on his own edition of Leviathan. ‘Atamuch later stage, I benefited from unpublished work on the Latin text by the late Karl Schuhmann; thanks to the kindness of his widow, Elizabeth ‘Schuhmann, and with the help of his devoted pupil Piet Steenbakkers, I was allowed to make use of his transcription of the text, in which variants were recorded and emendations proposed. Although my own judgements about the emendation of the text have sometimes diverged from his, T have been encouraged, on many points, by finding that our opinions concurred; and on ‘some points his lynx-eyed scrutiny of the text has saved me from omissions ‘or mistakes. So, although I have commented adversely in the Textual Intro- duction on his edition of the English text, I should like to pay tribute here to the care and skill with which he studied the Latin, should also like to express my gratitude to Blair Worden for commenting very helpfully om a draft of the first chapter of the General Introduction, and to Timothy Raylor, who has read parts of the Introductions, and has supplied advice and information on a range of Hobbesian matters over many years My work on the printing history of the English Leviathan was greatly helped by Giles Mandelbrote and Nicholas Smith; Iam indebted to both of them, Special thanks go also to Alban Rrustemi, who devised the word-processing programme which enabled me to prepare the text with multiple layers of an- notations. Iam very grateful, too, to Afrim Beka for recovering essential ma- terial from obsolete diskettes, and to Jeffrey Miller for photographing title pages and ornaments. I am also indebted to a great number of friends andxiv PREFACE colleagues for help on specific points. The timescale of the preparation of this edition is so great that I cannot be sure that I have included all of them here, but the list must certainly include the following, in addition to those already mentioned: Paul Brand, Robin Briggs, Ted Buterey, Angelos Cha- niotis, Alan Cromartie, George Garnett, Benjamin Gray, the late Philip Gri- erson, Kinch Hoekstra, Stefanie Kennell, David McKitterick, Jan Maclean, Scott Mandelbrote, Eric Nelson, Jean-Louis Quantin, Richard Serjeantson, Boudewijn Sirks, Johann Sommerville, Mikko Tolonen, and Cecilia Trifogl. Several of the names in that list are of Fellows of All Souls Colleges here T should like to express @ more general sense of gratitude to the College for enabling me to complete this project. The conditions of modern academic life are increasingly inimical to scholarly labour of this kind, which requires intensive—and, for prolonged periods, apparently unproductive—work on a mass of details; I have been fortunate indeed to be part of a collegiate body in which the traditions and ideals of scholarship are still fally upheld. Its also a pleasure to thank the Master and Fellows of Gonwille and Caius College, Cambridge, among whom I began work on this project. I should like to pay tribute, too, to another scholarly institution, the Oxford Univer- sity Press; Peter Momtchiloff, who has supervised the Clarendon Edition of ‘Hobbes over many years, has been a wise, patient, and altogether exemplary editor. Tam very grateful to His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, and to the’Trus~ tees of the Chatsworth Settlement, for allowing me to consult, and quote from, manuscripts at Chatsworth House. In my visits there over the years Ihave been greatly helped by Peter Day, Michael Pearman, Charles Noble, and Andrew Peppitt, to whom I am extremely grateful. It will be apparent from the List of Manuscripts that I am indebted to the staff of many ar- chives and libraries; in addition to those listed there, I should like to men tion the following: King’s College Library, Cambridge; the University of Chicago Library; the Royal Library, The Hague; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; Lambeth Palace Library, London; Leiden University Library; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the New York Public Li brary; the Codrington Library, All Souls College, Oxford; the Royal Library, ‘Stockholm; the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothck, Vienna; the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. And, finally, 1 am grateful to the editors and publishers of the journals in which some of the material