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THE ISLE OF PINES
By Henry Neville
1668
An Essay in Bibliography
by WORTHINGTON CHAUNCEY FORD
Boston
The Club of Odd Volumes 1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE CLUB OF ODD VOLUMES
TO
Charles Lemuel Nichols
lover of books
colleague
FRIEND
ETEXT TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Numbers enclosed in square brackets are the page numbers of the 1920 edition. Numbers enclosed in double curly brackets are the page numbers of the original 1668 edition. A damaged and incomplete bibliography and index in several languages has been included only as page-images.
The long S in the text files have been changed to the ordinary small S, however the accompanying html file uses the unicode character for the long S as in the original printed document. DW
Contents:
THE ISLE OF PINES
THE DOWSE COPIES
THE EUROPEAN EDITIONS
DUTCH EDITIONS
FRENCH EDITIONS
ITALIAN EDITION
GERMAN EDITIONS
THE S.G. NOT A CAMBRIDGE IMPRINT
THE COMBINED PARTS
THE PUBLISHERS
NOT AN AMERICAN ITEM
THE AUTHOR
THE STORY
INTERPRETATIONS
DEFOE AND THE "ISLE OF PINES"
THE ISLE OF PINES, The combined Parts as issued in 1668
PREFATORY NOTE
My curiosity on the "Isle of Pines" was aroused by the sale of a copy in London and New York in 1917, and was increased by the discovery of two distinct issues in the Dowse Library, in the Massachusetts Historical Society. As my material grew in bulk and the history of this hoax perpetrated in the seventeenth century developed, I thought it of sufficient interest to communicate an outline of the story to the Club of Odd Volumes, of Boston, October 23, 1918. The results of my investigations are more fully given in the present volume. I acknowledge my indebtedness to the essay of Max Hippe, "Eine vor-De-foesche Englische Robinsonade," published in Eugen Koelbing's "Englische Studien" xix. 66. WORTHINGTON CHAUNCEY FORD
Boston, February, 1920
THE ISLE OF PINES
OR,
A late Discovery of a fourth ISLAND in Terra Australis, Incognita.
BEING
A True Relation of certain English persons, Who in the dayes of Queen Elizabeth making a Voyage to the East India, were cast-away, and wracked on the Island near to the Coast of Australis, and all drowned, except one Man and four Women, whereof one was a Negro. And now lately Ann Dom. 1667, A Dutch Ship driven by foul weather there, by chance have found their Posterity (speaking good English) to amount to ten or twelve thousand persons, as they suppose. The whole Relation follows, written, and left by the Man himself a little before his death, and declared to the Dutch by His Grandchild.
THE ISLE OF PINES
[3]The scene opens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the year 1668, where in one of the college buildings a contest between two rival printers had been waged for some years. Marmaduke Johnson, a trained and experienced printer, to whose ability the Indian Bible is largely due, had ceased to be the printer of the corporation, or Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, but still had a press and, what was better, a fresh outfit of type, sent over by the corporation and entrusted to the keeping of John Eliot, the Apostle. Samuel Green had become a printer, though without previous training, and was at this time printer to the college, a position of vantage against a rival, because it must have carried with it countenance from the authorities in Boston, and public printing then as now constituted an item to a press of some income and some perquisites. By seeking to marry Green's daughter before his English wife had ceased to be, Johnson had created a prejudice, public as well as private, against himself.{1}
1 Mass. Hist Soc. Proceedings, xx. 265.
Each wished to set up a press in Boston itself, but the General Court, probably for police reasons, had ordered that there should be no printing but at Cambridge, and that what was printed there should be approved by any two of four gentlemen appointed by the Court. It thus appeared that each printer possessed a certain superiority over his rival. In the matter of types Johnson was favored, as he had new types and was a trained printer; but these advantages were partially [4]neutralized by indolence and by Green's better standing before the magistrates.{1}
In England the excesses of the printing-press during the civil war and commonwealth led to a somewhat strict though erratically applied censorship under the restoration. A publication must be licensed, and the Company of Stationers still sought, for reasons of profit, to control printers by regulating their production. The licensing agent in chief was a character of picturesque uncertainty and spasmodic action, Roger L'Estrange, half fanatic, half politician, half hack writer, in fact half in many respects and whole only in the resulting contradictions of purpose and performance. On one point he was strong—a desire to suppress unlicensed printing. So when in 1668 warrant was given to him to make search for unauthorized printing, he entered into the hunt with the zeal of a Loyola and the wishes of a Torquemada, harrying and rushing his prey and breathing threats of extreme rigor of fine, prison, pillory, and stake against the unfortunates who had neglected, in most cases because of the cost, to obtain the stamp of the licenser.{2}
New England was at this time England in little, with troubles of its own; but, having imitated the mother country in introducing supervision of the press, it also started in to investigate the printers of the colony, two in number, seeking to win a smile of approval from the foolish man on the throne. With due solemnity the inquisition was [5]made. Green could show that all then passing through his press had been properly licensed.
1 See the chapters on Green and Johnson in Littlefield, The Early Massachusetts Press, 197, 209.
2 L'Estrange was called the "Devil's blood hound." Col. S. P., Dom. 1663-1664, 616.
Johnson, less fortunate, was caught with one unlicensed piece—"The Isle of Pines." A fine of five pounds was imposed upon him, as effectual in suppressing him as though it had been one of five thousand pounds. He could now turn with relish to two books then on his press, "Meditations on Death and Eternity" and the "Righteous Man's Evidence for Heaven;" for Massachusetts Bay, with its then powerful rule of divinity without religion, or religion without mercy, held out small hope of his meeting such a fine within the expedition of his natural life. But he made his submission, petitioned the General Court in properly repentant language, acknowledged his fault, his crime, and promised amendment{1} The fine was not collected, and the principal result of the incident was to further the very natural union of Johnson and Green, but with Johnson as the lesser member in importance.
No copy of Marmaduke Johnson's issue of the "Isle of Pines" has come to light in a period of 248 years. It might well be supposed that the authorities caught him before the tract had gone to press, and so snuffed it out completely. Our sapient bibliographers have dismissed the matter in rounded phrase: "'The Isle of Pines' was a small pamphlet of the Baron Munchausen order, which in its day passed through several editions in England and on the Continent,"{2} a description which would fit a hundred titles of the period. In July, 1917, Sotheby announced the sale of a portion of the Americana collected by [6]"Bishop White Kennett (1660-1728) and given by him to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts."
1 The petition it in Littlefield, i. 248.
2 Mats. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xi. 247.
Lot No. 113 was described as follows:
[Neville (Henry)] The Isle of Pines, or a late Discovery of a fourth Island in Terra Australis, Incognita, being a True Relation of certain English persons who in the dayes of Queen Elizabeth, making a Voyage to the East Indies, were cast away and wracked upon the Island, wanting the frontispiece, head-line of title and some pagination cut into, Bishop Kenneths signature on title. sm. 4to S. G. for Allen Banks, 1668.
The pamphlet was sold, I am told, for fourteen shillings,{1} and resold shortly after to a New York bookseller for fifty-five dollars. He was attracted by the imprint, which read in full, "London, by S. G. for Allen Banks and Charles Harper at the Flower-Deluice near Cripplegate Church." The general appearance of the pamphlet was unlike even the moderately good issues of the English press, and the "by S. G." not only did not answer to any London printer of the day, except Sarah Griffin, "a printer in the Old Bailey,"{2} but was in form and usage exactly what could be found on a number of the issues of the press of Samuel Green, of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1 The sale took place July 30, 1917.
2 Only once does her name occur in the Term Catalogues, when in February, 1673, the prints George Buchanan' Psalmorum Davidis Paraphrasis Poetica, which told for two shillings a copy. Samuel Gellibrand was not a printer but a bookseller, with a shop "at the Ball in St. Paul's Churchyard."
On comparing the first page of the text of his purchase with the same page of an acknowledged London issue of the "Isle of Pines" [7]in the John Carter Brown Library,{1} the bookseller concluded that the two were entirely different publications.
An expert cataloguer connected with one of the large auction firms of New York then took up the subject. After a study of the tract he became assured that it could only have been printed by Samuel Green, of Cambridge, and he brought forward facts and comparisons which seemed conclusive and for which he deserves much credit. It was a clever bit of bibliographical work. With such an endorsement as to rarity and quality the pamphlet was again put to the test of the auction room. The cataloguer stated his case in sufficient fulness of detail and the first page of the text was reproduced.{2} Naturally the discovery sent a little thrill through the mad-house of bibliography. The tract was knocked down for $400 to a bookseller from Hartford, Connecticut, presumably for some local collection. The incident would have passed from memory had it not been for one of those accidents to which even the amateur bibliographer is liable.
1 No. 5 in the Bibliography, page 93, infra.
2 Nuggets of American History, American Art Association, November 19, 1917. The Isle of Pines was lot 142, and was introduced by the words, "Cambridge Press in New England." The catalogue was prepared by Mr. F. W. Coar.
