MACBEAN, William, translator.

Phocion's Conversations: or, the Relation between Morality and Politics. Originally translated by Abbé Mably, from a Greek Manuscript of Nicocles ...

London: Printed for the Author, and sold by Mr. Dodsley ... 1769. 8vo., pp. [8], civ, 303, [1], the‘Summary of the Conversations’ (one leaf) bound after the title-page rather than at the end of the prelims (as in the ESTC collation); a fine copy in contemporary polished calf, spine gilt, red morocco label, yellow edges, marbled endpapers; Syston Park bookplate (the library of Sir John Thorold). First edition in English of Gabriel Bonnot de Mably’s Entretiens de Phocion (1763), a supposed translation of an ancient manuscript which Mably claimed to have found in Monte Cassino, ‘a work hitherto unknown, and bearing the name of one of the greatest men of all Greece’, the general and statesman Phocion, whose conversation Nicocles collected ‘as Plato and Xenophon have preserved that of Socrates’. In fact, however, Entretiens is an imposture, a work of modern political philosophy in the form of conversations on such subjects as ‘Obedience to the laws of nature [is the] first rule [of politics]’, ‘There is no virtue, however obscure, which does not contribute to the happiness of mankind’, ‘Of the love of one’s country, and of mankind’, and ‘Different distempers of states’.The translator was the younger of two brothers who worked for Dr. Johnson transcribing quotations for the Dictionary. ‘For the mechanical part, he employed, as he told me six amanuenses ... To all these painful labourers, Johnson shewed a never-ceasing kindness, so far as they stood in need of it. The elder Mr. Macbean [Alexander] had afterwards the honour of being Librarian to Archibald, Duke of Argyle’ (Boswell) and compiled the index to Lives of the Poets.William Macbean became ‘Master of a Boarding-School at Newmarket’ (according to the title-page here); in 1785 he wrote to James Dodsley that he was the last survivor of that ‘laborious brethren, the Dr.’s amanuenses’, and that he had been gathering material for a supplement to the Dictionary, but it was never published. The subscribers’ list to Phocion’s Conversations is pretty sparse and does not include Johnson, though it does include W. Macbean, Gillies Macbean of Jamaica, and Charles Maitland, perhaps Boswell’s ‘Mr. Maitland’, another Dictionary assistant.ESTC lists eleven copies. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. Hill-Powell, I, 187, 536; Johnson’s Letters, ed. Bruce Redford, III, 145.

• GBP 2,500.00 > 其他币种价格
• 订书号：: E132

• 书商: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)