Chap. IX.] ESTABLISHMENT OF THE LEVANT COMPANY. 211
them far into the interior, and sent out many agents, whose journals and ad issi.
travels furnished, from time to time, valuable inforaiation with regard to Indian traffic.
It has sometimes been alleged that the immediate occasion of the formation Venetian
argosy lost
of the Levant Company, was the lo.ss of a vessel laden witii Indian })roduce on on ti.e the Goodwin Sands. The argosy which is referred to, and is thought to have >,^„|i^ derived the name, common to all vessels of its class, from the tovvTi of Ragusa, in Dalmatia, belonged to the Venetians, and sufficed to carr}', at a single voyage, as much Indian produce as supplied the demand of the kingdom of England for a whole year. The wreck of this vessel proved so disastrous, that the Venetians ceased thenceforth to pay their annual visit. The. English, thus cut off from the supply on whicii they had been accustomed to depend, had no alteraative but to send for the goods which they could not otherwise obtain ; and hence the forma- tion of the Levant Company. Such is the theory propounded ; and, in accor- dance with it, it is added that the same circumstance which led to the formation of the Levant Company, suggested to Shakspeare the idea of the "Merchant of Venice."
The lo.ss of an argosy on the Goodwin Sands, about ten years before the date usually assigned to the first representation of Shakspeare's immortal play, is a well-authenticated fact ; and he speaks with all the tnith of history when he says (act ii. scene 8) : —
" I reasoned with a Freuehiuan yesterday, Who told me, iu the narrow seas that part The French and English, there miscarried A vessel of our country, richly fraught."
And again (act iii. scene 1) : —
"The Goodwins, I think they call the place ; a very dangerous flat."
Unfortunately, however, for the theory, it is impossible to connect the loss of -xnachron- the argosy with the foundation of the Levant Company without committing a [)alpable anachronism. The chai-ter of the company was granted in 1581 ; the argo.sy was not lost till 1587. If the Venetians sent no more argosies after this date, the fact was prol^abl}' owing, not to any hon-or of "the naiTOw seas that part the French and English," for they were well inured to brave far greater dangei-s, but to their inability to derive any profit fi-om a traffic which could never have been very lucrative after the Portuguese had fairly entered the European market, and in which they had recently been brought into competi- tion with a native company powerful iu itself, and enjoying the special favour of the crown. The retirement of the Venetians was only one of the signs from which a sagacious merchant might have inferred that tlie Indian trade had deserted its ancient channels, and that England had become too well acquainted with its nature, and too much alive to its impoi-tance, to allow it to be an}- longer monopolized by Spaniards and Portuguese claiming the monopoly on
