Part 1

THE ISLE OF PINES

By Henry Neville

1668

An Essay in Bibliography

by WORTHINGTON CHAUNCEY FORD

Boston

The Club of Odd Volumes 1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE CLUB OF ODD VOLUMES

TO

Charles Lemuel Nichols

lover of books

colleague

FRIEND

ETEXT TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Numbers enclosed in double curly brackets are the page numbers of the original 1668 edition.

The long S in the text files have been changed to the ordinary small S, however the accompanying html file uses the unicode character for the long S as in the original printed document. DW

Contents:

THE ISLE OF PINES

THE DOWSE COPIES

THE EUROPEAN EDITIONS

DUTCH EDITIONS

FRENCH EDITIONS

ITALIAN EDITION

GERMAN EDITIONS

THE S.G. NOT A CAMBRIDGE IMPRINT

THE COMBINED PARTS

THE PUBLISHERS

NOT AN AMERICAN ITEM

THE AUTHOR

THE STORY

INTERPRETATIONS

DEFOE AND THE "ISLE OF PINES"

THE ISLE OF PINES, The combined Parts as issued in 1668

PREFATORY NOTE

My curiosity on the "Isle of Pines" was aroused by the sale of a copy in London and New York in 1917, and was increased by the discovery of two distinct issues in the Dowse Library, in the Massachusetts Historical Society. As my material grew in bulk and the history of this hoax perpetrated in the seventeenth century developed, I thought it of sufficient interest to communicate an outline of the story to the Club of Odd Volumes, of Boston, October 23, 1918. The results of my investigations are more fully given in the present volume. I acknowledge my indebtedness to the essay of Max Hippe, "Eine vor-De-foesche Englische Robinsonade," published in Eugen Kölbing's "Englische Studien" xix. 66. WORTHINGTON CHAUNCEY FORD

Boston, February, 1920

THE ISLE OF PINES

OR,

A late Discovery of a fourth ISLAND in Terra Australis, Incognita.

BEING

A True Relation of certain English persons, Who in the dayes of Queen Elizabeth making a Voyage to the East India, were cast-away, and wracked on the Island near to the Coast of Australis, and all drowned, except one Man and four Women, whereof one was a Negro. And now lately Ann Dom. 1667, A Dutch Ship driven by foul weather there, by chance have found their Posterity (speaking good English) to amount to ten or twelve thousand persons, as they suppose. The whole Relation follows, written, and left by the Man himself a little before his death, and declared to the Dutch by His Grandchild.

THE ISLE OF PINES

[3]The scene opens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the year 1668, where in one of the college buildings a contest between two rival printers had been waged for some years. Marmaduke Johnson, a trained and experienced printer, to whose ability the Indian Bible is largely due, had ceased to be the printer of the corporation, or Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, but still had a press and, what was better, a fresh outfit of type, sent over by the corporation and entrusted to the keeping of John Eliot, the Apostle. Samuel Green had become a printer, though without previous training, and was at this time printer to the college, a position of vantage against a rival, because it must have carried with it countenance from the authorities in Boston, and public printing then as now constituted an item to a press of some income and some perquisites. By seeking to marry Green's daughter before his English wife had ceased to be, Johnson had created a prejudice, public as well as private, against himself.{1}

1 Mass. Hist Soc. Proceedings, xx. 265.

Each wished to set up a press in Boston itself, but the General Court, probably for police reasons, had ordered that there should be no printing but at Cambridge, and that what was printed there should be approved by any two of four gentlemen appointed by the Court. It thus appeared that each printer possessed a certain superiority over his rival. In the matter of types Johnson was favored, as he had new types and was a trained printer; but these advantages were partially [4]neutralized by indolence and by Green's better standing before the magistrates.{1}

