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 "Yde Pinos."4 Mr. P. Lee Phillips, to whom I am indebted for referencesto 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 dePinos." Hakloyt (iii. 617) prints a "Ruttier" for theWest Indies, without date, but probably of the end of thesixteenth century, which contains the following; "Themarkes of Isla de Pinos. The Island of Pinos stretcheth itselfe East and West, and is full of homocks, and if youchance to see it at full sea, it will shew like 3 Islands,as though there were divers soundes betweene them, and thatin the midst is the greatest; and in rowing with them, itwill make all a firme lande: and upon the East side of thesethree homocks it will shewe all ragged; and on the Westside of them will appeare unto you a lowe point even withthe sea, and oftentimes you shall see the trees before youshall 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 Thomas à 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 AUTHORThus 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 à Wood,{1} merely because he belonged to the opposite party—the crudest possible measure of merit For theodium politicumand theodium theologicumare 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 to summarize what is known, without attempting to pass finally upon Neville's position among his contemporaries.1 Athenæ 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," 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 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. Thoughdated September 30, the act was entered at Stationers' HallSeptember 19. Eyre and Rivington, i. 276.2 It was reprinted in 1731.3 It is in the Harleian Miscellany, v. 298, and a copy ofthe 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 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 andStates both ancient and modern, an Endeavour is used todiscover the politick Distemper of our own; with the Causesand Remedies. The Second Edition, with Additions. In Octavo.Price 2s. 6d. Printed for S. I. and sold by R. Dew. The TermCatalogues (Arber), 1.443—the issue for May, 1681. Theinitials 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 calledout several replies, such as the anonymous AntidotumBrittanicum and Goddard's Plato's Demon, or the StatePhysician 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 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 Flornce. 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 November25,1674.) It was entered at Stationers' Hall, June 20,1674, "under the hands of Master Roger L'Estrange and MasterWarden Mean" with the statement that the translation wasmade by "J. D. Gent."3 This novel wa added by Starker to a translation of novelsby Gomez deQueverdoy Villegas published in November, 1670.The name of the printer suggests a connection with Neville.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 forFebruary, 1675. Entered at Stationers' Hall, February 4,1674-75, "under the hands of Master Roger L'Estrange andMaster Warden Roycroft," with the statement that thetranslation was made by "J.B. Salvo iure cuilibet." Theresort to L'Estrange in both instances is suggestive. 2 Ib453—the issue for June, 1681. "The Works of that famousNicholas Machiavel" is announced in the Catalogues, June,1675, for publication by R. Boulter, in Cornhill, and at thesame price of 18s., but I doubt if Neville had anything todo 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 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 theIndia Merchant, which sailed for the East Indies in 1569.Having rounded the Cape of Good Hope and 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'sVoyage, 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 Dutch captain—Cornelius Van Sloetton—and the location of the supposed island—longitude 76° and latitude 20°, 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.INTERPRETATIONSIt 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 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 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 Athenæ 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 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.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 theBibliography. It it dedicated to Anthonio Goldbeck,Burgomaster of Altona, and the letter of dedication b datedat 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, 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 deFoigny (pseud. J. Sadeur), describing the stay of Sadeur onthe southern continent for more than thirty-five years, Theoriginal edition, made in Geneva in 1676, is said to contain"many impious and licentious passages which were omitted inthe later editions." Sabin (xviii. 220) gives a list ofeditions, the first English translation appearing in 1693.It is possible that the author owed the idea of his work toNeville'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 Popellinière, 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 (Ardèche), entitled one of his compositions "Description Générale de l'Amérique 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, 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 onmaps as a continent lying to the south of the SolomonIslands.3 This was first republished at Augsburg in 1611; in aLatin translation in Henry Hudson's Descriptio acDelimeatis, Amsterdam, 1612, in Dutch, Verhael van seherMemorial, Amsterdam, 1612; in Bry, 1613, and shortly afterin Hulsius; in French, Paris, 1617; and in English, London,1617. I give this list because even so interesting anannouncement of a genuine voyage did not have so quick anacceptance 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, 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 "Mémoires touchant l'établissement d'une Mission Chrestienne dans la troisième Monde, autrement apellé la Terre Australe, Méridionale, 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 toTerra 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 inthe John Carter Brown Library. In 1756 Charles de Brossepublished his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australesfrom Vespuccius to his own day, which was largely used byJohn 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 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" translationof St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei, which remained the onlyEnglish translation of that work until 1871.3 In the Bodleian Library is a copy of the translation withthe title, The Discovery of a New World, Tenterbelly,Sheeland, and Fooliana, London, n.d.4 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 2d éd., II.167.While a later critic, Canon 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 inthe Dictionary of National Biography, XL. 107.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.oldtitle (114K)title2 (127K)THE ISLE OF PINES,The combined Parts as issued in 1668The Isle of PinesOR,A late Diſcovery of a fourth ISLAND near Terra Auſtralis, IncognitaBYHenry Cornelius Van Sloetten.Wherein is contained.
