[Rarebooks] fa: PETER PINDAR (John Wolcot) Satires on the EMBASSY TO CHINA 1792

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, July 17. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/zoeqkgt

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Peter Pindar [John Wolcot]: Odes to Kien Long, the Present Emperor of China; with The Quakers, A Tale... London: Printed for H.D. Symonds... and Robertson and Berry..., 1792. A New Edition (same year as the first). ESTC T42075. [WITH:] A Pair of Lyric Epistles to Lord Macartney and his Ship. London: Printed for H.D. Symonds, 1792. New Edition (same year as the first). With the half-title and final leaf of publisher's adverts. ESTC T118095. Two volumes, disbound 4tos (26.5 cm). Remnants of earlier leather bindings on the spines, leaves with some toning to the edges, occasional light spotting, but overall very clean, bright and fresh.

Uncommon and amusing commentaries on the 1792-94 British embassy to the court of the Emperor Quianlong in Peking, one of the defining modern encounters between China and the West. Eager to establish more favorable trading rights with the vast and mysterious Chinese Empire, the British government in 1792 dispatched a diplomatic mission led by George Macartney, an experienced diplomat and the former colonial governor of Madras, India. The mission was to prove a spectacular failure, Macartney returning to England virtually empty-handed. This disappointing outcome was far in the future at the time these works were composed, but Pindar/Wolcot was unwittingly prescient in some of his verses, particularly in the second work, where he envisioned Macartney and his entourage stripped, beaten and humiliated by the Chinese. "I see the mighty Emp'ror gravely place / Fools-caps on all the poor degraded men— / And now I hear the solemn Emp'ror say, / ''Tis thus we Kings of China folly pay; / Now, children, ye may all go home agen." The first work also contains comic verses on a variety of other subjects: "William Penn, Nathan, and the Bailiff, a Tale"; "A Lyric Epistle to Sir William Hamilton" on his latest archaeological discoveries in the vicinity of Pompeii ("More broken pans, more gods, more mugs, / More snivel bottles, jordens [chamber pots], and old mugs..."); "To a Fly, Drowned in a Bowl of Punch"; etc.