Hobbes' Leviathan. With an Essay by the late W. G.
Pogson Smith. (The Clarendon Press. 2s. 6d. net.)—Mr. Pogson Smith's introductory essay is only too short. It is, we are given to under- stand, but a very small part of a great body of material which he had collected by a most diligent study of all that concerned Hobbes. It seems that this is not in a condition to be utilised, a fact which no one who reads this specimen will fail to regret. We cannot accept all the writer's opinions and appreciations. He is curiously disrespectful to Francis Bacon, for instance, and speaks of Machiavelli as a "solemn humbug." But what he says about Hobbes, though he is not by any means a Hobbesian, ie admirable. This edition, reprinted from that of 1551, is well worth having,—five hundred and fifty-seven pages of writing as racy as one can find in the whole range of English literature for half-a-crown.
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