Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/538

 528 E. p. Cheyney penses ; it was the subject of discussion in the Privy Council, in ParHament, in the court of aldermen of London, and in the councils of various trading bodies. There must have been few persons in England who took any interest whatever in public questions who failed to become somewhat familiar with the subject of colonization ; and all later similar movements were carried on in the light of this familiarity. The influence of the Virginia project on the political movement of the day was by no means insignificant. It worked itself into the rising conflict between King and Parliament, giving occa- sion for defining the differences of political views between the royal and the popular party; and the Virginia Company, while falling a victim to the hostility of the former, strengthened and gave unity to the latter. Lastly, it influenced the literature of the time ; not only the litera- ture of voyages and travels, of practical proposals and patriotic or religious appeals, but the higher forms of imaginative writing. Bacon's essay " On Plantations " under its classic terms and general observations scarcely conceals his specific views and criticisms of the Virginia project as it was being carried on. In Drayton's " Ode to the Virginian Voyage " the familiar expressions of the devotees of colonization are put into the service of no mean poetry : And the ambitious vine Crownes with his purple masse The cedar reaching hie To kisse the skie. The cypresse, pine, And useful! sassafras. Thy voyages attend, Industrious Hackluit, Whose reading shall inflame Men to seeke fame. And much commend To after-times thy wit. Three excellent poets joined to immortalize the Virginian cap- tain and the reckless adventurer in Eastzvard Hoe ; and the changes are rung on " the Virginian continent ", " Virginian priests ", " Virginian princes ", and " the noblest Virginians " in Chapman's mask played before the king by the gentlemen of the Inns of Court in 1613. The sights and sounds of the sea, the shipwreck, the boast- ing and roystering, the grace, the charm, and the high imagination of the Tempest, and much more that belongs to the literature of that time and of all time, are not without a close connection with the earliest voyages to Jamestown. Edward P. Ciieynev.