In the bitter days of the winter of 1917-18 the working force of the Massachusetts Historical Society was contracted into one room—the Dowse Library—where was at least a semblance [8]of warmth in the open fireplace.
THE DOWSE COPIES
One afternoon, when I had finished my work and the others had left, I picked up the catalogue of the Dowse Library and began idly to turn over its leaves. Incidentally, that catalogue is characteristic of the older methods of the Society. As is known to the elect, no book in the Dowse Library can ever leave the room in which it now rests, and of the catalogue twenty-five copies were printed and never circulated. If the library had been left in the Dowse house in Cambridgeport, its existence and contents could not have been more successfully hidden from the world. While reading the titles in a very casual way, my eye was caught by one which gave me a start. It read:
Sloetten (Cornelius van). The Isle of Pines; or a Late Discovery of a Fourth Island in Terra Australis Incognita. London, printed by G. S. for Allen Banks, 1668. With a New and Further Discovery of the Isle of Pines, 1668; and a duplicate of the Isle of Pines. 1 vol. small 4to, calf supr., gilt leaves. A most interesting, rare, and valuable work.
Even against the Editor of the Society the Dowse books are kept behind lock and key, though he is not under more than ordinary suspicion. So I was obliged to wait till the next day before my curiosity could be satisfied. I then found a thin volume, less than one-third of an inch in thickness, containing two copies of this very tract which the auction expert had identified as an issue of the "Isle of Pines" by Green, and a London issue of a second part of the "Isle of Pines," with the name of Cornelius Van Sloetten, as author. For more than fifty years this little volume had reposed in this well-known yet almost forgotten [9]library, and no one had suspected or questioned the nature of its contents.
For full fifty years it had been in the care and at the call of Dr. Samuel A. Green, who claimed to be an expert on New England imprints of the seventeenth century, and one of the great wishes of whose life had been to establish his descent from this very printer, Samuel Green. Two copies within the same covers, of a tract long sought and of which only a single example had come to light in two centuries and a half—was not that alone something of a bibliographical coup?
I read two of the pieces—one of the Green issues and the second part as printed in England—making a few notes for future use. On returning to the matter some weeks later I found to my annoyance that every reference to the Green tract but one was wrong as to the page. Cold, haste, or weariness will account for a single or possibly two errors of reference, but to have a whole series—except one—go wrong pointed to failing eyes or mind. Very much put out, I read the tract a second time and corrected the page references, carefully checking up the result. Some days after I again took up the matter, and in verifying my first quotation found that I had again put down the wrong page number, and was surprised to find that the correct page was the one I had first given. This proved to be the case in all the references—except one. A book which could thus change its page numbering from week to week was bewitched—or I was careless. It occurred to me to compare the two copies of the tract as published by Green. The title-pages were exactly alike—not differing by so much as a fly speck, but one copy contained ten pages of text and the other only nine.
More [10]than that, the general style and the types were quite different One was printed in a well-known broad but somewhat used type, such as could be seen in Green's printing, and the other in a finer font with much italic. There was no possibility of confusing the two issues. Only one conclusion was possible. I had in this volume the publication by Green, and the original issue by Marmaduke Johnson, but with Green's title-page. So for we seem to rest upon solid ground. It may be surmised that Green set up his "Isle of Pines" in rivalry to Johnson, but did not incur the discipline of the authorities; or that he had set it up and also took over Johnson's edition, using his own title-page; and in either case it is possible that a simple subterfuge, the imprint, "by S. G. for Allen Banks and Charles Harper," a London combination of publishers, caused the tract to escape the attention of the examining local censors. Here was another step in developing the history of this tract—the discovery of one of Johnson's issues, except for the title-page. So far as the American connection is concerned, it only remains to discover a Johnson issue with a Johnson title-page, for in his apology and submission to the General Court he states that he had "affixed" his name to the pamphlet.
THE EUROPEAN EDITIONS
The European connection is also not without interest, for the skit—the first part of the "Isle of Pines," published without name of author—had an extraordinary run.
In 1493 a little [11]four-leaved translation into Latin of a Columbus letter announcing the discovery of islands in the west—De insulis nuper inventis—ran over Europe, startling the age by a simple relation which proved a marvellous tale as taken up by Vespuccius, Cortes, and a host of successors.{1} For a century the darkness of a new found continent slowly lifted and the record was collected in Ramusio, in De Bry, in Hulsius, and in Hakluyt, never felling treasuries of the wonderful, veritable schools for the adventurous. Another century had shown that, so fer from decreasing in greatness and in opportunities, the field of discovery had not begun to be tested, and in the summer of 1668 a new island—the Isle of Pines—was flashed before the London crowd, and proved that the flame of quest with danger was still burning. A new island! The interest was international, for nations had already long fought over the old discovered lands.
1 The intelligent industry of Mr. Wilberforce Eames has identified eleven issues of the letter of Columbus, printed in 1493, in Barcelona, Rome, Basle, Paris, and Antwerp; and twelve issues of the Novus Mundus of Vespucci us, printed in 1504, in Augsburg, Paris, Nuremberg, Cologne, Antwerp, and Venice. An earlier and even more extraordinary distribution of a letter of news is that of the letter purporting to be addressed by Prester John to the Emperor Manuel, which circulated through Europe about 1165. "How great was the popularity and diffusion of this letter," writes Sir Henry Yule, "may be judged in some degree from the fad that Zarncke in his treatise on Prester John gives a list of close on 100 mss. of it Of these there are eight in the British Museum, ten at Vienna, thirteen in the great Paris Library, and fifteen at Munich. There are also several renderings in old German verse." The cause of this popularity was the hope offered by the reported exploits of Prester John of a counterpoise to the Mohammedan power. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., xxii. 305.
An even greater contest was being waged for commerce, and with the experience of Spain in gathering the precious metals [12]from new found lands, every discovery of hitherto uncharted territory opened the possibility of wealth and an exchange of commodities, if rapine and piracy could not be practised. The merchant was an adventurer, and politics, quite as much as trade, controlled his movements; for the line between trader, buccaneer, and pirate faded away before conditions which made treaties of no importance and peaceful relations dependent upon an absence of the hope of gain. A state of war was not necessary to prepare the way for attack and plunder in those far distant oceans, and the merchantman sailed armed and ready to inflict as well as to repel aggression, only too willing to descend upon a weaker vessel or a helpless settlement of a power which had come to be regarded as a "natural enemy." So in Holland and in Germany the leaflets containing the story of the Isle of Pines were received with mingled feelings, exciting a desire to share in the possible benefits to be gained or extorted from natives of the new lands, or from those who had the first opportunity to exploit a virgin territory. On the first receipt of those leaflets merchants held back their vessels about to sail, to await more definite information on this fourth island of the Terra Australis incognita.
[13]An examination of the known issues of the tract proves this interest and offers an almost unique study in bibliography; for I doubt if any publication made in the second half of the seventeenth century—even a state paper of importance, as a treaty—attained such speedy and widespread recognition. A list of the various issues will be found in an appendix: it only remains to call attention to a few of the many novelties and variant characteristics of the editions.
DUTCH EDITIONS
In June and July, 1668, four tracts on the Isle of Pines from the same pen were licensed and published in London, which may for convenience be designated the first and second parts of the narrative, and the two parts in continuation. From London the tract soon passed to Holland, which had ever been a greedy consumer of voyages of discovery, for the greatness of that nation depended upon the sea, at once its most potent enemy and friend.{1} Three Dutch editions have been found, the earliest in point of time being that made by Jacob Vinckel, [14]of Amsterdam.
1 Holland was the centre of map publication as the twenty yean before 1668 saw the issue of atlases by Jansson, Blaeu, Mercator, Doncker, Cellarius, Loon, Visscher, and Goos, all published at Amsterdam. Phillips' list for this period gives atlases published elsewhere—those of Boissevin (Paris, 1653), Lubin (Paris, 1659), Nicolosi (Rome, 1660), Dudley (Florence, 1661), Du Val (Paris, 1662), Jollain (Paris 1667), Cluver (Wolfen-buttel, 1667?) and Ortelius (Venice, 1667).
His second title is an exact translation of the second title of the London first part. This version, however, omitted an essential part of the relation. The London second title is also that of the issue made at Amsterdam by Jacob Stichter, being the Vinckel version, word for word, and almost line for line, but the type used is the gothic, and the spelling of words is not the same. Further, Stichter was possessed of some imagination and decorated his title-page with a map of a part of the island, showing ranges of hills, a harbor or mouth of a river, with conventional soundings, and two towns or settlements. As each of these issues contains only eight pages of text, the first London part only was known to the publishers. The third Dutch edition was put out by Joannes Naeranus, at Rotterdam, and in a foreword he gives the following reason for issuing the tract:
To the Reader A part of the present relation is also printed by Jacob Vinckel at Amsterdam, being defective in omitting one of the principal things, so do we give here a true copy which was sent to us authoritatively out of England, but in that language, in order that the curious reader may not be deceived by the poor translation, and for that reason this very astonishing history fall under suspicion. Lastly, admire God's wondrous guidance, and farewell.
