Part 4 (1/2)

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 on maps as a continent lying to the south of the Solomon Islands.

3 This was first republished at Augsburg in 1611; in a Latin translation in Henry Hudson's Descriptio ac Delimeatis, Amsterdam, 1612, in Dutch, Verhael van seher Memorial, Amsterdam, 1612; in Bry, 1613, and shortly after in Hulsius; in French, Paris, 1617; and in English, London, 1617. I give this list because even so interesting an announcement of a genuine voyage did not have so quick an acceptance as Neville's tract with almost the same t.i.tle.

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 t.i.tle 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, [45]in 1617, it was published in London under the t.i.tle, ”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 a.s.signed to the Terra Australis in the world scheme.

Even in 1663 the Church seemed in doubt, for a father writes ”Memoires touchant l'etabliss.e.m.e.nt d'une Mission Chrestienne dans la troisieme Monde, autrement apelle la Terre Australe, Meridionale, Antartique, & I connue.”{1} That Neville even drew his t.i.tle from any of these publications cannot be a.s.serted, 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 to Terra 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 in the John Carter Brown Library. In 1756 Charles de Brosse published his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes from Vespuccius to his own day, which was largely used by John 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 l.u.s.trata.” The t.i.tle says it was printed at Frankfort, and the statement has been too readily accepted as the fact, for the tract was entered at [46]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 t.i.tle: ”The Discovery of a New World, or a Description of the South Indies. .h.i.therto 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 cla.s.s 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, c.r.a.pulia, 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” translation of St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei, which remained the only English translation of that work until 1871.

3 In the Bodleian Library is a copy of the translation with the t.i.tle, The Discovery of a New World, Tenterbelly, Sheeland, and Fooliana, London, n.d.

4 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 2d ed., II.

167.

While a later critic, Canon [47]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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.serted, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 in the Dictionary of National Biography, XL. 107.

[48]

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. [49]

[51]

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

The Isle of Pines

OR,

[53] A late Discovery of a fourth ISLAND near Terra Australis, Incognita