DAVIS, John Francis.

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Poeseos Sinensis Commentarii. First Chinese edition of this considered analysis of Chinese poetry, following the equally rare London edition by five years, with the bookplate of the American diplomat W. W. Rockhill, the first American to learn Tibetan. This edition also incorporates previously unpublished material: Davis's recollections of the 1816 Amherst embassy to Beijing and two examples of his prodigious scholarly output.Having joined the East India Company in 1813 as a writer based in Canton, Davis's (1795-1890) linguistic abilities earned him a place in Lord Amherst's ultimately unsuccessful delegation. He carved out a reputation as a formidable scholar of Chinese, publishing literary translations in 1817 and 1822 and a Chinese lexicon in 1824. After further scholarly activity in the 1830s and early 1840s, he was appointed the second governor of Hong Kong in 1844 - a position he held for four years. Poeseos Sinensis Commentarii promotes the aesthetic merits of Chinese poetry in the face of European and American bias and allowed the author to demonstrate his "vast knowledge of classical Chinese and profound academic expertise" (Lan, p. 28). It was read to the Royal Asiatic Society on 2 May 1829 and printed in London soon after. In the last five decades, only one example of the 1829 edition and one other example of this edition are recorded in commerce.Pages 111 to 151 present a diary-style account of the Amherst embassy and serve as a taster of the fuller account publis

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