His publication contains twenty pages of text, and is not an accurate translation of the English tract in parts, but rather a paraphrase of the text. To make the confusion the greater, he [15]expressly states on the title-page that he used a copy received from London, and gives the London imprint which will fit only the first London part. For "by S. G." appears only on the title-page of that part.
FRENCH EDITIONS
From Amsterdam and under date July 19, 1668, a summary of the earlier Dutch issue with two paragraphs of introduction was sent to Paris, and was printed in a four-page pamphlet by Sebastien Marbre Cramoisy, the king's printer, whose name is so honorably connected with the Jesuit Relations—stories as remarkable as any offered in the "Isle of Pines" and of immeasurable value on the earliest years of recorded history in our New England. Even this summary, thus definitely dated, offers problems. The location of the island is given in general terms in the half-title as "below the equinoctial line," and in the text as in "xxviii or xxix degrees of Antartique latitude." Nowhere in the first London part is either location used, and in the second London part, which bears nearly the same date as the Cramoisy summary—July 22—twenty degrees of latitude is given. The writer of the summary thus allowed himself some freedom.
A second French edition, without imprint, contains eleven pages and is a translation of the first London part, paraphrased in sentences, but on the whole a close rendering of the English text There never was a title-page to this issue—the first page having the signature-mark A—yet with eleven pages only, it [16]would seem fit that a title-page should round out the twelve for the convenience of printing.
ITALIAN EDITION
The Italian issue, made by Giacomo Didini, in Bologna and Venice, is a literal translation of Cramoisy's publication, and bears the same date, at Amsterdam, July 19, 1668. The original probably came from Paris, though it is possible that some Dutch merchant in Amsterdam sent a circular letter on the discovered Isle to his correspondents in Paris and Venice. It is unsafe to conjecture in such matters, for an Amsterdam issue may yet be found which will give, word for word, the French and Italian versions. Our ignorance on the press of the continent of those times, and especially the want of files of "corantos," or news sheets, close a wide field of research to the American inquirer. The catalogue of the British Museum gives 1669 as the probable year of issue. I see no good reason for rejecting 1668 as the more probable year. If the tract could go from London to Cambridge, in New England, in three months, it could pass from Amsterdam to Italy, by land or by sea, in an equal time.
GERMAN EDITIONS
From Holland the relation also penetrated the German states, finding ready welcome and arousing eager curiosity. Hippe regards the tract issued by Wilhelm Serlin, at Frankfort on the Main, as the first of the German publications, and, being translated [17]from the Dutch, he shows that the translator used both the Amsterdam and the Rotterdam publications.{1} The Hamburg version claimed to be derived from the English original, but it followed closely the Serlin translation from the Dutch with modifications which might have been drawn from the London tract. An edition not mentioned by Hippe or identified by any bibliographer is in the John Carter Brown Library, and opens with the statement that it is translated from the English and not from the Dutch. It closely follows the text of the London first part. Very likely it is the edition found at Copenhagen, if the similarity of titles offers an indication of the contents. South Germany obtained its information from France, and while neither of the two issues avowedly translated from the French gives the place of publication, the fact that one is in Munich and the other in Strassburg offers some reason to conjecture that they came from the presses of those cities. The Munich issue is for the most part a summary of what was in the first London issue, and, if translated directly from a French version, must have been from one not now located, for it is different from those in the list in this volume. Of the Strassburg text, Hippe states that it follows the Rotterdam pamphlet Finally, at Breslau is what calls itself a complete publication of the combined parts from a copy obtained from London, but it is more probably based upon the Dutch translations printed in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, with additions drawn from the English.{2}
1 Hippe, 11.
2 On these German issues Hippe is full, but I have given only what is needed to identify them.
[18]One of the strangest uses made of the narrative of Pine is to be found in Schoeben's translation into German of Jan Mocquet's "Voyages en Africque," etc., a work of some estimation which had already twice been published in France and once in a Dutch translation before Schoeben printed his edition in 1688. As pages inserted quite arbitrarily in Mocquets compilation, Schoeben gave Pine's story in full, with a paragraph of introduction which not a little abuses the truth while giving an additional color of truth. He asserted that while kept at Lisbon by the Dutch blockade, he was thrown much in the company of an Englishman, one of the Pine family, who were all regarded as notable seamen. From this man, then awaiting an opportunity to sail for the West Indies, our author heard a very strange story of the origin of the Pines, a story then quite notorious at Lisbon. Then follows, with some embroidery, a version of the Neville pamphlet, which is not like any German translation seen by me, but so full as to extend over ten pages of the volume. It ends with a reiteration of the wholly false manner in which this story had been obtained. So bold an appropriation of the narrative, with a provenience entirely new and as fictitious as the story itself, and its bodily inclusion by an editor in a work of recognized merit, where it is between two true recitals, cannot be defended.{1}
1 Mocquet's work originally appeared in Rouen in 1645, and a Dutch translation was published at Dordrecht in 1656. A second French issue, apparently unchanged in text, was put out at Rouen in 1665, and in 1618 Schoeben's edition, printed at Luneberg by Johann Georg Lippers, preceded by eight years an English translation made by Nathaniel Pullen. The Pine tract appears, of course, only in Schoeben's volume.
The tract passed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, before or early in September, and it would indeed be interesting to know [19]how and through whose hands it passed before reaching Marmaduke Johnson—to his undoing. Hezekiah Usher was the only bookseller in Boston at the time, and possibly his son, John, may have been associated with him. They ordered what they desired from London booksellers and publishers, and may have received voluntary consignments of publications from London. That would be a somewhat precarious venture, for nothing could be more different than the reading markets in Boston and in London, especially in the lighter products of the press. Had it come through the Ushers, the title-page might state that it had been printed "by M. J. for Hezekiah Usher," but in that event Usher would have suffered for not obtaining the needed license. The probability is that Johnson was alone responsible and was tempted by the hope of gain.
These were all contemporary issues, coming from the press within six months of the first appearance of the tract in London. So startling a popularity, so widely shown, was a tribute to the opportunity rather than to the contents of the piece. And the European interest continued for a full century. In Germany it was included in a number of collections of voyages, in Denmark it was printed in 1710 and 1789, and in France Abbe Prevost took it for his compilation of 1767 on discoveries. The English republication of 1778 has peculiar interest, for it was due to no other than Thomas Hollis, the benefactor of the library of Harvard College, who saw more in the tract than can now be recognized, and induced Cadell to reprint it.
[20]
THE S.G. NOT A CAMBRIDGE IMPRINT
In the absence of any positive objection, the conclusion of the auction expert—that the S. G. imprint was one of Samuel Green of Cambridge, Massachusetts—remained unquestioned. But a study of editions and of the chronological sequence of the English issues offers a decided negative to such a conclusion. The first part was licensed June 27, 1668. Van Sloetten dated the second part July 22, 1668, and the issue of the combined parts was licensed five days later, July 27. In the space of just four weeks all three trads were licensed, and the actual publication must have occurred within the same period of time. Such had been the start obtained by the first part that on the continent it was used for reprint and translation, almost to the neglect of the second part, and, as we have seen, most of these translations appeared before the end of 1668. Now the tract was not known in Massachusetts until discovered by the inquest on printers in September, and a S. G. or Samuel Green edition could hardly have come from the press before October, even if not delayed by the proceedings against Johnson. Yet on die title-page of the Dutch translation issued at Rotterdam in 1668, the printer states at length that it is from a copy from London, by S. G. for Allen Banks and Charles Harper, in the Lily near Cripplegate Church, and in his note "To the Reader" he expressly repeats that he obtained a copy of the work from London, in order to correct a faulty issue by another Dutch printer.
If S. G. was Samuel Green, we must suppose that one of his Cambridge issues was shipped to Rotterdam in time to [21]be translated and reprinted before the end of the year. In point of time the thing could be done, but in point of probability it was impossible. Apart from his own statement, there were a thousand to one chances in favor of the Dutch printer obtaining the pamphlet from London; there were ten thousand chances to one against his getting it from Massachusetts. I reject the supposition that this was a Cambridge imprint for that reason alone.
Additional evidence hostile to the claim may be adduced. The copy of the first tract in the British Museum is the S. G. for Banks and Harper.{1}
1 It is erroneously described as "an abridgment."
No other London imprint is to be found there or in the larger libraries of England. Of the three other copies located, that sold at audion (the White Kennett copy) and that in the Massachusetts Historical Society came direct from England, and the actual provenance of the copy in the New York Historical Society is not known. It belonged to Rufus King, long United States minister near the court of St James's, and is bound with other tracts under a general title of "Topographical Collection, Vol. I." The binding, Mr. Kelby tells me, is American. There is no mark to show when or where King obtained the pamphlet, and the Society did not receive it until 1906. That Rufus King belongs as much to Massachusetts as to New York is too slight a foundation on which to erect a claim that this particular tract was of Massachusetts origin.
