ABSTRACT
F. A. Borovsky, in his supplement to Gustav Parthey's descriptive catalogue of the works of Wenceslas Hollar, credited the Leviathan title-page engraving to this artist; and it is mounted with the Hollar title-pages devotes to Hollar's work in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. There has been a myth among writers on Hobbes that the first version of the engraved title-page of Leviathan showed the features of Charles I, which was then changed to a portrait of Cromwell in the alleged second and third editions of the work. From the first point, it exhibits finesses unlikely to have been within Hobbes's compass; from the second point, it seems to exhibit a familiarity with Hobbes's work that one might have thought would have been beyond Hollar. The author of Leviathan was a man exasperated and distressed by the splintering fabric of the state to which he belonged, who believed he knew the answer to his country's problems.