presented in the Introductions first appeared, for permission to reproduce or rework it here: Hobbes Studies (Brill), Intellectual History Review (Routledge), and The Seo- enteenth Century (Manchester University Press). | A NOTE ON DATES AND REFERENCES Dates are given in double format, both Julian and Gregorian (with the year dared from 1 January), Where one version of the date is an editorial infer ence, itis presented in square brackets, Works quoted or referred to in the notes are cited by short title; full details are given in the Bibliography. Refer- ences to works by Hobbes are given as follows: if the work has been pub- lished in the Clarendon Edition, reference is made to that edition; in most other cases a double reference is made, first to the original printing (from ‘ch any quotation is derived) and then to the printing in Molesworth’s edition (EW or OL: see the List of Abbreviations); in a few cases, where a scholarly modern edition exists, reference is made to that edition (e.g., the ‘Answer’ to Davenant, in Gladish’s edition of Condibert); and if the cited text is a work which Hobbes divided into chapters and ‘articles’ or sections, reference is made in that format (e.g., ‘De corpore XV.2’), since that refer cence is valid for all editions, Nore that any footnote which refers only to page numbers, without a book title or Ibid’, refers to the text of Leviathan in the present edition; in those cases where such a reference appears in a note after a reference to another work, the title Leviathan’ is given. All translations are my own, unless otherwise attributed. For a fuller account of the conventions used in this edition, see Chapter 3 of the’Textual Introduction.LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF FIGURES Add. Additional Leviathan, Head edition, engraved ttle page 129 Ay Authorized Version of the Bible 2. Leviathan, MS title page oe 1B BL British Library Niceron, Li Perspective cin, te optical device 137 BN Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris Niceron, La Perspective curicus, the ‘Ottoman sultans’ design 138 Bodl. Bodleian Library, Oxford . Leviathan, Head edition, printed tile page 210 Correspondence ‘Hobbes, The Correspondence, ed. Malcolm Leviathan, Head edition, ‘crowned head? ornament Pre csPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic . Leviathan, Bear edition, printed tte page 237 De cive Hobbes, De cive, ed, Warrender Leviathan, Beat edition, ‘St Christopher” ornament 24 edn, edition Leviathan, Ornaments edition, printed ttle page 259 EEBO Early English Books Online >. Opera philosophica, title page oe Elements of Law Hobbes, The Elements of Lam, ed. Tonnies 11. Opera philosophica, section title page of Leviathan oe 7 EW Hobbes, English Works ed. Molesworth 12, Leviathan, 1670 edition, ttle page : 288 Har Harieian | 13. Leviathan, 1676 “Tornson’ issue of the 1670 edition, title page 29 HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission i Ih left-hand MS ‘manuscript nd no date (of publication) np. no place (of publication) ns, new series ODN Osford Dictionary of National Biography i OED Osford English Dictionary ? OL Hobbes, Opera philesophica gua lative script, ed. Molesworth PG Migne, ed., Patrologia gracca i PL Migne, ed., Patrologia latina | rh right-hand Rogers and Schuhmann Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Rogers and Schuhmann sc Stationers’ Company records { TNA ‘The National Archives i For the books of the Bible, standard abbreviations are used. i For full details of the works cited here, and for publication details of all = the works cited by short title in the notes, see the Bibliography All references giving page numbers in Leviathan, unless otherwise ex- plained, refer to the text in the present edition; and any footnote which refers only to page numbers, without a book title or ‘bid. refers to the text of ‘Levlashen in the present edition. aGENERAL INTRODUCTION I THE WRITING OF LEVIATHAN Chronology ‘The earliest direct reference to the writing of Leviathan comes in a letter from Robert Payne to Gilbert Sheldon, dated 13 [/23] May 1650. Payne ‘was one of Hobbes's closest friends: an Oxford academic, with special in- terests in mathematics and natural philosophy, he had become acquainted swith Hobbes while serving in the 1630s as chaplain to the Earl of Newcastle.’ Both Payne and Gilbert Sheldon (the Warden of All Souls College) were ejected from their Oxford colleges by the parliamentary authorities in 1648; Sheldon retired to Staffordshire, and Payne then kept up a correspondence with him, Payne’s letters to Sheldon from this period (1649-51) make fre- quent reference to ‘my friend in Paris? or ‘my friend M' H.’, from which itis, clear that he was receiving letters on a regular basis—sometimes at the rate of one every three weeks —from Hobbes." There is other evidence that Hob ‘bes had been sending Payne drafis of some his work on De cerpore earlier in the 1640s; and, indeed, Payne’s letters to Sheldon imply that much of his correspondence with Hobbes was about natural philosophy.’ But Payne did also show an interest in Hobbes’s other writings, and in his letter of 13 [/23] May 1650 he mentioned that he had passed on to Hobbes the news (which he had apparently received from Sheldon) that someone was preparing to publish a translation of De cive: sent notice to M Hobbes, 'his booke de Cive was translated into English, & desir hhim to prevent y‘ translation by one of his owne. but he sends me word he hath an ‘On Payne sce Feingeld, A Friend of Hens’; Maen, igs, pp os. ‘See BL, MS Lansisne 81, fa. 174 (Payne tw Sheldon, 16 {/26] July 1650: Since {wrt co you last Troe fora my fiend at Pars"The as ete fered 0 here was probably that of 13 (723) [Mayes below a 4. » Chatsworth, Hobbes MSS C. iy 2and A. 10 ure notes by Payne, dating probably fom 1645-6, on ‘ary chapters De cargore, On 24 Apt [9 May) 160 Payne woot co Sheldon that he had recived t= fers ery lay fom Hobie, and cat discourse tn ter salon some pat of maura philsophie which Thad propose him a same formar eters’ (BL, MS Hl 6942, 0.120).2 GENERAL INTRODUCTION ‘other taske in hand, w* is Politiques, in English; of whe hath finishd 37 chapters. (atending about go in y* whole) w* are translated into French, by a Jearned french ‘man, of good quality, as fast as he finishes them. And y" his booke de Cive, is trans- lated into french, & printed allready:* ‘The news that Hobbes was composing a work of ‘Politiques, in English? ‘must have come as something of a surprise to his old friend—and not only because Hobbes had apparently been withholding this information from Payne during the many months in which he had been writing those 37 chap- ters, That Hobbes should write about politics was, of course, not in itself surprising; hee was already quite well known as a political writer. The im- mediate cause of his departure from England in November 1640 had been his fear that he would be called to account by Parliament for his strongly royalist treatise The Elements of Law, which had been widely circulated in manuscript since its completion in May of that year® During his first year in Paris he wrote another political treatise, De cive; his friend Marin Mersenne, ‘who was an intellectual impresario and ‘intelligencer’ as well as a theolo- gian, philosopher, and mathematician, organized the printing of this text in a small number of copies in 1642, which were sent to prominent intellectu- als for their comments. In response to the criticisms he received, Hobbes made some revisions and added some important explanatory passages in the ‘margins of his copy; and in the spring of 1646 he allowed one of his young admirers, Samuel Sorbigre, to take this annotated copy to Amsterdam, where it was used as the basis for a new, commercial publication of the text.’ When this edition (published by Louis Elzevier in January 1647) sold out, Sorbiére wrote to Hobbes in August 1647 to say that the publisher ‘is therefore think- ing of preparing a new edition, and that if you want to add anything to it, or take anything out, you can let me know’.’ When Hobbes eventually replied to this request, he sent just one page of corrections to typographical errors, declaring that, otherwise, ‘I have nothing to add or subtract’.