In no case, therefore, can an American setting to any one of the four known copies of the S. G. "Isle of Pines" be [22]established.{1} The probabilities are all against Samuel Green. The incident is a good example of the danger of giving play to the imagination on an appearance of a combination of fads cemented by interest.
Thus disappears from our memory the certain identification of the S. G. pamphlet as an early issue of the press in Cambridge, and with it goes my identification of the Johnson pamphlet with the S. G. title-page—a veritable pipe dream. It might be urged that as White Kennett was collecting on America, it would be more than probable that he would have had an American issue; but his own catalogue of 1713 describes the nine-page tract, and that is our London edition. I might claim still that my Johnson was a Johnson, with a London title-page; but the typographical adornment on the first page of its text is just the same as the adornment on the first page of the London issue—three rows of fleur-de-lys, thirty-seven in each row, and the same kind of type characters.{2}
1 Lowndes indexes it under George Pine, and describes a nine-page trait—probably the one now in the British Museum. He quotes a sale of a copy in it 60 (Puttkk) for L4.10s. He indexes the combined parts under Sloetten, and notes a copy, with the plate, sold in the White Knights sale for 1s..
2 To attempt to reason from types or rule of thumb measurements, however suggestive, leads to indefinite conclusions. For example, the width of the type page of the S. G. issue of the first part is exactly that of the English issue of the second part, but the former has 33 tines to the page and the latter a a. The width of the page in the variant S. G. issue is narrower and there are 38 and 39 lines to the page. But in the London second part the width of page varies by a quarter of an inch. We have Marmaduke Johnson's issue of Paine's Daily Meditations y issued in 1670 in connection with S. G. The ornamental border of fleur-de-lys is entirely different from those in the S. G. Isle of Pines. A copy of Johnson's issue of Scottow's translation of Bretz on the Anabaptists, printed in 1668, the very year of the Isle of Pines, shows a different foot of italics from that used in the Isle of Pines variant, yet the roman characters in the two pieces seem identical, and the width of page is exactly the same.
So I bid farewell to my theory, [23]and can only congratulate myself on having cleared one point—the London issue—and on having introduced a new confusion by the discovery of a second London issue with an identical title-page, a problem for the future to solve. I much doubt if a true Johnson issue will ever be found, for I believe the action of the authorities prevented its birth.
In the library of Mr. Henry E. Huntington is a London issue of which I do not find another example. It contains sixteen pages, and the title-page gives neither printer's name nor place of publication. It may be the first issue, or it may be a later re-issue of the tract, for the type, especially the italic, is better than that in the S. G. issue. The punctuation also is more carefully looked after, and the whole appearance suggests an eighteenth century print. As the original was duly licensed, there was no reason to suppress the names of printer or booksellers. Nor could the contents of the piece call out controversy or hostility from any political faction or religious following. It was proper for the author to omit his name from the publication, if he desired to remain unknown; but the publisher, having the support of the licenser, had every reason to advertise his connexion with the tract, although he could not have anticipated so ready an acceptance by the public. While I place the Huntington pamphlet first in the bibliography, I am more inclined to regard it as a publication made at a later time.
[24]
THE COMBINED PARTS
The English edition of thirty-one pages in the John Carter Brown Library, with an engraved frontispiece,{1} offers still further proof that the S. G. issue was made in London. In place of being entirely different from the S. G. tract, it is precisely the same so far as text is concerned. For it is nothing more than the two parts combined, but combined in a peculiar manner. The second part was opened at page 6 and the first part inserted, entire and without change of text{2} This insertion runs into page 16, where a sentence is inserted to carry on the relation: "After the reading and delivering unto us a Coppy of this Relation, then proceeded he on in his discourse." The rest of the text of the second part follows, and pages 27-31 of the combined parts seem to be the very type pages of pages 20-24 of the second part{3} In this sandwich form one must read six pages before coming to the text of the first part, and a careless reader, comparing only the respective first pages, would conclude that a pamphlet of thirty-one pages could have no likeness [25]to one of nine.
1 The plate in the copy in the John Carter Brown Library does not belong to that issue, but is inserted in so clumsy a manner as to prevent reproduction. The same plate is found in a copy of the ten-page S.G. issue in the library of Mr. Henry E. Huntington, and to all appearances belongs to that issue.
2 The last sentence on page 6 of the second part read: "Then proceeded he on in his discourse saying," and there are no pages numbered 7 and 8, although there is no break in the text, the catch-word on page 6 being the first word on page 9. In the combined parts, the last words on page 6 constitute a phrase: "which Copy hereafter followeth."
3 The only change made is in the heading of the Post-script, which was wrongly printed in the second part as "Post- script." On page 26 of the combined parts the words "except burning" were inserted, not appearing in the second part.
On typographical evidence it is safe to assume that the three pieces came from the same press, and to assert that the second part and the combined parts certainly did. The initials S. G. are found only on the first part.
THE PUBLISHERS
The imprints of the three parts agree that the booksellers or publishers handling the editions were Allen Banks and Charles Harper. The first part gives their shop as the "Flower-De-luice near Cripplegate Church," the second part as the "Flower-de-luce" as before, and the combined parts as "next door to the three Squerrills in Fleet-street, over against St. Dunstans Church." The church is still there, with more than two centuries of dirt and soot marking its walls since Neville wrote, and Chancery and Fettar Lanes enable one to place quite accurately the location of the booksellers' shop. Only three times do the names of Banks and Harper appear as partners on the Stationers' Registers,{1} and they separated about 1671, Banks going to the "St Peter at the West End of St Pauls." If any judgment may be drawn from their publications after ceasing to be partners, Banks leaned to light literature and may have been responsible for taking up the "Isle of Pines." Yet Harper was Neville's publisher in 1674 and in 1681, a fact which may indicate a personal relation.{2}
1 Eyre and Rivington, ii. 386, 388, and 410.
2 Sec page 34, infra.
[26]
NOT AN AMERICAN ITEM
By some curious chance this little pamphlet has come to be classed as Americana. Bishop Kenneth's Catalogue may have been the source of this error, leading collectors to believe that the item was a true relation of an actual voyage, and possibly touching upon some phase of American history or geography. The rarity of the pamphlet would not permit such a belief to be readily corrected. The existence also of two Isles of Pines in American waters may have aided the belief.
One of these islands is off the southwestern end of Cuba. On his second voyage, Columbus had sailed along the south coast of Cuba, and June 13,1494, reached an island, which he named Evangelista. Here he encountered such difficulties among the shoals that he determined to retrace his course to the eastward. But for that experience, he might have reached the mainland of America on that voyage. The conquest of the island of Cuba by Diego Velasquez in 1511 led to its exploration; but geographers could only slowly appreciate what the islands really meant, for they were as much misled by the reports of navigators as Columbus had been by his prejudice in favor of Cathay.
Toscanelli's map of the Atlantic Ocean (1474) gives many islands between Cape Verde and the "coast of spices," of which "Cippangu" is the largest and most important.{1}
1 This map, as reconstructed from Martin Behaim's globe, is in Scottish Geographical Magazine, 1893.
On Juan de laCosa's sea chart, 1500, Cuba is fairly drawn, with the sea to the south dotted with islands without names. In a few years the mist surrounding [27]the new world had so far been dispelled as to disclose a quite accurate detail of the larger West Indian islands{1} and to offer a continent to the west, one that placed Cipangu still far too much to the east of the coast of Asia.{2} An island of some size off the southwest of Cuba seems to have been intended at first for Jamaica, but certainly as early as 1536 that island had passed to its true position on the maps, and the island to the west is without a name. Nor can it be confused with Yucatan, which for forty years was often drawn as an island. On the so-called Wolfenbuttel-Spanish map of 1525-30 occurs the name "J. de Pinos," probably the first occurrence of the name upon any map in the sixteenth century. Two other maps of that time—Colon's and Ribero's, dated respectively 1527 and 1529—call it "Y de Pinos," and on the globe of Ulpius, to which the year 1542 is assigned, "de Pinos" is clearly marked. Bellero's map, 1550, has an island "de pinolas." Naturally, map-makers were slow to adopt new names, and in the numerous editions of Ptolemy the label St Iago was retained almost to the end of the century.{3} On the Agnese map there are two islands, one named "S. Tiago," the other "pinos," which introduced a new confusion, though he was not followed by most geographers until Wytfliet, 1597, gave both names to the same island—"S. Iago siue Y de Pinas"—in which he is followed by Hondius, 1633.{4} Ortelius, 1579, [28]adopts "I Pinnorum," while Linschoten, 1598, has "Pinas," and Herrera, 1601, "Pinos."
