1651 - Literature

Literature

Nonfiction: Leviathan, or "The Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil," by English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, 63, who published a translation of Thucydides in 1629. In order to survive, he says, people must surrender their individual rights and submit to an absolute sovereign whose duty is to protect them from outside enemies much as a feudal lord protected his vassals. "Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind, As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery," writes Hobbes, "Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth, no Navigation, nor use of the commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short"; Jacula Prudentum by the late George Herbert contains translations of proverbs that include "The eye is bigger than the belly"; "His bark is worse than his bite"; "Whose house is of glass, must not throw stones at another"; "God's mill grinds slow, but sure"; "In doing we learn"; "For want of a nail, the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost"; "One half the world knows not how the other half lives"; "He that lies with the dogs, riseth with fleas"; and "One hour's sleep before midnight is worth three after."

Poetry: Swan of Usk (Olor Iscanus) by Henry Vaughan; Spiritual and Worldly Poems (Geist und weltliche Poemata) by the late Paul Fleming, who died in 1640.