In England the excesses of the printing-press during the civil war and commonwealth led to a somewhat strict though erratically applied censorship under the restoration. A publication must be licensed, and the Company of Stationers still sought, for reasons of profit, to control printers by regulating their production. The licensing agent in chief was a character of picturesque uncertainty and spasmodic action, Roger L'Estrange, half fanatic, half politician, half hack writer, in fact half in many respects and whole only in the resulting contradictions of purpose and performance. On one point he was strong--a desire to suppress unlicensed printing. So when in 1668 warrant was given to him to make search for unauthorized printing, he entered into the hunt with the zeal of a Loyola and the wishes of a Torquemada, harrying and rushing his prey and breathing threats of extreme rigor of fine, prison, pillory, and stake against the unfortunates who had neglected, in most cases because of the cost, to obtain the stamp of the licenser.{2}

New England was at this time England in little, with troubles of its own; but, having imitated the mother country in introducing supervision of the press, it also started in to investigate the printers of the colony, two in number, seeking to win a smile of approval from the foolish man on the throne. With due solemnity the inquisition was [5]made. Green could show that all then passing through his press had been properly licensed.

1 See the chapters on Green and Johnson in Littlefield, The Early Massachusetts Press, 197, 209.

2 L'Estrange was called the "Devil's blood hound." Col. S. P., Dom. 1663-1664, 616.

Johnson, less fortunate, was caught with one unlicensed piece--"The Isle of Pines." A fine of five pounds was imposed upon him, as effectual in suppressing him as though it had been one of five thousand pounds. He could now turn with relish to two books then on his press, "Meditations on Death and Eternity" and the "Righteous Man's Evidence for Heaven;" for Massachusetts Bay, with its then powerful rule of divinity without religion, or religion without mercy, held out small hope of his meeting such a fine within the expedition of his natural life. But he made his submission, petitioned the General Court in properly repentant language, acknowledged his fault, his crime, and promised amendment{1} The fine was not collected, and the principal result of the incident was to further the very natural union of Johnson and Green, but with Johnson as the lesser member in importance.

No copy of Marmaduke Johnson's issue of the "Isle of Pines" has come to light in a period of 248 years. It might well be supposed that the authorities caught him before the tract had gone to press, and so snuffed it out completely. Our sapient bibliographers have dismissed the matter in rounded phrase: "'The Isle of Pines' was a small pamphlet of the Baron Munchausen order, which in its day passed through several editions in England and on the Continent,"{2} a description which would fit a hundred titles of the period. In July, 1917, Sotheby announced the sale of a portion of the Americana collected by [6]"Bishop White Kennett (1660-1728) and given by him to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts."

1 The petition it in Littlefield, i. 248.

2 Mats. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xi. 247.

Lot No. 113 was described as follows:

[Neville (Henry)] The Isle of Pines, or a late Discovery of a fourth Island in Terra Australis, Incognita, being a True Relation of certain English persons who in the dayes of Queen Elizabeth, making a Voyage to the East Indies, were cast away and wracked upon the Island, wanting the frontispiece, head-line of title and some pagination cut into, Bishop Kenneths signature on title. sm. 4to S. G. for Allen Banks, 1668.

The pamphlet was sold, I am told, for fourteen shillings,{1} and resold shortly after to a New York bookseller for fifty-five dollars. He was attracted by the imprint, which read in full, "London, by S. G. for Allen Banks and Charles Harper at the Flower-Deluice near Cripplegate Church." The general appearance of the pamphlet was unlike even the moderately good issues of the English press, and the "by S. G." not only did not answer to any London printer of the day, except Sarah Griffin, "a printer in the Old Bailey,"{2} but was in form and usage exactly what could be found on a number of the issues of the press of Samuel Green, of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1 The sale took place July 30, 1917.

2 Only once does her name occur in the Term Catalogues, when in February, 1673, the prints George Buchanan' Psalmorum Davidis Paraphrasis Poetica, which told for two shillings a copy. Samuel Gellibrand was not a printer but a bookseller, with a shop "at the Ball in St. Paul's Churchyard."

