"NO MAN PREVIOUS TO KARL MARX HAS HAD AS REVOLUTIONARY AN IMPACT ON POLITICAL THOUGHT": MACHIAVELLI’S WORKS IN ENGLISH, 1762, SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST FARNEWORTH TRANSLATION

MACHIAVELLI, Niccolo. The Works of Nicholas Machiavel… Newly Translated from the Originals; Illustrated with Notes, Annotations, Dissertations, and Several New Plans on the Art of War. By Ellis Farneworth. London: Printed for Thomas Davies et al., 1762. Two volumes. Thick quarto, contemporary full speckled brown calf, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, red and black morocco spine labels. $7500.

First edition of Ellis Farneworth's eminent translation of the Works of Machiavelli, including The Prince, The History of Florence, The Art of War, and featuring "Some Anecdotes Relating to the Life and Writings of Nicolas Machiavel… Never before Published," with eight folding plates of military formations (including seven letterpress plans and engraved plate titled "Form of an Employment"), scarce in contemporary calf gilt.

"Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind… Politics was a science to be divorced entirely from ethics, and nothing must stand in the way of its machinery" (PMM 63). While he has become a symbol for the "unscrupulous politician whose whole philosophy is that the end justifies the means… from a comparative reading of [Discourses and The Prince], one must come to the startling conclusion that Machiavelli was a convinced republican. He had no liking for despotism, and considered a combination of popular and monarchical government best. No ruler was safe without the favor of his people. The most stable states are those ruled by princes checked by constitutional limitations… His ideal government was the old Roman republic, and he constantly harked back to it in the Discourses… It is hardly disputable that no man previous to Karl Marx has had as revolutionary an impact on political thought as Machiavelli" (Downs, 12). "He more than any other political thinker created the meaning that has been attached to the state in modern political usage" (Sabine 351).

Machiavelli "influenced in one fashion or another… George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton" (Rabe, Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy, xxi). One historian, in particular, calls Hamilton "an 'American Machiavelli' both in the sense that his ideas were similar to those of Machiavelli and that he resembled Machiavelli, the flesh-and-blood human being" (Harper, American Machiavelli, 6). This first edition of Farneworth's important translation of Machiavelli's Works notably includes not only History of Florence, The Prince, Discourses of Livy and other major writings, it also features The Art of War, deemed vital to a full grasp of Machiavelli's thought. "Only by careful consideration of The Art of War in relation to The Prince and The Discourses can one fully grasp the relevance of Machiavelli's military thought for his political ideas" (Neal Wood). "The first writings of Machiavelli's to have been published in English were… Arte della guerra (1521, Art of War) and Istorie fiorentine (1532, Florentine Histories). The Prince and Discorsi (1531, Discourses on Livy), by contrast, appear to have been banned from publication during the Elizabethan period… The first published English translations of these works, both by the shadowy figure of Edward Dacres, date from 1636 and 1640. Collections of the principal works followed, by Henry Neville and Ellis Farneworth" (France, ed., Oxford Guide, 484). The first edition of Farneworth's translation of Machiavelli's Works appeared in this two-volume quarto edition, "published in 1762, and a second edition (four vols, octavo) in 1775)" (Toynbee, Dante, 325). Bertelli Secolo XVIII: 83. CBEL II:811. See Lowndes, 1438 (incorrect dating of 1752). Contemporary armorial bookplates of Sir John Eden Bart of West Auckland, England, who served in Parliament in the late 18th century. Tiny bit of early marginalia (I:592).

Text generally fresh with light scattered foxing, mild staining to several leaves (I: 387-395), light edge-wear, minor rubbing to boards. A highly desirable extremely good copy, finely bound in contemporary speckled calf.