HISTORY OF MARITIME DISCOVERY. By Richard Biddle, Eag. of Pitts- ILLUSTRATED BY DOCUMENTS FROM THE ROLLS, NOW FIRST PUBLISHED. LONDON: HURST, CHANCE, AND CO., ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD. СНАР. Х. Letters Patent now first published, dated 19th March 1501, from Henry VII. to Richard Warde, Thomas Ashehurst, John Thomas, of Bristol, and John Fernandus, Francis Fernandus, and John Gunsolus, Por- Possible origin of the misconception as to the name Dominus vobiscum erroneously associated with the voyage of 1527 from England-Fors- ter's mistake as to Norumbega-Error as to the period at which New- INTRODUCTION. THE following pages lay claim to the share of merit that may be due to a spirit of diligent research which took nothing at second hand where an original writer, or document, could be consulted, and would not be turned aside, by any authority, from the anxious pursuit, and resolute vindication, of the Truth. They are offered, therefore, with the confidence inspired by a consciousness of good faith. Yet the author is suffi ciently aware that the public has nothing to do with the integrity of his purpose, or the patient industry with which it has been followed up, except so far as a valuable result may have been achieved. What is now submitted made part, originally, of a much more extensive plan. But there was found, at every turn, so much to clear up, and the materials for rectification so multiplied, that it seemed impossible to treat the subject satisfactorily without giving to it, in connexion with any other, a cumbrous and disproportioned air. To hazard assertions, and to venture on the requisite plainness of criticism, without producing the evidence which justified a departure from received B opinions could have effected no good purpose, and would have justly incurred the charge of presumption. Error was too deeply intrenched to permit a hope of dislodging it, unless through the regular, though tedious, forms of investment. The author is very sensible of the dry and argumentative manner here imparted to topics which have usually been viewed, and treated, as susceptible of the highest embellishment. He can only hope that others may catch a feeling, such as gained on himself at every step, which, in the disentanglement of facts, rejects impatiently, rather than solicits, whatever does not conduce directly to the result. The mind seems to demand, with sternness, that this labour shall first be gone through, as the eye requires a solid foundation, and an assured elevation, before it can rest with complacency on the decorative acanthus. Amidst a great deal of undeniably fine writing on the subject with which the present volume is connected, it would seem to have secured to itself less than any other of patient and anxious labour. The task of setting facts right has been regarded as an unworthy drudgery, while an ambitious effort is witnessed to throw them before the public eye in all the fantastic shapes, and deceptive colouring, of error. Gibbon remarks of Tillemont, that his inimitable Accuracy" almost assumes the character of Genius." Many writers of the present day seem to have constantly in view the tendency of the public mind to a classification of powers, and to dread lest any remarkable display of the quality in question, might be artfully seized on as characteristic, and thus prejudice their claims to the highest honours of authorship. A new and urgent motive may be suggested for endeavouring to clear up, as speedily as possible, the confusion which has hence been suffered to gather round the best established facts, and left their recognition or denial at the mercy of chance or caprice. While a salutary jealousy of extensive Combinations, in the Political World, distinguishes the present age, there has been organised in that of Letters, almost unobserved in this country, a confederacy which has gradually drawn to itself, and skilfully consolidated, a power that may now be pronounced truly formidable. It has already begun to speak out plainly the language of dictation. The great literary achievement of modern France--the "Biographie Universelle"-is at length brought to a close, completing by the fifty-second volume its triumph over the alphabet. It is a work destined, unquestionably, to exercise an important influence over the Rights of the Dead of all Nations. When it stated that the list of contributors contains the names of more than three hundred writers of the highest literary eminence in France, from the year 1810, when the first volume appeared, to the present time, that every article is accompanied by the name of the author to whom it had been assigned in reference to his habitual studies, and that not a line appeared without having been previously submitted to several contributors in succession, it must be obvious that the character of such a work is matter of deep and universal interest. |