* It thus ap- pears that by early 1646 Hobbes had made all the substantive changes that he thought necessary to this major statement of his political theory, and that, as recently as late 1647 he had not felt the need for any further additions or Wid. pa 585-7 MS anadowne Sq, f, 1241/26] July 1650, jes and Seda, Join Pel. 48, 383, § ins aparently sso inside the optical diagrams for De i j | | ‘ | | | THE WRITING OF LEvraTHAN 1 a volume consisting of his own Preface and Hobbes’s ‘Answer’ to it, which svas dated [31 December 1649/] 10 January 1650. In the Preface, Davenant thanked Hobbes at the outset for giving his poem ‘a daylie examination as it ayas writing’, and again for“examining, correcting, and allowing this Poem in parcels’, In his Answver, Hobbes returned the compliment: ‘For I have vsed your Judgment no lesse in many thinges of mine, which comming to light will thereby appeare the better." It seems reasonable to assume that those ‘hinges’ included drafis of the early chapters of Leviathan; if so, this state- ment is the earliest datable reference to Hobbes's work on that book. ‘One other type of evidence, from roughly the same period, can also be connected with the preparation of Leviathan: a discussion of the rights and nature of episcopacy in the correspondence between Hobbes and Robert Payne, As we have seen, Payne did not know of the preparation of Leviathan until May 1650; nevertheless, he seems unwittingly to have played a part in the development of Hobbes’s arguments on episcopacy (one of the topics discussed in the book) during the previous winter. In November or early De- ‘cember 1649 he was trying to defend episcopacy against Hobbes’s criticisms; he wrote Hobbes a letter dealing with several of the points to which Hobbes objected (the use of the title providentia divina, ‘by divine providence’; the practice of anointing kings at coronation services; the claim to exercise a power independent of the civil sovereign), sent a copy of this letter to Shel- don, and received a reply to it from Hobbes not long before 20 December. Payne wrote again to Hobbes, renewing his own arguments on this topic, before 4 February; and, after he had been informed about the preparation of Hobbes's Politiques’, he continued to discuss these ecclesiological issues with him well into the summer of 1650. “That Hobbes was thinking about these issues (and, to that extent, prepar- ing his arguments about them) during the winter of 1649-30 seems plain enough. That he was writing the relevant parts of Leviathan at that time is, however, much less clear. By May 1650 he had apparently got as far as the end of Chapter 37; but his general treatment of ecclesiastical claims to exercise a power independent of the sovereign, and his particular discussion of the ttle brovidentia divina, appear in Chapter 42, while his comments on the anoint- ment of kings by bishops are made in Chapter 44." Much must depend, it seems, on what one means by ‘writing’ Leviathan. The statement in May 1650 that he had finished 37 chapters, and that they were being translated ® Daven, Prefice 1 Gon, pp. 1 65.156 (Davenant, Gander. dish, pp 3, 2454 Ror deal ofall these Teer see Callin Christan Ecclesiology’ which prin the teat of Payne's lets to Hobbes (BL, MS Har. 642, 0.153) fr the fs "See in general Ch 42, and in particular pp. 854, 9828 OUNERAL INTRODUGTION into French as fast as he finished them, suggests the completion of the final version of each chapter: there could be little point in offering a translator a yet-to-be-perfected draft. At the same time, the statement that he intended ‘about 50” chapters altogether (there are in fact 47, or 48 if one includes the ‘Review, and Conclusion’, which is indeed described in the running titles of the manuscript as ‘crtaP. 48°) shows that he had a scheme of the whole work, which may have been quite a detailed one; the use of the phrase ‘about 50° may well have represented rounding, rather than uncertainty, on Hobbes’s part. Many years later, discussing the writing of Leviaihan, his close friend John Aubrey recorded the following: the manner of writing of which booke (he told me) was thus. He walked much and contemplated, and he had in the head of his staife a pen and inke-horne, carried alvayes a note-booke in his pocket, and as soon as a thought darted, he presently entred it into his booke, or otherwise he migiat perhaps have lost it. He had drawne the designe of the booke into chapters, etc so he knew whereabout it would come in. ‘Thus that booke was made." Other evidence of Hobbes’s working methods is supplied by Sir Charles Cavendish’s comments on the draft chapters of De corpore which he read in 1645: writing to the Hamburg scholar Joachim Jungius, he explained