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 "Yde Pinos."4 Mr. P. Lee Phillips, to whom I am indebted for referencesto 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 dePinos." Hakloyt (iii. 617) prints a "Ruttier" for theWest Indies, without date, but probably of the end of thesixteenth century, which contains the following; "Themarkes of Isla de Pinos. The Island of Pinos stretcheth itselfe East and West, and is full of homocks, and if youchance to see it at full sea, it will shew like 3 Islands,as though there were divers soundes betweene them, and thatin the midst is the greatest; and in rowing with them, itwill make all a firme lande: and upon the East side of thesethree homocks it will shewe all ragged; and on the Westside of them will appeare unto you a lowe point even withthe sea, and oftentimes you shall see the trees before youshall 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 Thomas à 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.
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 à Wood,{1} merely because he belonged to the opposite party—the crudest possible measure of merit For theodium politicumand theodium theologicumare 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 to summarize what is known, without attempting to pass finally upon Neville's position among his contemporaries.
1 Athenæ 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," 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 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. Thoughdated September 30, the act was entered at Stationers' HallSeptember 19. Eyre and Rivington, i. 276.2 It was reprinted in 1731.3 It is in the Harleian Miscellany, v. 298, and a copy ofthe 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 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 andStates both ancient and modern, an Endeavour is used todiscover the politick Distemper of our own; with the Causesand Remedies. The Second Edition, with Additions. In Octavo.Price 2s. 6d. Printed for S. I. and sold by R. Dew. The TermCatalogues (Arber), 1.443—the issue for May, 1681. Theinitials 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 calledout several replies, such as the anonymous AntidotumBrittanicum and Goddard's Plato's Demon, or the StatePhysician 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 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 Flornce. 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 November25,1674.) It was entered at Stationers' Hall, June 20,1674, "under the hands of Master Roger L'Estrange and MasterWarden Mean" with the statement that the translation wasmade by "J. D. Gent."3 This novel wa added by Starker to a translation of novelsby Gomez deQueverdoy Villegas published in November, 1670.The name of the printer suggests a connection with Neville.
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 forFebruary, 1675. Entered at Stationers' Hall, February 4,1674-75, "under the hands of Master Roger L'Estrange andMaster Warden Roycroft," with the statement that thetranslation was made by "J.B. Salvo iure cuilibet." Theresort to L'Estrange in both instances is suggestive. 2 Ib453—the issue for June, 1681. "The Works of that famousNicholas Machiavel" is announced in the Catalogues, June,1675, for publication by R. Boulter, in Cornhill, and at thesame price of 18s., but I doubt if Neville had anything todo 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 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 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 theIndia Merchant, which sailed for the East Indies in 1569.
Having rounded the Cape of Good Hope and 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'sVoyage, 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 Dutch captain—Cornelius Van Sloetton—and the location of the supposed island—longitude 76° and latitude 20°, 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.
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 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 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 Athenæ 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 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.
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 theBibliography. It it dedicated to Anthonio Goldbeck,Burgomaster of Altona, and the letter of dedication b datedat 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, 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 deFoigny (pseud. J. Sadeur), describing the stay of Sadeur onthe southern continent for more than thirty-five years, Theoriginal edition, made in Geneva in 1676, is said to contain"many impious and licentious passages which were omitted inthe later editions." Sabin (xviii. 220) gives a list ofeditions, the first English translation appearing in 1693.It is possible that the author owed the idea of his work toNeville'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 Popellinière, 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 (Ardèche), entitled one of his compositions "Description Générale de l'Amérique 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, 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 onmaps as a continent lying to the south of the SolomonIslands.3 This was first republished at Augsburg in 1611; in aLatin translation in Henry Hudson's Descriptio acDelimeatis, Amsterdam, 1612, in Dutch, Verhael van seherMemorial, Amsterdam, 1612; in Bry, 1613, and shortly afterin Hulsius; in French, Paris, 1617; and in English, London,1617. I give this list because even so interesting anannouncement of a genuine voyage did not have so quick anacceptance 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, 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 "Mémoires touchant l'établissement d'une Mission Chrestienne dans la troisième Monde, autrement apellé la Terre Australe, Méridionale, 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 toTerra 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 inthe John Carter Brown Library. In 1756 Charles de Brossepublished his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australesfrom Vespuccius to his own day, which was largely used byJohn 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 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" translationof St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei, which remained the onlyEnglish translation of that work until 1871.3 In the Bodleian Library is a copy of the translation withthe title, The Discovery of a New World, Tenterbelly,Sheeland, and Fooliana, London, n.d.4 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 2d éd., II.167.
While a later critic, Canon 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 inthe Dictionary of National Biography, XL. 107.
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.
oldtitle (114K)
title2 (127K)