On comparing the first page of the text of his purchase with the same page of an acknowledged London issue of the "Isle of Pines" [7]in the John Carter Brown Library,{1} the bookseller concluded that the two were entirely different publications.

An expert cataloguer connected with one of the large auction firms of New York then took up the subject. After a study of the tract he became assured that it could only have been printed by Samuel Green, of Cambridge, and he brought forward facts and comparisons which seemed conclusive and for which he deserves much credit. It was a clever bit of bibliographical work. With such an endorsement as to rarity and quality the pamphlet was again put to the test of the auction room. The cataloguer stated his case in sufficient fulness of detail and the first page of the text was reproduced.{2} Naturally the discovery sent a little thrill through the mad-house of bibliography. The tract was knocked down for $400 to a bookseller from Hartford, Connecticut, presumably for some local collection. The incident would have passed from memory had it not been for one of those accidents to which even the amateur bibliographer is liable.

1 No. 5 in the Bibliography, page 93, infra.

2 Nuggets of American History, American Art Association, November 19, 1917. The Isle of Pines was lot 142, and was introduced by the words, "Cambridge Press in New England." The catalogue was prepared by Mr. F. W. Coar.

In the bitter days of the winter of 1917-18 the working force of the Massachusetts Historical Society was contracted into one room--the Dowse Library--where was at least a semblance [8]of warmth in the open fireplace.

THE DOWSE COPIES

One afternoon, when I had finished my work and the others had left, I picked up the catalogue of the Dowse Library and began idly to turn over its leaves. Incidentally, that catalogue is characteristic of the older methods of the Society. As is known to the elect, no book in the Dowse Library can ever leave the room in which it now rests, and of the catalogue twenty-five copies were printed and never circulated. If the library had been left in the Dowse house in Cambridgeport, its existence and contents could not have been more successfully hidden from the world. While reading the titles in a very casual way, my eye was caught by one which gave me a start. It read:

Sloetten (Cornelius van). The Isle of Pines; or a Late Discovery of a Fourth Island in Terra Australis Incognita. London, printed by G. S. for Allen Banks, 1668. With a New and Further Discovery of the Isle of Pines, 1668; and a duplicate of the Isle of Pines. 1 vol. small 4to, calf supr., gilt leaves. A most interesting, rare, and valuable work.

Even against the Editor of the Society the Dowse books are kept behind lock and key, though he is not under more than ordinary suspicion. So I was obliged to wait till the next day before my curiosity could be satisfied. I then found a thin volume, less than one-third of an inch in thickness, containing two copies of this very tract which the auction expert had identified as an issue of the "Isle of Pines" by Green, and a London issue of a second part of the "Isle of Pines," with the name of Cornelius Van Sloetten, as author. For more than fifty years this little volume had reposed in this well-known yet almost forgotten [9]library, and no one had suspected or questioned the nature of its contents.

For full fifty years it had been in the care and at the call of Dr. Samuel A. Green, who claimed to be an expert on New England imprints of the seventeenth century, and one of the great wishes of whose life had been to establish his descent from this very printer, Samuel Green. Two copies within the same covers, of a tract long sought and of which only a single example had come to light in two centuries and a half--was not that alone something of a bibliographical coup?

I read two of the pieces--one of the Green issues and the second part as printed in England--making a few notes for future use. On returning to the matter some weeks later I found to my annoyance that every reference to the Green tract but one was wrong as to the page. Cold, haste, or weariness will account for a single or possibly two errors of reference, but to have a whole series--except one--go wrong pointed to failing eyes or mind. Very much put out, I read the tract a second time and corrected the page references, carefully checking up the result. Some days after I again took up the matter, and in verifying my first quotation found that I had again put down the wrong page number, and was surprised to find that the correct page was the one I had first given. This proved to be the case in all the references--except one. A book which could thus change its page numbering from week to week was bewitched--or I was careless. It occurred to me to compare the two copies of the tract as published by Green. The title-pages were exactly alike--not differing by so much as a fly speck, but one copy contained ten pages of text and the other only nine.

