Part 2 (1/2)

[24]

THE COMBINED PARTS

The English edition of thirty-one pages in the John Carter Brown Library, with an engraved frontispiece,{1} offers still further proof that the S. G. issue was made in London. In place of being entirely different from the S. G. tract, it is precisely the same so far as text is concerned. For it is nothing more than the two parts combined, but combined in a peculiar manner. The second part was opened at page 6 and the first part inserted, entire and without change of text{2} This insertion runs into page 16, where a sentence is inserted to carry on the relation: ”After the reading and delivering unto us a Coppy of this Relation, then proceeded he on in his discourse.” The rest of the text of the second part follows, and pages 27-31 of the combined parts seem to be the very type pages of pages 20-24 of the second part{3} In this sandwich form one must read six pages before coming to the text of the first part, and a careless reader, comparing only the respective first pages, would conclude that a pamphlet of thirty-one pages could have no likeness [25]to one of nine.

1 The plate in the copy in the John Carter Brown Library does not belong to that issue, but is inserted in so clumsy a manner as to prevent reproduction. The same plate is found in a copy of the ten-page S.G. issue in the library of Mr.

Henry E. Huntington, and to all appearances belongs to that issue.

2 The last sentence on page 6 of the second part read: ”Then proceeded he on in his discourse saying,” and there are no pages numbered 7 and 8, although there is no break in the text, the catch-word on page 6 being the first word on page 9. In the combined parts, the last words on page 6 const.i.tute a phrase: ”which Copy hereafter followeth.”

3 The only change made is in the heading of the Post-script, which was wrongly printed in the second part as ”Post- script.” On page 26 of the combined parts the words ”except burning” were inserted, not appearing in the second part.

On typographical evidence it is safe to a.s.sume that the three pieces came from the same press, and to a.s.sert that the second part and the combined parts certainly did. The initials S. G. are found only on the first part.

THE PUBLISHERS

The imprints of the three parts agree that the booksellers or publishers handling the editions were Allen Banks and Charles Harper. The first part gives their shop as the ”Flower-De-luice near Cripplegate Church,”

the second part as the ”Flower-de-luce” as before, and the combined parts as ”next door to the three Squerrills in Fleet-street, over against St. Dunstans Church.” The church is still there, with more than two centuries of dirt and soot marking its walls since Neville wrote, and Chancery and Fettar Lanes enable one to place quite accurately the location of the booksellers' shop. Only three times do the names of Banks and Harper appear as partners on the Stationers' Registers,{1} and they separated about 1671, Banks going to the ”St Peter at the West End of St Pauls.” If any judgment may be drawn from their publications after ceasing to be partners, Banks leaned to light literature and may have been responsible for taking up the ”Isle of Pines.” Yet Harper was Neville's publisher in 1674 and in 1681, a fact which may indicate a personal relation.{2}

1 Eyre and Rivington, ii. 386, 388, and 410.

2 Sec page 34, infra.

[26]

NOT AN AMERICAN ITEM

By some curious chance this little pamphlet has come to be cla.s.sed as Americana. Bishop Kenneth's Catalogue may have been the source of this error, leading collectors to believe that the item was a true relation of an actual voyage, and possibly touching upon some phase of American history or geography. The rarity of the pamphlet would not permit such a belief to be readily corrected. The existence also of two Isles of Pines in American waters may have aided the belief.

One of these islands is off the southwestern end of Cuba. On his second voyage, Columbus had sailed along the south coast of Cuba, and June 13,1494, reached an island, which he named Evangelista. Here he encountered such difficulties among the shoals that he determined to retrace his course to the eastward. But for that experience, he might have reached the mainland of America on that voyage. The conquest of the island of Cuba by Diego Velasquez in 1511 led to its exploration; but geographers could only slowly appreciate what the islands really meant, for they were as much misled by the reports of navigators as Columbus had been by his prejudice in favor of Cathay.

Toscanelli's map of the Atlantic Ocean (1474) gives many islands between Cape Verde and the ”coast of spices,” of which ”Cippangu” is the largest and most important.{1}

1 This map, as reconstructed from Martin Behaim's globe, is in Scottish Geographical Magazine, 1893.

On Juan de laCosa's sea chart, 1500, Cuba is fairly drawn, with the sea to the south dotted with islands without names. In a few years the mist surrounding [27]the new world had so far been dispelled as to disclose a quite accurate detail of the larger West Indian islands{1} and to offer a continent to the west, one that placed c.i.p.angu still far too much to the east of the coast of Asia.{2} An island of some size off the southwest of Cuba seems to have been intended at first for Jamaica, but certainly as early as 1536 that island had pa.s.sed to its true position on the maps, and the island to the west is without a name. Nor can it be confused with Yucatan, which for forty years was often drawn as an island. On the so-called Wolfenb.u.t.tel-Spanish map of 1525-30 occurs the name ”J. de Pinos,” probably the first occurrence of the name upon any map in the sixteenth century. Two other maps of that time--Colon's and Ribero's, dated respectively 1527 and 1529--call it ”Y de Pinos,” and on the globe of Ulpius, to which the year 1542 is a.s.signed, ”de Pinos”

is clearly marked. Bellero's map, 1550, has an island ”de pinolas.”

Naturally, map-makers were slow to adopt new names, and in the numerous editions of Ptolemy the label St Iago was retained almost to the end of the century.{3} On the Agnese map there are two islands, one named ”S.

Tiago,” the other ”pinos,” which introduced a new confusion, though he was not followed by most geographers until Wytfliet, 1597, gave both names to the same island--”S. Iago siue Y de Pinas”--in which he is followed by Hondius, 1633.{4} Ortelius, 1579, [28]adopts ”I Pinnorum,”

while Linschoten, 1598, has ”Pinas,” and Herrera, 1601, ”Pinos.”

1 The Agnese Atlas of 1529 may be cited as an example.