1 The Agnese Atlas of 1529 may be cited as an example.
2 See, for example, the so-called Stobnicza [Joannes, Stobnicensis] map of 151a, and the Ptolemy of 1513 (Strassburg).
3 Muenster, 1540. Cabot, 1544, and Desceller, 1546, give "Y de Pinos."
4 Mr. P. Lee Phillips, to whom I am indebted for references to atlases of the time, also supplies the following: Lafreri, 1575 (?) "S. Tiagoj" Percacchi, 1576, "S. Tiago;" Santa Cruz, 1541, "Ya de Pinosj" and Dudley, 1647, "I de Pinos." Hakloyt (iii. 617) prints a "Ruttier" for the West Indies, without date, but probably of the end of the sixteenth century, which contains the following; "The markes of Isla de Pinos. The Island of Pinos stretcheth it selfe East and West, and is full of homocks, and if you chance to see it at full sea, it will shew like 3 Islands, as though there were divers soundes betweene them, and that in the midst is the greatest; and in rowing with them, it will make all a firme lande: and upon the East side of these three homocks it will shewe all ragged; and on the West side of them will appeare unto you a lowe point even with the sea, and oftentimes you shall see the trees before you shall discerne the point."
When the name given by Columbus was dropped and by whom the island was named "de Pinos" cannot be determined.
Our colleague, Mr. Francis R. Hart, has called my attention to a second Isle of Pines in American waters, being near Golden Island, which was situated in the harbor or bay on which the Scot Darien expedition made its settlement of New Edinburgh. The bay is still known as Caledonia Bay, and the harbor as Porto Escoces, but the Isla de Pinas as well as a river of the same name do not appear on maps of the region. The curious may find references to the island in the printed accounts of the unfortunate Darien colony.
The Isle of Pines could thus be found on the map as an actual island in the West Indies; but the "Isle of Pines" of our tract existed only in the imagination of the writer. The mere fact of its having been printed—but not published—in Cambridge, Massachusetts, does not entitle it to be classed even indirectly as Americana, any more than Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress or [29]Thomas a Kempis could be so marked on the strength of their having a Massachusetts imprint Curiosities of the American press they may be, but they serve only as crude measures of the existing taste for literature since become recognized as classic.
The dignified Calendar of State Papers in the Public Record Office, London, gravely indexes a casual reference to the tract under West Indies, and the impression that the author wrote of the Cuban island probably accounts for the different editions in the John Carter Brown Library, as well as for the price obtained for the White Kennett copy. No possible reason can be found, however, for regarding the "Isle of Pines" in any of its forms as Americana.
THE AUTHOR
Thus far I have been concerned with externals, and before turning to the contents of the tract itself in an endeavor to explain the extraordinary popularity it enjoyed, something must be said of the author—Henry Neville. Like most of the characters engaged in the politics of England in the middle of the seventeenth century, he has suffered at the hands of his biographer, Anthony a Wood,{1} merely because he belonged to the opposite party—the crudest possible measure of merit For the odium politicum and the odium theologicum are twin agents of detraction, and the writing of history would be dull indeed were it not for the joy of digging out an approximation to the truth from opposing opinions. Where the material is so scanty it will be safer [30]to summarize what is known, without attempting to pass finally upon Neville's position among his contemporaries.
1 Athenae Oxoniemses (Bliss), iv. 413.
The second son of Sir Henry Neville, and grandson of Sir Henry Neville (1564?-1615), courtier and diplomatist under Elizabeth and James I, Henry Neville was born in Billing-bear, Berkshire, in 1620. He became a commoner of Merton College in 1635, and soon after migrated to University College, where he passed some years but took no degree. He travelled on the continent, becoming familiar with modern languages and men, and returned to England in 1645, to recruit for Abingdon for the parliament Wood states that Neville "was very great with Harry Marten, Tho. Chaloner, Tho. Scot, Jam. Harrington and other zealous commonwealths men." His association with them probably arose from his membership of the council of state (1651), and also from his agreement with them in their suspicions of Cromwell, who, in his opinion, "gaped after the government by a single person." In consequence he was banished from London in 1654, and on Oliver's death was returned to parliament December 30,1658, as burgess for Reading. An attempt to exclude him on charges of atheism and blasphemy failed.
He was undoubtedly somewhat closely associated with James Harrington, the author of "Oceana," and was regarded as a "strong doctrinaire republican." He was a member of the club—the Rota—formed by Harrington for discussing and disseminating his political views, a club which continued in existence only a few months, from November, 1659, to February, 1660; but its name is embalmed in one of Harrington's essays—"The Rota"—published in 1660, and extracted from his "Art of Law-giving," [31]which was itself an abridgment of the "Oceana."
At this time, says Wood, Neville was "esteemed to be a man of good parts, yet of a factious and turbulent spirit." On the restoration he "sculk'd for a time," and, arrested for a supposed connection in the Yorkshire rising of 1663, he was released for want of evidence against him, retiring from all participation in politics. For twenty years before his death he lived in lodgings in Silver Street, near Bloomsbury market, and dying on September 20, 1694, he was buried in the parish church of Warfield, Berkshire. By his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Staverton of Warfield, he had no issue.{2} In his retirement he found occupation in political theory. He translated some of the writings of Machiavelli, which he had obtained in Italy in 1645, and published some verses of little merit.
{1} Wood.
{2} Dictionary of National Biography, XL. 259.
It cannot be said that a reading of Neville's productions before 1681 raises him in our estimation, it certainly does not give the impression of a man of letters, a student of government, or even a politician of the day. There is always the possibility in these casual writings of a purpose deeper than appears to the reader of the present day, of a meaning which escapes him because the special combination of events creating the occasion cannot be reconstructed. The "Parliament of Ladies," which was published in two parts in 1647, has little meaning to the reader, though they appeared in the year when the Parliament took notice of the "many Seditious, False and Scandalous Papers and Pamphlets daily printed and published in and about the cities of London and Westminster, and thence dispersed [32]into all parts of this Realm, and other parts beyond the Seas, to the great abuse and prejudice of the People, and insufferable reproach of the proceedings of the Parliament and their Army."{1}
To write, print, or sell any unlicensed matter whatsoever would be liable to fine or imprisonment, and to whet the zeal of discovery one-half of the fine was to go to the informer. Every publication, from a book to a broadsheet, must bear the name of author, printer, and licenser. Neither of Neville's pamphlets of 1647 conformed to the requirements of this act, which is not, however, positive evidence that they did not appear after the promulgation of the law. Suppression of printing has proved a difficult task to rulers, even when supported by public opinion or an army. The Stationers' Registers show that the "Parliament of Ladies" and its sequel were not properly entered; nor do they contain any reference to Neville's "News from the New Exchange," issued in 1650.{2}
Nine years passed before he printed a pamphlet which marked his break with Cromwell—"Shuffling, Cutting, and Dealing in a Game of Picquet."{3}
1 Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, i. 1021. Though dated September 30, the act was entered at Stationers' Hall September 19. Eyre and Rivington, i. 276.
2 It was reprinted in 1731.
3 It is in the Harleian Miscellany, v. 298, and a copy of the meanly printed original is in the Ticknor Collection, Boston Public Library.
This little pamphlet was put out in the poorest dress possible, bespeaking a press of meagre equipment, and a printer without an idea of the form which even the leaflet can assume in skilful hands. Without imprint, author's name, or any mark of identification, it indicates a secret impression and [33]issue—one of the many occasional pamphlets which appeared at the time from "underground" shops which least of all wanted to be known as the agent of publication. Neville either avowed the authorship or it was traced to him, and the displeasure of Cromwell and banishment from London followed.
In 1681 he printed "Discourses concerning Government," which was much admired by Hobbes, and even Wood admits that it was "very much bought up by the members [of parliament], and admired: But soon after, when they understood who the author was (for his name was not set to the book), many of the honest party rejected, and had no opinion of it" A later writer describes it as an "un-Platonic dialogue developing a scheme for the exercise of the royal prerogative through councils of state responsible to Parliament, and of which a third part should retire every year."{1} Reissued at the time under its better known title—"Plato Redivivus"{2}—it was reprinted in 1742,{3} and again by Thomas Hollis in 1763.
1 Dictionary of National Biography, XL. 259.
2 Plato Redivivus, or A Dialogue concerning Government: wherein, by Observations drawn from other Kingdoms and States both ancient and modern, an Endeavour is used to discover the politick Distemper of our own; with the Causes and Remedies. The Second Edition, with Additions. In Octavo. Price 2s. 6d. Printed for S. I. and sold by R. Dew. The Term Catalogues (Arber), 1.443—the issue for May, 1681. The initials S. I. do not again occur in the Catalogues, and R. Dew is credited with only two issues, both in May, 1681, neither giving the location of his shop. The tract called out several replies, such as the anonymous Antidotum Brittanicum and Goddard's Plato's Demon, or the State Physician Unmasked ( 1684).
