The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (review)

686 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER 1995 But what are these numbers? Do they have anything to do with the strict measurement of the coming age of science? Not likely. They are in a certain way a code--in chapter thirteen of his Commentary Ficino calls them metaphors (translationes)--and are evidently more qualitative than quantitative, number structures with value connotations . As Allen shows, they do correspond to Platonic and even Ptolemaic metaphysical and cosmic structures, and by expressing the musical intervals were conceived as realities. It is notable that Ficino was turning toward such world-salvific projections as Plato's fatal number in the mid-149os. He had written his De vita coelestuscomparanda, which recommended a way of attracting celestial blessings, in the summer of 1489. In 1492 Lorenzo il Magnifico had died. In 1494 Ficino's erstwhile friends and sometime rivals, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano also died; Charles VIII invaded and Lorenzo's son Piero fled. Savonarola, preaching purification, had become a major influence in Florence . The moment for dire speculation and doom-saying had arrived. Allen persuasively argues for the influence of these events on Ficino's composition of De numero fatali and rightly shows the persistence of his optimistic efforts to manipulate the celestials of 1489. Nuptial Arithmetic is an elegant work, well researched and deeply pondered. Allen edits and translates Ficino's Commentary on the Fatal Number in Book VIII of Plato's Republic with his customary grace and precision. He reveals in his own commentary the richness and complexity of Ficino's speculation and demonstrates its importance for the history of the Platonic tradition. CHARLES TRINKAUS University of Michigan Noel Malcolm, editor. The Correspondence of Thoma~ Hobbes. Volumes I and II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. Ixxv + 1oo8. Cloth, $78.00. The word 'stupendous' has already been applied to Malcolm's work by one of the keepers of Hobbes's correspondence, a person who very likely is not given to hyperbole . Certainly, 'stupendous' is perfectly accurate for these magnificent volumes. They consist of three major elements: first, a textual introduction, in which Malcolm describes such things as the manuscript sources, the principles of transcription, and method of dating; second, all the known letters either written by Hobbes or sent to him; third, a "Biographical Register," which gives ample biographies of virtually all of Hobbes's correspondents. The letters are accompanied by full scholarly notations in a clean and unobtrusive form. Malcolm's judiciousness as an editor is evident in a dozen or so little details. In the Biographical Register, for example, he follows "an inverse law of historical importance : well-known figures who are listed in standard reference works are dealt with more summarily than minor figures for whom the reader would not otherwise have an easily available source of information" (l xv). Although this means that neither the first nor second earl of Devonshire gets a formal biography, they and other noncorrespondents are discussed in sufficient detail in the notes. BOOK REVIEWS 687 Nothing more need be said about the seventy-plus pages of the textual introduction , except perhaps that it foreshadows the superior scholarship that the reader will find in the rest of the book. The heart of the volumes are the a i I surviving letters, of which 68 come from the years 1654-57. Their most salient characteristic is the paucity of information about Hobbes's feelings, even though others reveal theirs to him. The letters from Frangois du Verdus to Hobbes are the most touching, one of which includes a thirteen-page poem, written in Italian, about the love between two women, Iris and Phoenix. All of the letters have explanatory notes affixed to them. Those that are written in Latin, French, or Italian are followed by Malcolm's translation of them. The first surviving letter, dated December 1o, 162~, is from Robert Mason. It supplies Hobbes with various tidbits of religio-politicalgossip and asks him for information in return. As a member of the influential Cavendish household, he was well placed to know what was going on. The last dated letter is of August 18, 1679. It is an anticlimactic note...