INTRODUCTION

The diffident conclusion to the Politica did not augur well for a spectacular reception and initially the work sank from view. The simplest reason may be that once a settlement had been achieved, Lawson's work no longer touched on burning issues. But so much appeared around 1660 that almost everything was lost under a floating tide of paper. The Politica is unusual in surviving at all and one can only speculate on the fate of Leviathan had it appeared in that monstrous year of the word. However, there may be a serious discrepancy between significance and citation. In a way we are quite properly restricted by the latter, but we should not on this basis assume that the only importance a writer might have had is to be found on the page. Caution is needed here to avoid the phantom world of hidden influence, but Maclean has pointed out that Lawson's works were widely distributed in the libraries of the English gentry; they found their way to America; and the Politica was still being read during the Napoleonic Wars. Both the auctioneer's and Baxter's paeans of praise seem to reflect a recognised importance which belies the paucity of textual citation.

Further, if one looks at the pattern of citation in the seventeenth century, this may not be unduly surprising. References to the works of others fall roughly into the following main categories.