Though he had already written a summary of Aristotle's Rhetoric in Latin and later wrote about logic, Hobbes would probably deserve no more than a footnote in the history of rhetoric if he had not published Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiastical and Civill (1651). One of the greatest works of political philosophy in English, Leviathan relies on rhetoric for its effectiveness. As Hobbes's confidence in logic waxed, his confidence in rhetoric waned; in Leviathan, however, rhetoric is wedded to logic.

Hobbes was born just outside of Malmesbury, Wiltshire, on 5 April 1588. His mother--whose name, like his sister's, may have been Anne--gave birth to him prematurely, he said in his verse autobiography (1679; translated, 1680), because she was frightened by reports of the approach of the Spanish Armada. His father, also named Thomas, was an unexemplary and impecunious minister. Hobbes learned to read and write English at...