Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/217

 S. III. MARCH i, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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for Lackington, Allen & Co., for in 1807 he produced 'A Voyage round the World,' by J. F. G. cle la Perouse, in three volumes, translated from the French.

Simms mentions seven other volumes printed by Richards, the first of which is dated 1802, though some of these, I may .say, bear no date at all, according to a practice which, even at the present day, is sadly too prevalent. CHAS. F. FOKSHAW, LL.D.

Baltimore House, Bradford.

NOTES ON BOOKS, 4c.

IlaMuyt-us Potfhumus ; or. Purchas His By Samuel Purchaa, B.D. In 20 vols. Vols. I. and II. (Glasgow, MacLehose & Sons.) THE great and worthy task the inception of which by Messrs. MacLehose & Sons we have already chronicled, the reprinting for the first time of the 'Hakluytus Posthumus ' of Purchas, has at length begun. Its origin is, of course, found in the issue, now completed, of Hakluyt's 'Voyages,' to the appearance of successive instalments of which we drew frequent attention. 'Hakluytus Posthumus,' of which the first two out of twenty volumes are now given, is immeasurably rarer than the previous work, and is in many respects not less valuable. It may perhaps be regarded as the scarcest and least accessible of the works which chronicle the heroic deede of Englishmen. So little known is it, indeed, that ordinary works of reference are almost silent concerning its author, that bibliographers do not greatly concern themselves with the work, and that very grudging estimates of Purchas's merits as an historian and a writer have been formed by those entitled to speak. For this Purchas is himself largely responsible. Having had access to the unemployed MSS. of Hakluyt, he printed ,1 very large number of them, entirely ruining himself in so doing, and dying in poverty, and almost, it is to be feared, in want, so soon as he had secured their transmission to the world. Five folio volumes constitute an enormous bulk of printed matter, through which none but a zealot will succeed in wading. Unfortunately Purchas, with what is really zeal, but almost seems wantonness, opposed obstacles to the discharge of the task. Like Hakluyt, Purchas was a clergyman. Unlike him, however, he seems to have been a confirmed Puritan, a good deal of a polemic, and in no respect a man of the world. A disproportionate amount of his early work is occupied with tracing out the journeys in search of the land of Ophir, the travels of the apostles and of early classical explorers, and other subjects of the kind. Almost the whole of the first volume of the reprint may, accordingly, be dismissed by the reader who seeks to get at the <l substantific marrow" of Purchas's work. Un- aware of this, the ordinary student who has begun the perusal has been apt to turn away in dis- c'oxiragement, and to leave on record an unjust arraignment of the author's style. A great stylist Purchas is not, and he is not to be compared in any respect with contemporaries such as Hooker, Fuller, Walton, and Sir Thomas Browne. His writing is quaintly charged with Latinisms, a

reproach from which few men of the epoch escaped, and he indulges in quaint escapades of alliteration. Quotation is, of course, denied us. One or two brief extracts may, however, show in how curious forms of speech he was apt to indulge. In his praise of Columbus: "Magnanimous Columbus, not broken, with Povertie at home, with Affronts and Dis- countenances abroad ; with imputations of im- potent, almost impudent, at least as imprudent as importunate fancies of impossible, impassable Navi- gations by unknowne Seas to unknowne Lands!" &c. The Genoese discoverer is again compared, in Purchas's most edifying style, with other adven- turers, " who going f >rth with high swolne Sayles, filled with puffes of Pride, and blasts of Arrogance,, addicting themselves to Swearing, Cursing, and other resolute Dissolutenesse (as if they sought Discoveries in the infernall Regions, and acquaint- ance with those Legions of Hell, rather then to discover Lands and recover Intidels to internall peace by the eternallGospell), eyther perish at Sea, or returne with the gaine of losse. and shame, in stead of glory." Here we have Purchas at his literary strongest and his ethical best. Against the charges brought by no less an authority than Prof. Laughton, that he was neither a faithful editor nor a judicious compiler, and that to his carelessness is attributable the less of many of the originals, abstracts of which he preserves, we are in no position to protest. We can only treat Purchas as we find him, and he is now for the first time accessible in a tenth of his work. When he is not concerned to preach, however, or to dilate upon Popish iniquities, he may be read with pleasure as well as interest.

At any rate, his work is immortal, and its appear- ance in a form so accessible and so handsome is a matter for warmest congratulation. The volumes now given, like those which are to come, are uniform with those of the Hakluyt, on which we have often dwelt, and are a credit to the great Glasgow press from which they issue. Vol. i. reproduces the fine emblematical frontis- piece, containing the only known portrait of Pur- chae. This is constantly missing from the original editions which come up for sale. It reproduces also seven maps of Hondius (Josse Hondt), done, presumably, when he was a refugee in London, and including his map of St. Paul's peregrinations and that of the navigation of ^Eneas the Trojan, as well as his map of the world. It gives, moreover^ facsimiles of the title-page to the first part and of the curious illustrations to Pnrchas's ' Discourse of the Diversity of Letters use 1 by the divers Nations in the World.' In the second volume are portraits of Christopher Columbus and Sir Thomis Smith, first governor of the East India Company. In dismissing this first instalment of a work of un- limited interest, we advise readers who wisli to see the compiler at his best to begin with the second volume. At the close of the perusal of that they will be as like as not to turn back to the first. If they do this the appearance of forthcoming volumes will be eagerly anticipated.

History of the Reformation in Germany. By Leopold von Ranke. Edited by Robert A. Johnson, M.A. (Routledge & Sons.)

THOUGH less popular than his 'History of the Popes,' Ranke's ' History of the Reformation in Germany' has most of the qualities which con- tributed to the success of that work, to which it