Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v1.djvu/30

4 northern coast, and of how the leader of one band of adventurers amused himself. It contains a parody of the Litany which is said to have been sung by four of the “Fraternitie attired in long white Robes,” and may have been part of an embryo pageant wherewith the days were whiled away.

Vaughn had a “deare Friende and Fellow-Planter, Master Robert Hayman, who with Pen and Person” prepared “more roome for Christians in the Newfound-World,” and who published in 1628 a volume of Quodlibets, lately come over from New Britaniola, All of them Composed and done at Harbor-Grace in Britaniola, anciently called Newfound-Land. The verses which fill its pages passed current with the similar output of his age. A number, and by no means the least rhythmical, were inspired by his associates on the western shores of the Atlantic. One of these is addressed “To the right Honourable, Sir George Calvert, Knight, Baron of Baltamore, and Lord of Avalon in Britaniola, who came over to see his Land there, 1627”; it compares Baltimore to the Queen of Sheba.

The repayment of the drafts made upon the literature of the motherland was not long delayed. It is more than probable that Shakespeare found in the reports of some New World voyagers one of his most momentous inspirations. Hugh Peters and the younger Harry Vane were only two of the temporary Americans who returned to take a lively part in the pamphleteering conflicts of the Protectorate. Roger Williams divided his controversial activities equally between the old and New England, and his Key into the Languages of America was cast into shape while he was on his way from one to the other.