PREFACE.
OF Hobbes’s Behemoth, or (as it was commonly called) the Dialogue of the Civil Wars of England, though written probably a few years after the Restoration, there was no genuine edition during the author’s lifetime, which lasted until 1679. But three years later his old publisher, William Crooke, issued a volume entitled, Tracts of Mr. Th. H. of Malmsbury, containing in the first place the treatise entitled Behemoth, which is followed by three other pieces, and introduced by the following remarks: “My duty, as well to the Public as to the memory of Mr. Hobbs, has obliged me to procure, with my utmost diligence, that these Tracts should come forth with the most correct exactness. I am compelled by the force of Truth to declare, how much both the world and the name of Mr. Hobbs have been abused by the several spurious editions of the ‘History of the Civil Wars,’ wherein, by various and unskilful transcriptions, are committed above a thousand faults, and in above a hundred places whole lines left out, as I can make appear. I must confess Mr. Hobbs, upon some considerations, was averse to the publishing thereof; but since it is impossible to suppress it, no book being more commonly sold by all book-sellers, I hope I need not fear the offence of any man, by doing right to the world and this work, which I now publish from the original manuscript, done by his own amanuensis, and given me by himself above twelve years since,” &c. In the meantime, Mr. Crooke had been printing a letter by
