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HOBBES, Thomas.
Le corps Politique ou les elements de la loy morale et civile.
Avec des Reflexions sur la Loy de Nature, sur les Serments, les Pacts, & les diverses sortes de Gouvernemens; leurs changemens, & leurs revolutions … Traduit d'Anglois en François par un de ses amis [Samuel Sorbière].
First edition in French of Hobbes's first statement of his political theory. The treatise The Elements of Law was originally written in England and first distributed in manuscript in 1640, just after the dissolution of the Short Parliament. Hobbes was fiercely attacked as a hardline theorist of royal absolutism and, before Parliament reconvened, he left London for Paris, where he stayed for eleven years. Among Hobbes's circle of friends there, centered on Mersenne, was the young Huguenot intellectual Samuel Sorbière, the translator of this work. The English text appeared in print for the first time in 1650. This first French edition is scarce in commerce: the translation is far more often met with in the Elsevier edition of 1653. The engraved frontispiece, unique to this edition, is copied from the top half of the engraved title-page of Leviathan, here representing Leviathan with a pair of scales instead of a crozier in his left and, as before, a sword in his right. The landscape below is different in detail, though the general conception is similar.
12mo. Attractively bound in 18th-century French red morocco, smooth spine gilt in compartments with flowers, leaf-sprays and circles, green morocco label, sides with triple gilt rules, comb-marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Engraved frontispiece. Engraved bookplate of Pierre Clement de Laussat (1756–1835), the last French governor of Louisiana, with arms erased; early notes on blank facing frontispiece. Slight mark to front cover, text very faintly and evenly browned, else a fine copy.
