RAS-1961 — Page 61

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch

RASHKB and author

Vol. 1 (1961)

ISSN 1991-7295

57

painstaking scholar. In his journals and letters he notes with appreciation books received for recreational purposes and also for the education of his children. The collection is representative of the period and contains more curiosities than rarities,

Only about two hundred volumes remain which are of Far East interest. This section seems to have suffered the depredations of time and insects more than any other, but what is left is perhaps of sufficient interest to warrant description. There are a fair number of eighteenth century books but in all only five seventeenth century and of these only two are about China,

The earliest is Atlas Extreme Asiae Sive Sinarum Imperii (Atlas of furthermost Asia and Imperial China) by Martin Martinius of 1654. It lacks a title page and of the fifteen maps three are missing. It includes a brief note on Korea and Japan. It has a thirty-six page supplement "De Bello Tartarico Historia" many separate editions of which appeared in French and Dutch trans- lations. The work is listed in Cordier as Nouvus Atlas Sinensis a Martino Martinio Soc. Iesv, a later edition than the one here described. According to the same authority there were two Latin editions and many translations.

Only one of the two copies listed of China Monumentis by Athanasius Kircher, S.J. is now in the Library. It is a copy of the first 1667 edition listed in Cordier as being the finest, a folio, complete with the engraved frontispiece and the numerous plates.

Among the eighteenth century books there is a copy of the first edition of the first English translation to be made of Camoës' epic poem, The Lusiad (Ös Lusiadas) by William Julius Mickle. Mickle published a translation of Book Five only in The Gentle- man's Magazine for March, 1771 and a little later the first canto. These were followed by the whole poem in 1775 when its publication was supported by a long list of subscribers. The translator visited Portugal as secretary to Commodore Johnstone in 1779 where he was received with much acclaim.

There is a copy of the first collected English edition of The Works of Peter Pindar, Esq. in three volumes (two earlier collected editions had appeared in Dublin), but unfortunately the first volume is missing. Peter Pindar, the pen name of John Wolcot, was well known as a pungent satirist in his day. This collected edition was published in 1794 by John Walker of Paternoster Row, London, to whom Wolcot sold all the rights of his published and future work in 1793. This arrangement subsequently led to disputes and a law suit which was decided in the author's favour and he enjoyed a comfortable annuity for the rest of his long life until 1819. The Works contain A pair of Lyric Epistles to Lord Macartney and Odes to Kien Long which recall how much in the public eye was the British Embassy to Peking at this time.