CAMÖENS, Luis de.

£5,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Lusiad; or the Discovery of India. Second edition of William Mickle's translation and the first to print his attack on Adam Smith. This finely bound copy belonged to the diplomat George Macartney (1737-1806), who governed Madras between 1781 and 1785, with his baronial bookplate on the front pastedown. Published in 1776 by subscription, Mickle's translation from the Portuguese was more an adaptation of Camöens's epic in his own style, with plenty of poetic licence. It remained the major translation of Lusiad into the mid-19th century. In the 236-page introduction to the second edition, Mickle reacts to Smith's stance in the Wealth of Nations "as the philosophical champion for the abolition of the Monopoly of the English United East India Company" (p. clxi). For the next 26 pages Mickle criticizes Smith's economics, not only his specific application of his general laissez faire doctrines to the East India Company issue, but also these doctrines themselves.Despite his inexperience with India, Macartney persuaded the East India Company to send him to Fort Saint George as their first non-company servant. During his tenure he successfully took the Dutch settlements of Negapatam and Trincomali, but managed to make enemies of many powerful men, including General Eyre Coote, Calcutta's governor-general Warren Hastings, his benefactor Paul Benfield, and the Carnatic nawab. In 1792, he led the first British mission to China.

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