3 A copy is in the Library Company, Philadelphia.
His translations from Machiavelli are not so easily traced, nor is any explanation possible for his having delayed for nearly [34]thirty years publication of evidence of his admiration for the Florentine politician. He was not alone in desiring to make the Italian political moralist better known, for translations of the "Discourses" and "The Prince," with "some marginal animadversions noting and taxing his [Machiavelli's] errors," by E. D.{1} was published in a second edition in November, 1673, but I do not connect Neville with that issue. In the following year the connection of Charles Harper's name with the "Florentine History" suggests Neville, as does a more ambitious undertaking of the "Works," first fathered by another London bookseller, but with which Harper was concerned in 1681:
The Florentine History, in Eight Books. Written by Nicholas Machiavel, Citizen and Secretary of Florence: now exactly translated from the Italian. In Octavo. Price, bound, 6s. Printed for Charles Harper, and J. Amery, at the Flower de luce, and Peacock, in Fleet street.{2}
The Works of the Famous Nicholas Machiavel, Citizen and Secretary of Florence. Containing, 1. The History of Florence. 2. The Prince. 3. The Original of the Guelf and Ghibilin Factions. 4. The life of Castrucio Castraceni. 5. The murther of Vitelli, etc., by Duke Valentine. 6. The State of France. 7. The State of Germany. 8. The Discourses of Titus Livius. 9. The Art of War. 10. The Marriage of Belphegery a Novel.{3}
1 Edward Dacres.
2 The Term Catalogues (Arber i. 18—the issue for November 25,1674.) It was entered at Stationers' Hall, June 20, 1674, "under the hands of Master Roger L'Estrange and Master Warden Mean" with the statement that the translation was made by "J. D. Gent."
3 This novel wa added by Starker to a translation of novels by Gomez deQueverdoy Villegas published in November, 1670. The name of the printer suggests a connection with Neville.
[35]11. Nicholas Machiavel's Letter in Vindication of himself and his Writings. All written originally in Italian; and from thence newly and faithfully Translated in English. In Folio. Price, bound, 18s. Printed for J. Starkey at the Mitre in Flret street near Temple Bar.
[Same Title.] The Second Edition. Printed for J. Starkey, C. Harper, and J. Amery, at the Miter, the Flower de luce, and the Peacock, in Flret street. Folio. Price, bound, 16s.{1}
1 The Term Catalogues (Arber) i.199—the issue for February, 1675. Entered at Stationers' Hall, February 4, 1674-75, "under the hands of Master Roger L'Estrange and Master Warden Roycroft," with the statement that the translation was made by "J.B. Salvo iure cuilibet." The resort to L'Estrange in both instances is suggestive. 2 Ib 453—the issue for June, 1681. "The Works of that famous Nicholas Machiavel" is announced in the Catalogues, June, 1675, for publication by R. Boulter, in Cornhill, and at the same price of 18s., but I doubt if Neville had anything to do with that translation.
It may be admitted that questions of government were eagerly discussed in the seventeenth century. It was only needed to live under the Stuarts and to pass through the Civil War and Protectorate to realize that a transition from the divinely anointed ruler to a self-constituted governor resting upon an army, and again to a trial of the legitimate holder of royal prerogative, offered an education in matters of political rule which naturally led to a constitutional monarchy, and which could not be equalled in degree or lasting importance until the American colonies of Great Britain questioned the policy of the mother country toward her all too energetic children. Hobbes' "Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil," appeared in 1651, a powerful argument for absolutism, but cast in such a form as to make the [36]writer an unwelcome adherent to royalty in exile.
In 1652 Filmer published his "Observations concerning the Original of Government," one of a series of tracts, completed by his "Patriarcha," printed after his death, which has made him a prophet of the extreme supporters of the divine origin of kingship. These are only examples of the political discussion of the day, and to them may be added Harrington, whose "Oceanan" appeared in 1656.{1} It satisfied no party or faction, and a second edition was not called for until 1700, when other writings of the author were added. This compilation was, in 1737, pirated by a Dublin printer, R. Reilly, who added Neville's "Plato Redivivus;"{2} but the third English edition (1747), issued by the same printer who made the second edition, omitted Neville's tract.
1 Entered at Stationers' Hall by Livewell Chapman, September 19,1656. Eyre and Rivington, ii. 86.
2 Bibliotheca Liudeusianat ii. 4228.
THE STORY
"The Isle of Pines" was Neville's fifth publication, issued nine years after his fourth, a political tract: "Shuffling, Cutting and Dealing in a Game of Picquet" Like most titles of the day, that of "The Isle of Pines" did not fail in quantity. It was repeated word for word, except the imprint, on the first page of the text. Briefly, the relation purports to have been written by an Englishman, George Pine, who at the age of twenty shipped as book-keeper in the India Merchant, which sailed for the East Indies in 1569.
Having rounded the Cape of Good Hope and [37]being almost within sight of St. Lawrence's Island, now Madagascar,{1} they encountered a great storm of wind, which separated the ship from her consorts, blew many days, and finally wrecked the vessel on a rocky island. The entire company was drowned except Pine, the daughter of his master, two maid-servants, and one negro female slave. They gathered what they could of the wreckage, and Pine and his companions lived there in community life, a free-love settlement By the four women he had forty-seven children, and in his sixtieth year he claimed to have 565 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It was from one of his grandchildren that the Dutch ship received the relation. Apart from the title-page, the entire tract is occupied by the story of George Pine, from whom the island took its name. In 1667, or ninety-eight years after Pine was wrecked, the Dutch captain estimated that the population of the island amounted to ten or twelve thousand persons. Methuselah, with his years to plead for him, might boast of such breeding, but in ordinary man it is too near the verminous, the rat, the guinea-pig, and the rabbit, to be pleasant.
1 It was the Island of St. Laurence of James Lancaster's Voyage, 1593. Hakluyt, Principall Navigations, vi. 401.
The publication must have attracted attention at once, for before the end of July Neville put forth a second part, "A New and further Discovery of The Isle of Pines," which purported to be the relation of the Dutch captain to whom the history of Pines had been confided. It is an unadorned story such as might have been gathered from a dozen tales in Hakluyt or Purchas, and is interesting only in giving the name of the [38]Dutch captain—Cornelius Van Sloetton—and the location of the supposed island—longitude 76 deg. and latitude 20 deg., under the third climate—which places it to the northeast of Madagascar. Almost immediately after the publication of the second part it was combined with the first part, as already described, and published late in July or early in August Cornelius Van Sloetton, as he signed himself in the second part, became Henry Cornelius Van Sloetten in the combined issue.
INTERPRETATIONS
It was Pine's relation which received the greatest attention on the continent, and that was chiefly concerned in describing his performances in populating the island. It was therefore with only a mild surprise that I read in one of those repulsively thorough studies which only a German can make, a study made in 1668 of this very tract, "The Isle of Pines," the assertion that Pines, masquerading as the name of the discoverer and patriarch of the island, and accepted as the name of the island itself, was only an anagram on the male organ of generation—penis. On one of the German issues in the John Carter Brown [39]Library this has also been noted by a contemporary hand.{1} Such an interpretation reduces our tract to a screaming farce, but it closely suits the general tone of other of Neville's writings, which are redolent of the sensual license of the restoration. To this I would add an emendation of my own. The name adopted by Neville was Henry Cornelius van Sloetten. It suggests a somewhat forcible English word—slut—of doubtful origin, although forms having some resemblance in sound and sense occur in the Scandinavian languages.
1 Christian Weise, Prof. Polit, in augusteo in A. 1685.
Such interpretations seem to fit the work better than that of a German critic, who sees in the book a sort of Utopia, a model community, or an exhibition in the development of law and order. Free love led to license, maids were ravished, and the complete promiscuity of intercourse disgusted Pine, who sought to suppress it by force and, in killing the leader of a revolt, a man with negro blood in his veins, to impose punishments for acts which he had himself done. The ground for believing that Neville had any such purpose when he wrote the book is too slight to be accepted. In 1668 the author had no call to convey a lesson in government to his countrymen by any means so frankly vulgar and pointless as the "Isle of Pines." If Neville had intended such a political object, a phrase would have sufficed to indicate it. No such key can be found in the text, and there is nothing to show that, politician as he was, he realized that such an intimation could be drawn from his paragraphs.
To assume, therefore, that so carefully hidden a suggestion of a model republic could have aided the circulation [40]of the pamphlet at the time, or at any later period, is to introduce an element unnecessary to explain the vogue of the relation. It passed simply as a story of adventure, and as such it fell upon a time when a wide public was receptive to the point of being easily duped. Wood asserts that the "Isle of Pines," when first published, "was look'd upon as a mere sham or piece of drollery; "{1} and there are few contemporary references to the relation of either Pine or Van Sloetten, and those few are of little moment If the seamen, who were in a position to point out discrepancies of fad in the story, made any comment or criticism, I have failed to discover them.
