The Isle Of Pines (1668) Part 1

The Isle Of Pines (1668).

by Henry Neville.

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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Kolbing'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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 const.i.tuted 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 Ma.s.s. 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 pa.s.sing through his press had been properly licensed.

1 See the chapters on Green and Johnson in Littlefield, The Early Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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, pet.i.tioned the General Court in properly repentant language, acknowledged his fault, his crime, and promised amendment{1} The fine was not collected, and the princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sed through several editions in England and on the Continent,"{2} a description which would fit a hundred t.i.tles 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 pet.i.tion 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 t.i.tle and some pagination cut into, Bishop Kenneths signature on t.i.tle. 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, Ma.s.sachusetts.

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 a.s.sured 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 endors.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociation, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 t.i.tles 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 t.i.tle-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 t.i.tle-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 t.i.tle-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 t.i.tle-page. So far as the American connection is concerned, it only remains to discover a Johnson issue with a Johnson t.i.tle-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