The Isle Of Pines (1668) Part 2

[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 const.i.tute 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 a.s.sume that the three pieces came from the same press, and to a.s.sert 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.

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NOT AN AMERICAN ITEM

By some curious chance this little pamphlet has come to be cla.s.sed 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 c.i.p.angu 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 pa.s.sed 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 Wolfenb.u.t.tel-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 a.s.signed, "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 (Stra.s.sburg).

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 h.o.m.ocks, 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 h.o.m.ocks 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, does not ent.i.tle it to be cla.s.sed 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 cla.s.sic.

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 politic.u.m and the odium theologic.u.m 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 pa.s.s 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, Berks.h.i.+re, in 1620. He became a commoner of Merton College in 1635, and soon after migrated to University College, where he pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociation with them probably arose from his members.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sociated 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 Yorks.h.i.+re rising of 1663, he was released for want of evidence against him, retiring from all partic.i.p.ation 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, Berks.h.i.+re. 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 pa.s.sed 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.