More [10]than that, the general style and the types were quite different One was printed in a well-known broad but somewhat used type, such as could be seen in Green's printing, and the other in a finer font with much italic. There was no possibility of confusing the two issues. Only one conclusion was possible. I had in this volume the publication by Green, and the original issue by Marmaduke Johnson, but with Green's title-page. So for we seem to rest upon solid ground. It may be surmised that Green set up his "Isle of Pines" in rivalry to Johnson, but did not incur the discipline of the authorities; or that he had set it up and also took over Johnson's edition, using his own title-page; and in either case it is possible that a simple subterfuge, the imprint, "by S. G. for Allen Banks and Charles Harper," a London combination of publishers, caused the tract to escape the attention of the examining local censors. Here was another step in developing the history of this tract--the discovery of one of Johnson's issues, except for the title-page. So far as the American connection is concerned, it only remains to discover a Johnson issue with a Johnson title-page, for in his apology and submission to the General Court he states that he had "affixed" his name to the pamphlet.

THE EUROPEAN EDITIONS

The European connection is also not without interest, for the skit--the first part of the "Isle of Pines," published without name of author--had an extraordinary run.

In 1493 a little [11]four-leaved translation into Latin of a Columbus letter announcing the discovery of islands in the west--De insulis nuper inventis--ran over Europe, startling the age by a simple relation which proved a marvellous tale as taken up by Vespuccius, Cortes, and a host of successors.{1} For a century the darkness of a new found continent slowly lifted and the record was collected in Ramusio, in De Bry, in Hulsius, and in Hakluyt, never felling treasuries of the wonderful, veritable schools for the adventurous. Another century had shown that, so fer from decreasing in greatness and in opportunities, the field of discovery had not begun to be tested, and in the summer of 1668 a new island--the Isle of Pines--was flashed before the London crowd, and proved that the flame of quest with danger was still burning. A new island! The interest was international, for nations had already long fought over the old discovered lands.

1 The intelligent industry of Mr. Wilberforce Eames has identified eleven issues of the letter of Columbus, printed in 1493, in Barcelona, Rome, Basle, Paris, and Antwerp; and twelve issues of the Novus Mundus of Vespucci us, printed in 1504, in Augsburg, Paris, Nuremberg, Cologne, Antwerp, and Venice. An earlier and even more extraordinary distribution of a letter of news is that of the letter purporting to be addressed by Prester John to the Emperor Manuel, which circulated through Europe about 1165. "How great was the popularity and diffusion of this letter," writes Sir Henry Yule, "may be judged in some degree from the fad that Zarncke in his treatise on Prester John gives a list of close on 100 mss. of it Of these there are eight in the British Museum, ten at Vienna, thirteen in the great Paris Library, and fifteen at Munich. There are also several renderings in old German verse." The cause of this popularity was the hope offered by the reported exploits of Prester John of a counterpoise to the Mohammedan power. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., xxii. 305.

An even greater contest was being waged for commerce, and with the experience of Spain in gathering the precious metals [12]from new found lands, every discovery of hitherto uncharted territory opened the possibility of wealth and an exchange of commodities, if rapine and piracy could not be practised. The merchant was an adventurer, and politics, quite as much as trade, controlled his movements; for the line between trader, buccaneer, and pirate faded away before conditions which made treaties of no importance and peaceful relations dependent upon an absence of the hope of gain. A state of war was not necessary to prepare the way for attack and plunder in those far distant oceans, and the merchantman sailed armed and ready to inflict as well as to repel aggression, only too willing to descend upon a weaker vessel or a helpless settlement of a power which had come to be regarded as a "natural enemy." So in Holland and in Germany the leaflets containing the story of the Isle of Pines were received with mingled feelings, exciting a desire to share in the possible benefits to be gained or extorted from natives of the new lands, or from those who had the first opportunity to exploit a virgin territory. On the first receipt of those leaflets merchants held back their vessels about to sail, to await more definite information on this fourth island of the Terra Australis incognita.

