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Second edition, extensively revised from the first of 1780. This handsome copy is unusual in having the fine, lively plates hand coloured. McArthur (1756-1840) was a skilled swordsman and served with distinction on the North American station and during the Revolution. The subscribers list includes many British officers from the army, navy, and marines, and a number of American individuals. "McArthur had studied under several masters, but principally under [Jean] Olivier, of whom he had a high opinion, though he does criticise his master's treatise as 'not so methodically arranged, nor so explicit, as a learner could wish'. With this in mind, he set himself to make a digest of what he had been taught, arranging it in a series of lessons planned so that two novices might give them to each other when no professional teacher was available, and interspersing them with chapters dealing with possible variations on the basic themes … [His book] must have supplied a want, for it went to three editions … [The plates are] after drawings by the amazing young author himself, who, at the age of twenty-three, was able not only to produce a creditable manual, but to illustrate it with plates deserving high praise" (Aylward, pp. 204-06). In 1782, while in American waters, the enterprising McArthur prepared a revised signal book and in 1805 published what became a standard work on naval courts martial. But his name is best known through his collaboration with James Stanier Clarke in a magnificent two-volume quarto life of Nelson (1809), which "set a new standard in the use of primary sources" (ODNB). The list of subscribers runs to 121 individuals taking 130 copies and includes Joseph Hunt, who replaced McArthur as Hood's secretary; J. Schomberg, presumably Isaac Schomberg, the naval historian; the "privileged bon vivant" Colonel Cosmo Gordon, court-martialled for his conduct at Springfield, New Jersey, in 1780 (Fanelli); and Captain (later Sir) Edmund Nagle RN, hero of the wars against the French and confidante of the Prince Regent. Among the American subscribers is Thomas Wall of Maryland, founder of the Maryland Company of Comedians, the first permanent theatrical company in Baltimore, who also built that city's first theatre. ESTC T118279; Thimm. p. 107 (mistakenly calling for 8 plates in the first edition). J. D. Aylward, The English Master of Arms from the Twelfth to the Twentieth Century, 1956; Robert N. Fanelli, "A Fatal Dispute Among the Guards", Journal of the American Revolution, 2021. Quarto (256 x 204 mm), pp. [ii], xxii, 162. Hand-coloured engraved allegorical frontispiece and 19 other engraved plates (16 hand-coloured, all but 3 folding), by James Newton after McArthur. Late 19th-century speckled calf by Riviere, sometime rebacked with the original decorative gilt spine laid down, strong reddish orange morocco label, sides with gilt French fillet border, richly gilt turn-ins, gilt edges. Gilt supralibros on front cover of Michael Edwin Marcus Sandys, fifth Baron Sandys, of Ombersley (1855-1948). Some abrasions to covers, light offsetting from frontispiece to title page and vice versa, Plate 9 split at fold, folding plates lightly offset, scattered foxing, yet this remains a handsome copy.
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