William Julius Mickle

Mickle’s translation of Camöens’s Lusiad, dedicated to the Duke of Buccleugh, with a 236-page introduction. First published in 1776 by subscription, Mickle’s translation was more an adaptation of Camöens’s epic in his own style, with plenty of poetic licence. It remained the major translation of Lusiad into the mid-nineteenth century. It is in this second edition that appears for the first time Mickle’s critical attack on Adam Smith. As a part of his introductory “History of the rise and fall of the Portuguese Empire in the East”, Mickle writes “The application of the example of Portuguese Asia cannot be better enforced than by an examination of the popular arguments relative to the British commerce with India. A recent writer on the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, has stood forth as the philosophical champion for the abolition of the Monopoly of the English United East India Company”

The Lusiad