[13]An examination of the known issues of the tract proves this interest and offers an almost unique study in bibliography; for I doubt if any publication made in the second half of the seventeenth century--even a state paper of importance, as a treaty--attained such speedy and widespread recognition. A list of the various issues will be found in an appendix: it only remains to call attention to a few of the many novelties and variant characteristics of the editions.

DUTCH EDITIONS

In June and July, 1668, four tracts on the Isle of Pines from the same pen were licensed and published in London, which may for convenience be designated the first and second parts of the narrative, and the two parts in continuation. From London the tract soon passed to Holland, which had ever been a greedy consumer of voyages of discovery, for the greatness of that nation depended upon the sea, at once its most potent enemy and friend.{1} Three Dutch editions have been found, the earliest in point of time being that made by Jacob Vinckel, [14]of Amsterdam.

1 Holland was the centre of map publication as the twenty yean before 1668 saw the issue of atlases by Jansson, Blaeu, Mercator, Doncker, Cellarius, Loon, Visscher, and Goos, all published at Amsterdam. Phillips' list for this period gives atlases published elsewhere--those of Boissevin (Paris, 1653), Lubin (Paris, 1659), Nicolosi (Rome, 1660), Dudley (Florence, 1661), Du Val (Paris, 1662), Jollain (Paris 1667), Cluver (Wolfen-bûttel, 1667?) and Ortelius (Venice, 1667).

His second title is an exact translation of the second title of the London first part. This version, however, omitted an essential part of the relation. The London second title is also that of the issue made at Amsterdam by Jacob Stichter, being the Vinckel version, word for word, and almost line for line, but the type used is the gothic, and the spelling of words is not the same. Further, Stichter was possessed of some imagination and decorated his title-page with a map of a part of the island, showing ranges of hills, a harbor or mouth of a river, with conventional soundings, and two towns or settlements. As each of these issues contains only eight pages of text, the first London part only was known to the publishers. The third Dutch edition was put out by Joannes Naeranus, at Rotterdam, and in a foreword he gives the following reason for issuing the tract:

To the Reader A part of the present relation is also printed by Jacob Vinckel at Amsterdam, being defective in omitting one of the principal things, so do we give here a true copy which was sent to us authoritatively out of England, but in that language, in order that the curious reader may not be deceived by the poor translation, and for that reason this very astonishing history fall under suspicion. Lastly, admire God's wondrous guidance, and farewell.

His publication contains twenty pages of text, and is not an accurate translation of the English tract in parts, but rather a paraphrase of the text. To make the confusion the greater, he [15]expressly states on the title-page that he used a copy received from London, and gives the London imprint which will fit only the first London part. For "by S. G." appears only on the title-page of that part.

FRENCH EDITIONS

From Amsterdam and under date July 19, 1668, a summary of the earlier Dutch issue with two paragraphs of introduction was sent to Paris, and was printed in a four-page pamphlet by Sébastien Marbre Cramoisy, the king's printer, whose name is so honorably connected with the Jesuit Relations--stories as remarkable as any offered in the "Isle of Pines" and of immeasurable value on the earliest years of recorded history in our New England. Even this summary, thus definitely dated, offers problems. The location of the island is given in general terms in the half-title as "below the equinoctial line," and in the text as in "xxviii or xxix degrees of Antartique latitude." Nowhere in the first London part is either location used, and in the second London part, which bears nearly the same date as the Cramoisy summary--July 22--twenty degrees of latitude is given. The writer of the summary thus allowed himself some freedom.

A second French edition, without imprint, contains eleven pages and is a translation of the first London part, paraphrased in sentences, but on the whole a close rendering of the English text There never was a title-page to this issue--the first page having the signature-mark A--yet with eleven pages only, it [16]would seem fit that a title-page should round out the twelve for the convenience of printing.

ITALIAN EDITION