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Catalogue
73
Voyages
& Travels
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91. [MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLO]. Discovrs de L'Estat de Paix et
de Gverre, de N. Macchiavel, citoyen et secretaire de Florence.
Traduict d'Italien en François. Ensemble vn Traité
de mesme Auteur, intitulé Le Prince, De novveau corrigez
,[sic] & illustrez de maximes Politiques en marge. A Paris,
Chez Anthoine de Sommaville... M.DC.XXIX (1629).
[bound with]:
L'art de la Gverre de N. Macchiavel, citoyen et secretaire de Florence.
Tres-utile & necessaire à tous Roys, Princes, Republiques,
Seigneurs, Capitaines, Gentilshommes, & autre suivans les armes....
A Paris, Chez Avgvstin Covrbe... M.DC.XXIX (1629).
[bound with]:
Le Prince de Nicolas Macchiavel, ... n.p., M. DC. XXIX (1629). $1,350
Short thick 8vo; 6 ff, ff. 2, ff. 283, [7 ff.] (Table). 8 ff., ff.
192 ff, 8 folding diagrams; ff. 80; contemporary full vellum, wanting
ties; front pastedown little torn; manuscript title on spine; faint
remains of shelf label at tail of spine; old number at bottom of
title-page; little sporadic foxing; overall a very good copy. There
is no attribution of a publisher for the third work, The Prince.
Not in Brunet; vide BNF (diff. imprint); this edition not in COPAC,
Yale, Harvard, JCB, Huntington, Minn., Mich., NYPL, LC, all of which
have earlier or later editions; OCLC 31960274 is the same year but
a different imprint. Machiavelli's "Discourses" are based
on the first ten books ("decade") of Titus Livius' (59
BCE - 17 CE) monumental work on the history of Rome. In his work,
Machiavelli expounds a general theory of government and politics
that stresses the importance of an uncorrupted political culture
and political morality, and indicates clearly his republican principles.
In the second work, The Art of War he reviews military problems
in relation to politics, as well as reports and brief works, accompanied
by eight diagrams of formations of regiments and battalions. The
third work, and his best-known, The Prince, describes the means
by which a prince may gain and maintain his power, and might well
be modeled on Cesare Borgia. His "ideal" prince is an
amoral and calculating tyrant who would be able to establish a unified
Italian state and, indeed, the last chapter of the work pleads for
the eventual liberation of Italy from foreign rule. A scarce early
edition of Machiavelli's classic works.
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First Edition of this Classic Overland Account
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92. MACKENZIE, ALEXANDER. Voyages from Montreal, on the River
St. Laurence, through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen
and Pacific Oceans, in the Years 1789 and 1793, with a preliminary
account of the rise, progress, and present state of the Fur Trade
of that country. London, T. Cadell, Jun. & W. Davies, 1801.
First edition. $8,250
4to; f, pp. viii, cxxxii, 412, f (errata); engraved frontispiece
portrait; 3 large, engraved, folding maps (1 coloured); recent full
faux-calf; text lightly toned; little sporadic foxing; usual offsetting
from portrait to title-page; wants half-title; a very good copy
of an important work.
Sabin 43414; TPL 658; Str. VI: 3653; Wagner-Camp 1; Field 967; Vlach
511; Graff 2630; Howes M133; Peel 25; Hill, p. 187; Cox II, p. 177;
Lande 1317; Smith 6382; Wagner-Camp 1:1; Strathern 343. Leaving
Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabaska in 1789, Mackenzie set out for
the Arctic Sea on the river now bearing his name, and returned the
same year. In 1793 he again set out, this time for the Pacific.
He and his party worked their way up the Peace River, the Parsnip
River, crossed the Continental Divide, and discovered the Fraser
River. They travelled down the Fraser for a bit and then struck
overland; they reached and crossed the Coast Ranges, reached the
Bella Coola River which they descended, and found themselves at
the river's mouth in a tidal inlet of the Pacific, thus completing
the first overland journey, north of Mexico, across North America.
