Читать книгу The Isle Of Pines (1668) and An Essay in Bibliography by Worthington Chauncey Ford - Henry Neville - Страница 13

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From Holland the relation also penetrated the German states, finding ready welcome and arousing eager curiosity. Hippe regards the tract issued by Wilhelm Serlin, at Frankfort on the Main, as the first of the German publications, and, being translated from the Dutch, he shows that the translator used both the Amsterdam and the Rotterdam publications.{1} The Hamburg version claimed to be derived from the English original, but it followed closely the Serlin translation from the Dutch with modifications which might have been drawn from the London tract. An edition not mentioned by Hippe or identified by any bibliographer is in the John Carter Brown Library, and opens with the statement that it is translated from the English and not from the Dutch. It closely follows the text of the London first part. Very likely it is the edition found at Copenhagen, if the similarity of titles offers an indication of the contents. South Germany obtained its information from France, and while neither of the two issues avowedly translated from the French gives the place of publication, the fact that one is in Munich and the other in Strassburg offers some reason to conjecture that they came from the presses of those cities. The Munich issue is for the most part a summary of what was in the first London issue, and, if translated directly from a French version, must have been from one not now located, for it is different from those in the list in this volume. Of the Strassburg text, Hippe states that it follows the Rotterdam pamphlet Finally, at Breslau is what calls itself a complete publication of the combined parts from a copy obtained from London, but it is more probably based upon the Dutch translations printed in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, with additions drawn from the English.{2}

1 Hippe, 11.

2 On these German issues Hippe is full, but I have given

only what is needed to identify them.

One of the strangest uses made of the narrative of Pine is to be found in Schoeben's translation into German of Jan Mocquet's "Voyages en Africque," etc., a work of some estimation which had already twice been published in France and once in a Dutch translation before Schoeben printed his edition in 1688. As pages inserted quite arbitrarily in Mocquets compilation, Schoeben gave Pine's story in full, with a paragraph of introduction which not a little abuses the truth while giving an additional color of truth. He asserted that while kept at Lisbon by the Dutch blockade, he was thrown much in the company of an Englishman, one of the Pine family, who were all regarded as notable seamen. From this man, then awaiting an opportunity to sail for the West Indies, our author heard a very strange story of the origin of the Pines, a story then quite notorious at Lisbon. Then follows, with some embroidery, a version of the Neville pamphlet, which is not like any German translation seen by me, but so full as to extend over ten pages of the volume. It ends with a reiteration of the wholly false manner in which this story had been obtained. So bold an appropriation of the narrative, with a provenience entirely new and as fictitious as the story itself, and its bodily inclusion by an editor in a work of recognized merit, where it is between two true recitals, cannot be defended.{1}

1 Mocquet's work originally appeared in Rouen in 1645, and a

Dutch translation was published at Dordrecht in 1656. A

second French issue, apparently unchanged in text, was put

out at Rouen in 1665, and in 1618 Schoeben's edition,

printed at Lûneberg by Johann Georg Lippers, preceded by

eight years an English translation made by Nathaniel Pullen.

The Pine tract appears, of course, only in Schoeben's

volume.

The tract passed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, before or early in September, and it would indeed be interesting to know how and through whose hands it passed before reaching Marmaduke Johnson—to his undoing. Hezekiah Usher was the only bookseller in Boston at the time, and possibly his son, John, may have been associated with him. They ordered what they desired from London booksellers and publishers, and may have received voluntary consignments of publications from London. That would be a somewhat precarious venture, for nothing could be more different than the reading markets in Boston and in London, especially in the lighter products of the press. Had it come through the Ushers, the title-page might state that it had been printed "by M. J. for Hezekiah Usher," but in that event Usher would have suffered for not obtaining the needed license. The probability is that Johnson was alone responsible and was tempted by the hope of gain.

These were all contemporary issues, coming from the press within six months of the first appearance of the tract in London. So startling a popularity, so widely shown, was a tribute to the opportunity rather than to the contents of the piece. And the European interest continued for a full century. In Germany it was included in a number of collections of voyages, in Denmark it was printed in 1710 and 1789, and in France Abbé Prévost took it for his compilation of 1767 on discoveries. The English republication of 1778 has peculiar interest, for it was due to no other than Thomas Hollis, the benefactor of the library of Harvard College, who saw more in the tract than can now be recognized, and induced Cadell to reprint it.