Ecco polytico. Responde en Portugal a la voz de Castilla: y satisface a un papel anonymo, ofrecido al Rey Don Felipe el Quarto sobre los intereces de la Corona Lusitana, y del Occeanico, Indico, Brasilico, Ethyopico, Arabico, Persico & Africano Imperio ….

Lisbon, Por Paulo Craesbeck Impressor de las Ordenes Militares, 1645.. FIRST EDITION. 4°, eighteeth-century speckled sheep (minor wear), spine gilt with raised bands in five compartments, crimson leather lettering piece in second compartment from head, short title lettered gilt. Frontispiece engraving of Fame signed by Lucas Vorstermans. Small triangular repair to upper outer corner of fronispiece engraving and title page, about 2.5 x 2.5 x 4 cm., touching the final letter "O" in "Polytico" on title page. Much smaller repairs to blank portion of upper inner margins of title page and two following leaves. Overall in good to very good condition. Armorial bookplate of A. Canovas del Castillo. Frontispiece, (4), 100 [i.e. 98] ll. Due to a press error, the foliation skips from 42 to 45. The collation by signatures, [ ]4, A-M8, N2, is correct. *** FIRST EDITION of this important work defending the Restoration of Portuguese independence, as well as defending the Portuguese and D. João IV against an unidentified royal counselor who was advising the King of Spain on how to regain control over rebellious Portugal. Manuel de Mello quotes the anonymous work sentence by sentence, answering each argument at length on political, historical, and religious grounds. Rodrigues finds the work useful for understanding the situation in the Iberian Peninsula at the time when the Dutch were in Brazil, and notes that it mentions the Dutch several times. References to Brazil and Portuguese colonies are scattered throughout, e.g., f. 10r (slaves and Portuguese merchants). There are also occasional references to China, Japan, Mexico, Ethiopia, commerce with Asia, the Turks, the Americas in general, etc.According to Prestage, the author preferred this work to his @Historia de los movimientos y separación de Cataluña, although the @Historia has received more critical acclaim. "O @Ecco, a meu juizo, tem mais garbo; ou he que a materia me suborna a eleição, ou que, como filho mais moço me engana mais" (Manuel de Mello, quoted in Prestage p. 209).Frei Ignacio Galvão, who signed the first license, noted that several other authors had responded to the same work: "O Papel anonymo offerecido a el Rey Castholico Dom Felipe Quarto ... està tão cheo de peçonha, odio, & raiua contra os Portugueses que com razão se determinarão muytos, zelosos da honra de seu Rey, & de seu Reyno, a responder a elle. E assi me vierão já à mão outras duas respostas doctissimas, & por taes as julguei. Esta me parece tambem digna de muita estima ...." The author of the anonymous Spanish work apparently signed himself "o Consejero Castellano" (f. 2r); we have been unable, however, to identify the work in question in OCLC or elsewhere.The engraved title page with its allegorical figure of Fame is signed by Lucas Vorsterman. Vosterman, born in Antwerp ca. 1624, was the son of the famous engraver Lucas Emile Vorsterman, from whom he learned the art. The son lived in Portugal from 1645 to 1648 and was a friend of D. Francisco Manuel de Mello. Soares comments, "Ainda que as suas obras não sejam comparáveis as de seu pai e mestre, tem, todavia, o merecimento da correcção e do manejo do buril, distinguindo-se das executadas no século XVII pela vida e movimento das suas figuras."D. Francisco Manuel de Mello [or Melo, as some pedantic cataloguers would have it] not only led a romantic and adventurous life but established himself as a major figure in Portuguese and Spanish literature, ranking with Quevedo among seventeenth-century Iberian writers. Born into the highest Portuguese nobility, he began both his military and literary careers at the age of 17. Shipwrecked near St. Jean de Luz in 1627 while sailing with a Hispano-Portuguese armada protecting an American treasure fleet (he was forced to supervise the burial of more than 2,000 who perished), he was sent with the Conde de Linhares to quell the Évora insurrection in 1637, fought in the battle of the Downs in 1639, and the following year took part in the campaign against the Catalan rebels. In 1640, suspected of favoring an independent Portugal, he was thrown into a Spanish jail. Only a few years later (1644), when he returned to Portugal, he was imprisoned in turn by D. João IV, some said on a charge of murder, others said because he was D. João's rival for a lady's affections. The year 1655 saw him deported to Bahia, but in 1658 he was pardoned, recalled from exile, and sent on the first of several important diplomatic missions. Not until he reached his forties did he publish his first work in Portuguese: the @Carta de guia de casados (1651), one of the great classics of Portuguese prose. According to Bell, "No literary figure in Portugal of the seventeenth century, few in the Peninsula, can rank with Francisco Manuel de Mello (1608-1666), the leading lyric poet and prose writer of his time."Provenance: Antonio Canovas del Castillo (1828-1897), Spain's leading politician in the late nineteenth century, was largely responsible for the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty and served as prime minister for many years during the 1870's to 1890's. He was also a noted bibliophile book collector.*** Alden & Landis 645/82: citing copies at DCU, MH, NN-RB, RPJCG, and BN. Arouca M211. Barbosa Machado II, 185. Innocêncio II, 439 (listed without collation); IX, 331. Exposição Bibliográfica da Restauração 834 (incomplete collation: giving only 6 preliminary pages). Visconde de Trindade, Restauração 222. Garcia Peres p. 366. JCB, Portuguese and Brazilian Books 645/1. Medina, BHA 1079. Palau 160449. Palha 3001 (without mention of the frontispiece). Soares, História da gravura artística em Portugal nº 2212; on the artist, II, pp. 655-9. Pinto de Matos (1970) p. 407. Prestage, D. Francisco Manuel de Mello, 5. J.H. Rodrigues, Dominio holandés 90. Monteverde 3333. Azambuja 1496. Azevedo-Samodães 2046. Ameal 1491. Avila Perez 4822. On Manuel de Mello, see Ward, Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature pp. 380-1; Bell, Portuguese Literature pp. 252-5 and throughout; Saraiva & Lopes, História da literatura portuguesa (1976) pp. 489-512 and throughout; and Maria Lucilia Gonçalves Pires in Biblos III, 599. Porbase locates six copies, all at the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. CCPBE cites only two copies, in the Biblioteca del Senado, Madrid, and the Fundación Universitária Española, Madrid. Rebiun locates a copy at the Universidade de Oviedo. Copac locates a copy only at the British Library. Hollis cites only one copy at Harvard University, in the Houghton Library. The online catalogue of the Biblioteca Nacional de España locates four copies at that institution. NUC: NN, DCU–IA, CaBV, VaU, MB, MH.