Many of the nineteenth-century explorers who followed in Mackenzie's
tracks found his accuracy remarkable. These two expeditions were
undertaken on behalf of the North West Company in its attempt to
break the monopoly of the fur trade held by the Hudson's Bay Company.
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93.
MANDEVILLE, Sir JOHN. The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John
Maundeville, Kt. which treateth of the Way to Hierusalem; and of
Marvayles of Inde, with Other Ilands and Countryes. London, Edward
Lumley, 1839. $250
8vo; f, pp. xiv, (xiii)-xvii, (1), (v)-xii, 326, (2) (publisher's
cat.); frontispiece and numerous textual illustrations. Original
cloth little worn; sporadic light foxing on first and final leaves;
overall a very good copy.
This edition not in Cox. This work purports to record the experiences
of the author's supposed travels through Jerusalem, Egypt, Turkistan,
India, China, etc. It is, in actuality, a compilation of the works
of other 14th-century writers into which the author has interpolated
details from mediaeval fables and lore. It is now generally believed
that Mandeville was a pseudonym used by one Jean d'Outemeuse, a
native of Liege and a writer of histories and fables. The work has
been published in many languages and in many editions from 1499
into the twentieth century.
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94.
MARTINI, M[ARTINUS]. De Bello Tartarico Historia; In quâ,
quo pacto Tartari hac nostrâ ætate Sinicum Imperium
inuaserint, ac ferè totum occuparint, narratur; eorumque
mores breuiter describunter. Antwerp, ex Officina Plantiniana Baltharis
Moreti. M.DC.LIV (1654). First edition. $1,150
Small 8vo; pp. 156, (3); wanting small folding map; contemporary
full calf; marbled endpapers; woodcut device of the Society of Jesus
on title-page; few woodcut initials and one tailpiece; very faint
light dampstain to first and final leaves; overall, a very good
clean copy. This is not to be confused with the second edition (166
pp.), published the same year.
Cordier Sinica 1: 623; De Backer-Sommerfogel V: 647: 7; not in Cioranescu
nor in Brunet; of this first edition we have located one copy at
each of the following: BNF, BL, SOAS, NYPL, and Harvard (Houghton).
The author (1614-1661) was a Jesuit historian, cartographer amd
missionary who studied mathematics under Athanasius Kircher. He
was sent out to China in 1640, arriving in 1643, and became Superior
in Hangzhou, one of the most important cities in the Yangze delta
area. He was witness to the overthrow of the ancient Ming Dynasty
by the Qing, or Manchu Tatars, in 1643-44 and this work is one of
the most faithful and honest descriptions of this period of Chinese
history. Westerners were fascinated by information out of the East,
and this work of Martini was published in many editions and in many
languages - English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and
Portuguese - within fifteen years of this first edition. Martini
was also the author of Novus Atlas Sinensis, an important cartographical
work on China published by Blaeu in 1655 in Amsterdam.
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First Edition in French and Very Scarce
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95. MAUNDRELL, HENRY. Voyage d'Alep à Jerusalem, à
Pâques en l'année 1697. Utrecht, Guillaume va Poolsum
1705. First edition in French. $1,250
12mo; pp. [10], 251; 10 engraved plates, including frontispiece,
7 of which are folding; contemporary full calf, spine gilt in compartments;
marbled endpapers; small stain at head of one leaf; minimum wear
to edges of binding; a very good copy.
Cox I, p. 219; vide Bevis, p. 136 (earlier Eng. eds.); Tobler, pp.
116; Weber II: 448; Röhricht 286; Atabey 784 note; Blackmer
1095. Maundrell, chaplain to the English Factory at Aleppo, set
out from that city in February, 1697 to visit the Holy Land at Easter
of that year. This lucid, well-written account of his travels through
Syria, Lebanon and Palestine "was popular throughout the 18th
century and has proved a useful record of the condition of the Levant
in his time." -(Bevis) This is the first edition in French,
predating the Paris edition of the following year. It is much scarcer
than the latter; we have noted only the copy at Leeds in COPAC and
RLIN cites the copy at University of Chicago only.
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