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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io a. v. FEB. n, urn.
NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.
The English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century. By
Walter Raleigh. (Glasgow, MacLehose & Sons.) Hakluytus Posthumus ; or, Purchas His Pilgrimes.
By Samuel Purchas, B.D. Vols. JX. and X.
(Same publishers.)
FIRST printed in April, 1905, as an introduction to the splendid reissue by Messrs. MacLehose of Hakluyt's 'Navigations,' Prof. Raleigh's volume constitutes the best portal through which one may pass into the enchanted land of early English travel. It is true that the land itself lies open to .all, and that to enter therein neither permission nor passport is required. What is said, however, at the outset by Prof. Raleigh, concerning " the great prose epic of the modern English nation" is true : it is but an incident in a world-drama which " unrolls its vast theme leisurely, observing none of the unities." The average reader is accordingly the better for a preface of the sort now given, which enables him to judge of Hakluyt's voyages as a consistent and homogeneous whole, and not as a series of more or less disconnected fragments. Students of the Professor's work will understand the origin and significance of Hakluyt's great and pious labours. Three separate parts supply all that can be desired.
The first deals with the voyagers themselves, the assiduous questors after passages North-East, Far East or North-West, and all who sought to bridge or pierce the huge unbroken continent that stretched from Nova Zembla to Magellan the Portuguese and Italian navigators ; the Spanish cavaliers, who, unable to exterminate with sufficient rapidity by the sword, called in the aid of the Inquisition ; the English shipmen ; the Frenchmen and the Dutch- men ; and all who joined in the pursuit of treasure, or the search for the earthly paradise or the realm of Ophir. A second instalment deals with Richard Hakluyt himself, who, cleric though he was, con- trived to build himself an immortality scarcely less assured than that of our Drakes, Raleghs, Haw- kinses, Frobishers, Grenvilles, Cavendishes, and the like ; while a third shows the influence of the English voyages upon poetry and imagination. To not a few readers the last portion will be the most interesting and significant. Those most familiar with the Tudor literature generally, and the Tudor drama in particular, know how potent an influence was exercised by the precise details narrated in the voyages no less than by the general spirit of dis- covery current in the epoch. Nowhere else is the literary influence of these things so well and so nobly shown as in the 'Musophilus' of Samuel, Daniel, and it is gratifying to discover the most \ pregnant and prophetic passages of Daniel quoted j in the Professor's volume. Though expressly in- tended to serve for Hakluyt, ' English Voyages ' are just as useful in connexion with Coryat's ' Crudities,' j and, in a sense, with this first reprint of the Purchas collection. It is, however, bootless to ! insist upon this fact, since we cannot readily fancy | any purchaser separating the various works, or j regarding them as other than one inspired and | precious whole. As frontispiece to a valuable and delightful volume appears a finely reproduced por- trait of Queen Elizabeth, wearing her crown, and
holding the sceptre in her right hand and the orb
in her left.
The two volumes of Purchas just issued bring us half way towards completion of Purchas's magni- ficent collection. Vol. ix. opens with the relation by Edward Terry, " Master of Arts and Student of Christ-Church in Oxford," of his voyage to the East Indies. Many of the features on which he com- ments intelligently are still to be observed, and others have but recently disappeared. Fights with the Portuguese often of the most determined character on both sides are well described. Some characteristic proceedings of Master Coryat are related. An interesting account is given of the clepsydra clocks. Lewis Barthema, whose narrative follows, seems almost to have anticipated the deeds of Sir Richard Burton. Some of his accounts are singularly naive, and he describes, with a freedom that must have shocked some of his English com- peers, the queenly interest in his nudity. To temperance he assigns the great age of 125 years often attained by the natives. Much of the pious comment and edifying reflection with which the comments of Catholic observers are accompanied must be attributed to Purchas himself. To the student of primitive culture or folk-lore the work offers unending attraction. As a rule, men of Latin race deal more freely with such subjects than Englishmen. Richard Jobson is, however, an ex- ception, and is sufficiently outspoken.
In vol. x. the book of Antonio Galvanos of ' The Discoveries of the World' occupies a considerable space. It includes some romance ; see the tender story of the discovery by Macham of the isle of Madera and its consequences. Among the more interesting portions of this volume are Coryat's travels to and observations in Constantinople, and the 'Briefe Memorial! ' of the travels of Sir Robert Sherley. We have also an account of those Dutch proceedings at Amboyna which subsequently moved to indignation Cromwell and Dryden.
Scenes from Old Ptaybooks, arranged as an Intro- duction to Shakespeare. By Percy Simpson, M. A. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.)
A HAPPY idea is here admirably carried out. A series of scenes from Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlowe, Heywood, Marston, and Mas- singer are so arranged by the assistant master at St. Olave's Grammar School as to form a pleasant
uide to Shakespeare and the Tudor stage. Intro- uetions on 'A Shakespearean Play ' and 'Shake- speare's Theatre' reveal much observation and knowledge, some of it practical ; a presentation, from Mr. Sidney Lee's ' Life of Shakespeare,' of the famous 1596 design of the Swan Theatre, serves as frontispiece : and the whole, which is intended for schools and the young, forms a most helpful and valuable volume. The stage notes are specially useful, and there is a glossary.
Poems of Love. Edited by G. K. A. Bell. (Rout- ledge & Sons.)
EVERY ingenious youth with a- love for "wine, woman, and song," may frame his own anthology. The present, which is annexed to the cheap reissue of " The Muses' Library," is as good as another, and joins in rather higgledy-piggledy order many delightful compositions from Wyatt to William Watson. More pains should have been taken. The Erst two lines of the second*