1 Athenae Oxomiensis (Bliss), iv. 410.
Neville himself freely played with the subject, and it is strange that he did not excite some suspicion of his veracity among his readers. He had told in his first part of a Dutch ship which was driven by foul weather to the island and of the giving to the Dutch the story of Pine. His second part is the story of the Dutch captain, sailing from Amsterdam, re-discovering the Isle of Pines, and returning home—that is, to Holland. Yet Neville for the combined issue, and presumably only a few days after giving out the first part, composed two letters from a merchant of Amsterdam—Abraham Keek—dated June 29 and July 6, saying that the last post from Rochelle brought intelligence of a French vessel which had just arrived and reported the discovery of this very island, but placing it some two or three hundred leagues "Northwest from Cape Finis Terre," though, he added with reasonable caution, "it may be that there may be some mistake in the number of the Leagues, as also of the exact [41]point of the compass from Cape Finis Terre."
Keek offered an additional piece of geographical information, that "some English here suppose it maybe the Island of Brasile which have been so oft sought for, Southwest from Ireland."{1} The first letter of Keek is dated five days after the licensing of the first part of the "Isle of Pines," and the second sixteen days before the date of Sloetten's narrative. It is hardly possible that Neville could have been forgetful of his having made a Dutch vessel responsible for the discovery and history of Pine, and it is more than probable that he took this means of giving greater verisimilitude to the Isle of Pines, by bringing forward an independent discovery by a French vessel. However intended, the ruse did not contribute to such a purpose, as the combined parts did not enjoy as wide a circulation as the first part.
1 See page 53, infra.
On the continent a German, who knew the tract only as translated into German through a Dutch version of the English text, and therefore imperfectly, gave it serious consideration, and had little difficulty in finding inconsistencies and contradictions. Some of his questions went to the root of the matter. It was a Dutch ship which first found the Isle of Pines and its colony; why was not the discovery first announced by the Dutch? Piece by piece the critic takes down the somewhat clumsily fashioned structure of Neville's fiction, and in the end little remains untouched by suspicion. No such examination, dull and labored in form, and offering no trace of imagination which wisely permits itself to be deceived in details in order to be free to accept a whole, could pass beyond the narrow circle of a university.
[42]As an antidote to the attractions of Neville's tract it was powerless, and to-day it remains as much of a curiosity as it was in 1668, when it was written. Indeed, a question might be raised as to which tract was less intentionally a joke—Neville's "Isle of Pines," or our German's ponderous essay upon it? At least the scientific ignorance of the Englishman, perfectly evident from the start, is more entertaining than the pseudo-science of the German critic, who boldly asserts as impossible what has come to be a commonplace.{1}
1 Das verdachtige Pineser-Eylandd, No. 29 in the Bibliography. It it dedicated to Anthonio Goldbeck, Burgomaster of Altona, and the letter of dedication b dated at Hamburg, October 26, 1668.
Hippe calls attention to the geography of the relation as not the least interesting of its features, for the neighborhood of the Island of Madagascar was used in other sea stories as a place of storm and catastrophe. "The ship on which Simplicissimus wished to return to Portugal, suffered shipwreck likewise near Madagascar, and the paradisiac island on which Grimmelshausen permits his hero finally to land in company with a carpenter, is also to be sought in this region. In precisely the same way the shipwreck of Sadeur,{1} the hero of a French Robinson Crusoe story, [43]happens on the coast of Madagascar, and from this was he driven in a southerly direction to the coast of the southern land."
1 La Terre Australe commue, a romance written by Gabriel de Foigny (pseud. J. Sadeur), describing the stay of Sadeur on the southern continent for more than thirty-five years, The original edition, made in Geneva in 1676, is said to contain "many impious and licentious passages which were omitted in the later editions." Sabin (xviii. 220) gives a list of editions, the first English translation appearing in 1693. It is possible that the author owed the idea of his work to Neville's pamphlet.
In most of the older surveys of the known world America counts as the fourth part, naturally coming after Europe, Asia, and Africa. Even that arrangement was not generally accepted. Joannes Leo (Hasan Ibn Muhammad, al-Wazzan), writing in 1556, properly called Africa "la tierce Partie du Monde;" but the Seigneur de la Popelliniere, in his "Les Trois Mondes," published in 1582, divided the globe into three parts—1. Europe, Asia, and Africa; 2. America, and 3. Australia. A half century later, Pierre d'Avitz, of Toumon (Ardeche), entitled one of his compositions "Description Generale de l'Amerique troisiesme partie du Monde," first published in 1637.{2} The expedition under Alvaro de Mendana de Nevra, setting sail from Callao, November 19, 1567, and steering westward, sought to clear doubt concerning a continent which report had pictured as being somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The Solomon Islands rewarded the enterprise, and with New Guinea and the Philippines completed a connection between Peru and the continent of Asia. There had long existed, however, a settled belief in the existence of a great continent in the southern hemisphere, which should serve as a counterpoise to the known lands in the northern.
1 A copy is in the Boston Athenaeum.
The geographical ideas of the times required such a continent, [44]and even before the circumnavigation of Africa, the world-maps indicated to the southward "terra incognita secundum Ptolemeum,"{1} or a land of extreme temperature and wholly unknown.{2} The sailing of ships round the Cape of Good Hope dissipated in some degree this belief but it merely placed some distance between that cape and the supposed Terra Australia which was now extended to the south of America, separated on the maps from that continent only by the narrow Straits of Magellan, and stretching to the westward, almost approaching New Guinea.{3}
1 As on the Ptolemy, Ulm, 1482.
2 As in Macrobius, In Sommium Scipionis Expositio, Brescia, 1483. 3 See the map of Oronce Fine, 1522, and Ortelius, Orbis Terrarum 1592. 4 The "Quiri Regio" was long marked on maps as a continent lying to the south of the Solomon Islands.
3 This was first republished at Augsburg in 1611; in a Latin translation in Henry Hudson's Descriptio ac Delimeatis, Amsterdam, 1612, in Dutch, Verhael van seher Memorial, Amsterdam, 1612; in Bry, 1613, and shortly after in Hulsius; in French, Paris, 1617; and in English, London, 1617. I give this list because even so interesting an announcement of a genuine voyage did not have so quick an acceptance as Neville's tract with almost the same title.
Such an expanse of undiscovered land, believed to be rich in gold, awakened the resolution of Pedro Fernandez de Queiros, who had been a pilot in the Mendafia voyage of 1606. By chance he failed in his object, and deceived by the apparent continuous coast line presented to his view by the islands of the New Hebrides group, he gave it the resounding name of Austrialia del Espiritu Santo, because of the King's title of Austria. On the publication of his "Relation" at Seville in 1610, the name was altered, and he claimed to have discovered the "fourth part of the world, called Terra Australis incognita." Seven years later, [45]in 1617, it was published in London under the title, "Terra Australia incognita, or A new Southerne Discoverie, containing a fifth part of the World." It is obvious that geographers and their source of information—the adventurous sea captains—were not agreed upon the proper number to be assigned to the Terra Australis in the world scheme. Even in 1663 the Church seemed in doubt, for a father writes "Memoires touchant l'etablissement d'une Mission Chrestienne dans la troisieme Monde, autrement apelle la Terre Australe, Meridionale, Antartique, & I connue."{1} That Neville even drew his title from any of these publications cannot be asserted, nor do they explain his designation of the Isle of Pines as the fourth island in this southern land; but they show the common meaning attached to Terra Australis incognita, and his use of the words was a clever, even if not an intentional appeal to the curiosity then so active on continents yet to be discovered.
1 Printed at Paris by Claude Cramoisy, 1663. A copy is in the John Carter Brown Library. In 1756 Charles de Brosse published his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes from Vespuccius to his own day, which was largely used by John Callender in compiling his Terra Australis Cogmta, 1766-68.
Another volume, however, written by one who afterwards became Bishop of Norwich, may have been responsible for the conception of Neville's pamphlet. This was Joseph Hall's "Mundus Alter et Idem sive Terra Australis ante hac semper incognita longis itineribus peregrini Academici nuperrime lustrata." The title says it was printed at Frankfort, and the statement has been too readily accepted as the fact, for the tract was entered at [46]Stationers' Hall by John Porter, June 2, 1605, and again on August 1, 1608.{1} The biographer of Bishop Hall states that it was published at Frankfort by a friend, in 1605, and republished at Hanau in 1607, and in a translated form in London about 1608. It is more than probable that all three issues were made in London, and that the so-called Hanau edition was that entered in 1608. On January 18, 1608-09, Thomas Thorpe entered the translation, with the address to the reader signed John Healey, who was the translator.{2} This carried the title: "The Discovery of a New World, or a Description of the South Indies hitherto unknown."{3} It is a satirical work with no pretense of touching upon realities. Hallam wrote of it: "I can only produce two books by English authors in this first part of the seventeenth century which fall properly under the class of novels or romances; and of these one is written in Latin. This is the Mundus Alter and Idem of Bishop Hall, an imitation of the later and weaker volumes of Rabelais. A country in Terra Australis is divided into four regions, Crapulia, Virginia, Moronea, and Lavernia. Maps of the whole land and of particular regions are given; and the nature of the satire, not much of which has any especial reference to England, may easily be collected. It is not a very successful effort."{4}
1 Stationers' Registers (Arber), in. 291, 386.
2 Ib. 400. Healey made an "exceptionally bad" translation of St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei, which remained the only English translation of that work until 1871.