that he hhad looked at Hobbes’s ‘schedulae’—a term which suggests loose notes con- sisting of small sheets of paper.” No such Hobbesian note drafts survive, of any of his writings; but a reasonable guess as to his working methods might ‘80 a8 follows, First, when ‘a thought darted’, it was hastily written in a note- ‘book which was not itself governed by any ordering principle, (This was a standard technique of early modern ‘commonplacing’: such a notebook was sometimes compared to a merchant's ‘waste book’, in which matters were entered immediately, to be transferred later to the appropriate ledgers.) ‘Then, in his study, Hobbes would enter the ‘thought’ in the appropriate rough draft chapter on loose leaves, which may have been more a set of ap- proximately ordered apersus than a piece of continuous prose. And lastly, ‘when he came to write up the chapter, he would place those note drafts in front of him, and compose the final version. ‘The evidence presented up to this point makes it possible to sketch a line of argument about the timescale of the composition of Leviathan. The most solid piece of information is that Hobbes had finished 37 chapters by May 2 Bos, MS Aubrey of. 5 printed in Aube, “Brig Liter. 34, 2 Staind Usiversiatbibiochel, Hamburg, MS Pe 1a (= Sup. ep 97).n0 85, ee, [1/111 May 1645 (priate in von Brock, Des St Cards Caren Drei, yp. 4 Fo D9). *# SecBea,'Nosonsin Garson’ pp. 132-3and the commentsin Malem, “Theres Hrvsom p21. ‘THE WRITING OF LEVIATHAN a 1650. As we shall see the book’s publisher, Andrew Crooke, entered it in the Stationers? Register in January 1651, and there is good resson to think that fhe must have had a manuscript copy of the entire work when he did so. This ‘means that Hobbes must Have completed the text by the end of December 11630 at the latest. The first 37 chapters represent 6o per cent of the book; jffwe assume that Hobbes wrote at a constant rate, and that he took eight ‘months to write the remaining 4o per cent, this would imply that he had taken twelve months to write the first 6o per cent—that is, that he had begun circa May 1649, The completion date, however, should probably be brought forward by at least a month, to allow time for revisions and, perhaps, for the copying of the entire texts on that basis, the starting-point might be moved to June ot July 1649. But even a simplistic calculation of this sort should be adjusted to take account of the fact that writing the second half of Leviathan ‘would surely have been slower work than writing the first: parts one and two of the book covered much ground that Hobbes had already traversed in The Elements of La and De cive, whereas most of the material in the third and fourth parts was new. Allowing faster rate for the earlier part of the book, we right move the starting-point to the late summer or early autumn of 1649, Such an estimate, though based on a very crude sct of assumptions, does yield an approximate date which fits quite neatly with some of the evidence presented above. We have seen that up to 1649 Hobbes was hard at work on De corpore; that he told Sorbiére in June 1649 that he hoped to finish it by the end of the summer, and that he was so confident of its imminent comple~ tion that he was commissioning the (no doubt expensive) work of having the plates engraved; that in September of that year he told Sir Charles Caven- dish that he hoped to see De corpore (and, perhaps, De homie) in print in ap- proximately six months’ time; and that from that moment onwards a strange silence descended on this topic in the documentary record. But what exactly happened at this point remains a mystery. We know, of course, that Hobbes had not in fact completed De corpore: in the concluding sentences of Levia~ than he declared that he would now ‘return to my interrupted Speculation ‘of Bodies Naturall; wherein, (if God give me health to finish it,) Thope the Novelty will... please’.”” Whether he gave up work on De corpore because he felt impelled to concentrate full-time on Leviathan, or whether he was ‘encouraged to devote himself to the latter by the fact that he had reached ‘yet another impasse in his work on the former, cannot now be known. But the speed and concentration of his work on Leviathan do suggest that he was eventually gripped by a powerful impulse to write this book,