3 In the Bodleian Library is a copy of the translation with the title, The Discovery of a New World, Tenterbelly, Sheeland, and Fooliana, London, n.d.
4 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 2d ed., II. 167.
While a later critic, Canon [47]Perry, says of it: "This strange composition, sometimes erroneously described as a 'political romance,' to which it bears no resemblance whatever, is a moral satire in prose, with a strong undercurrent of bitter jibes at the Romish church, and its eccentricities, which sufficiently betray the author's main purpose in writing it. It shows considerable imagination, wit, and skill in latinity, but it has not enough of verisimilitude to make it an effective satire, and does not always avoid scurrility."{1} Like Neville's production, the satire was misinterpreted.
The title of Neville's tract also recalls the lost play of Thomas Nash—"The Isle of Dogs"—for which he was imprisoned on its appearance in 1597, and suffered, as he asserted, for the indiscretion of others. "As Actaeon was worried by his own hounds," wrote Francis Meres in his "Palladis Tamia," "so is Tom Nash of his Isle of Dogs." And three years later, in 1600, Nash referred in his "Summers Last Will" to the excitement raised by his suppressed play. "Here's a coil about dogs without wit! If I had thought the ship of fools would have stay'd to take in fresh water at the Isle of Dogs, I would have furnish'd it with a whole kennel of collections to the purpose." The incident was long remembered. Nine years after Nash's experience John Day published his "Isle of Gulls," drawn from Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia."{2}
1 Dictionary of National Biography, xxiv. 76.
2 I take these facts from Sir Sidney Lee's sketch of Nash in the Dictionary of National Biography, XL. 107.
[48]
DEFOE AND THE "ISLE OF PINES"
I would apologize for taking so much time on a nine-page hoax did it not offer something positive in the history of English literature. It has long been recognized as one of the more than possible sources of Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe." It is truly said that the elements of a masterpiece exist for years before they become embodied, that they are floating in the air, as it were, awaiting the master workman who can make that use which gives to them permanent interest Life on an island, entirely separated from the rest of mankind, had formed an incident in many tales, but Neville's is believed to have been the first employment by an English author of island life for the whole story. And while Defoe excludes the most important feature of Neville's tract—woman—from his "Robinson Crusoe," issued in April, 1719, he too, four months after, published the "Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," in which woman has a share. It would be wearisome to undertake a comparison of incident; suffice it to say that the "Isle of Pines" has been accepted as a pre-Defoe romance, to which the far greater Englishman may have been indebted. [49]
[51]
THE ISLE OF PINES, The combined Parts as issued in 1668
The Isle of Pines
OR,
[53] A late Discovery of a fourth ISLAND near Terra Australis, Incognita
BY
Henry Cornelius Van Sloetten.
Wherein is contained.
A True Relation of certain English persons, who in Queen Elizabeths time, making a Voyage to the East Indies were cast away, and wracked near to the Coast of Terra Australis, Incognita, and all drowned, except one Man and four Women. And now lately Anno Dom. 1667. a Dutch Ship making a Voyage to the East Indies, driven by foul weather there, by chance have found their Posterity, (speaking good English) to amount (as they suppose) to ten or twelve thousand persons. The whole Relation (written and left by the Man himself a little before his death, and delivered to the Dutch by his Grandchild) Is here annexed with the Longitude and Latitude of the Island, the situation and felicity thereof, with other matter observable.
Licensed July 27. 1668.
London, Printed for Allen Banks and Charles Harper next door to the three Squerrills in Fleet-Street, over against St Dunstans Church, 1668.
Two Letters concerning the Island of Pines to a Credible person in Covent Garden.
IT is written by the last Post from Rochel, to a Merchant in this City, that there was a French ship arrived, the Mailer and Company of which reports, that about 2 or 300 Leagues Northwest from Cape Finis Terre, they fell in with an Island, where they went on shore, and found about 2000 English people without cloathes, only some small coverings about their middle, and that they related to them, that at their first coming to this Island (which was in Queen Elizabeths time) they were but five in number men and women, being cast on shore by distress or otherwise, and had there remained ever since, without having any correspondence with any other people, or any ship coming to them. This story seems very fabulous, yet the Letter is come to a known Merchant, and from a good hand in France, so that I thought fit to mention it, it may be that there may be some mistake in the number of the Leagues, as also of the exact point of the Compass, from Cape Finis Terre; I shall enquire more particularly about it. Some English here suppose it may be the Island of Brasile which have been so oft sought for, Southwest from Ireland, if true, we shall hear further about it; your friend and Brother, Abraham Keek.
Amsterdam, July the 6th 1668.
IT is said that the Ship that discovered the Island, of which I hinted to you in my last, is departed from Rochel, on her way to Zealand, several persons here have writ thither to enquire for the said Vessel, to know the truth of this business. I was promised a Copy of the Letter [54]Amsterdam, June the 29th 1668, that came from France, advising the discovery of the Island above-said, but its not yet come to my hand; when it cometh, or any further news about this Island, I shall acquaint you with it,
Your Friend and Brother,
A. Keck.
{{1 }} [55]Discovered Near to the Coast of Terra Australis Incognita, by Henry Cornelius Van Sloetten, in a Letter to a friend in London, declaring the truth of his Voyage to the East Indies.
SIR,
I Received your Letter of this second instant, wherein you desire me to give you a further account concerning the Land of Pines, on which we were driven by distress of Weather the last Summer, I also perused the Printed Book thereof you sent me, the Copy of which was surreptiously taken out of my hands, else should I have given you a more fuller account upon what occasion we came thither, how we were entertained, with some other circumstances {{2 }}of note wherein that relation is defective. To satisfie therefore your desires, I shall briefly yet sully give you a particular account thereof, with a true Copy of the Relation itself; desiring you to bear with my blunt Phrases, as being more a Seaman then a Scholler.
April the 26th 1667. We set sail from Amsterdam, intending for the East-Indies; our ship had to name the place from whence we came, the Amsterdam burthen 350. Tun, and having a fair gale of Wind, on the 27 of May following we had a sight of the high Peak Tenriffe belonging to the Canaries, we have touched at the Island Palma, but having endeavoured it twice, and finding the winds contrary, we steered on our course by the Isles of Cape Ferd, or Insula Capitis Viridis, where at St. James's we [56]took in fresh water, with some few Goats, and Hens, wherewith that Island doth plentifully abound.
June the 14. we had a sight of Madagascar, or the Island of St Laurence, an Island of 4000 miles in compass, and scituate under the Southern Tropick; thither we steered our course, and trafficked with the inhabitants for Knives, Beads, Glasses and the like, having in exchange thereof Cloves and Silver. Departing from thence we were incountred with a violent storm, and the winds holding contrary, for the space of a fortnight, brought us back almost as far as the Isle Del Principe; during which time many of our men fell sick, and some dyed, but at the end of that time it pleased God the wind favoured us again, and we steered on our course merrily, for the space of ten days: when on a sudden we were encountered with such a violent storm, as if all the four winds together had conspired for our destruction, so that the stoutest spirit of us all quailed, expecting every hour to be devoured by that merciless element of water, sixteen dayes together {{3 }} did this storm continue, though not with such violence as at the first, the Weather being so dark all the while, and the Sea so rough, that we knew not in what place we were, at length all on a sudden the Wind ceased, and the Air cleared, the Clouds were all dispersed, and a very serene Sky followed, for which we gave hearty thanks to the Almighty, it being beyond our expectation that we should have escaped the violence of that storm.
At length one of our men mounting the Main-mast espyed fire, an evident sign of some Countrey near adjoyning, which presently after we apparently discovered, and steering our course [57]more nigher, we saw several persons promiscuously running about the shore, as it were wondering and admiring at what they saw: Being now near to the Land, we manned out our long Boat with ten persons, who approaching the shore, asked them in our Dutch Tongue What Eyland is dit? to which they returned this Answer in English, "that they knew not what we said." One of our Company named Jeremiah Hanzen who understood English very well, hearing their words discourst to them in their own Language; so that in fine we were very kindly invited on shore, great numbers of them flocking about us, admiring at our Cloaths which we did wear, as we on the other side did to find in such a strange place, so many that could speak English and yet to go naked.
Four of our men returning back in the long Boat to our Ships company, could hardly make them believe the truth of what they had seen and heard, but when we had brought our ship into harbour, you would have blest your self to see how the naked Islanders flocked unto us, so wondering at our ship, as if it had been the greatest miracle of Nature in whole World. {{4 }} |
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