Читать книгу The Isle Of Pines (1668) and An Essay in Bibliography by Worthington Chauncey Ford - Henry Neville - Страница 14

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In the absence of any positive objection, the conclusion of the auction expert—that the S. G. imprint was one of Samuel Green of Cambridge, Massachusetts—remained unquestioned. But a study of editions and of the chronological sequence of the English issues offers a decided negative to such a conclusion. The first part was licensed June 27, 1668. Van Sloetten dated the second part July 22, 1668, and the issue of the combined parts was licensed five days later, July 27. In the space of just four weeks all three trads were licensed, and the actual publication must have occurred within the same period of time. Such had been the start obtained by the first part that on the continent it was used for reprint and translation, almost to the neglect of the second part, and, as we have seen, most of these translations appeared before the end of 1668. Now the tract was not known in Massachusetts until discovered by the inquest on printers in September, and a S. G. or Samuel Green edition could hardly have come from the press before October, even if not delayed by the proceedings against Johnson. Yet on die title-page of the Dutch translation issued at Rotterdam in 1668, the printer states at length that it is from a copy from London, by S. G. for Allen Banks and Charles Harper, in the Lily near Cripplegate Church, and in his note "To the Reader" he expressly repeats that he obtained a copy of the work from London, in order to correct a faulty issue by another Dutch printer.

If S. G. was Samuel Green, we must suppose that one of his Cambridge issues was shipped to Rotterdam in time to be translated and reprinted before the end of the year. In point of time the thing could be done, but in point of probability it was impossible. Apart from his own statement, there were a thousand to one chances in favor of the Dutch printer obtaining the pamphlet from London; there were ten thousand chances to one against his getting it from Massachusetts. I reject the supposition that this was a Cambridge imprint for that reason alone.

Additional evidence hostile to the claim may be adduced. The copy of the first tract in the British Museum is the S. G. for Banks and Harper.{1}

1 It is erroneously described as "an abridgment."

No other London imprint is to be found there or in the larger libraries of England. Of the three other copies located, that sold at audion (the White Kennett copy) and that in the Massachusetts Historical Society came direct from England, and the actual provenance of the copy in the New York Historical Society is not known. It belonged to Rufus King, long United States minister near the court of St. James's, and is bound with other tracts under a general title of "Topographical Collection, Vol. I." The binding, Mr. Kelby tells me, is American. There is no mark to show when or where King obtained the pamphlet, and the Society did not receive it until 1906. That Rufus King belongs as much to Massachusetts as to New York is too slight a foundation on which to erect a claim that this particular tract was of Massachusetts origin.

In no case, therefore, can an American setting to any one of the four known copies of the S. G. "Isle of Pines" be established.{1} The probabilities are all against Samuel Green. The incident is a good example of the danger of giving play to the imagination on an appearance of a combination of fads cemented by interest.

Thus disappears from our memory the certain identification of the S. G. pamphlet as an early issue of the press in Cambridge, and with it goes my identification of the Johnson pamphlet with the S. G. title-page—a veritable pipe dream. It might be urged that as White Kennett was collecting on America, it would be more than probable that he would have had an American issue; but his own catalogue of 1713 describes the nine-page tract, and that is our London edition. I might claim still that my Johnson was a Johnson, with a London title-page; but the typographical adornment on the first page of its text is just the same as the adornment on the first page of the London issue—three rows of fleur-de-lys, thirty-seven in each row, and the same kind of type characters.{2}

1 Lowndes indexes it under George Pine, and describes a

nine-page trait—probably the one now in the British Museum.

He quotes a sale of a copy in it 60 (Puttkk) for £4.10s. He

indexes the combined parts under Sloetten, and notes a copy,

with the plate, sold in the White Knights sale for 1s..

2 To attempt to reason from types or rule of thumb

measurements, however suggestive, leads to indefinite

conclusions. For example, the width of the type page of the

S. G. issue of the first part is exactly that of the English

issue of the second part, but the former has 33 tines to the

page and the latter a a. The width of the page in the

variant S. G. issue is narrower and there are 38 and 39

lines to the page. But in the London second part the width

of page varies by a quarter of an inch. We have Marmaduke

Johnson's issue of Paine's Daily Meditations y issued in 1670 in connection with S. G. The ornamental border of fleur-de-lys is entirely different from those in the S. G. Isle of Pines. A copy of Johnson's issue of Scottow's translation of Bretz on the Anabaptists, printed in 1668, the very year of the Isle of Pines, shows a different foot of italics from that used in the Isle of Pines variant, yet the roman characters in the two pieces seem identical, and the width of page is exactly the same.

So I bid farewell to my theory, and can only congratulate myself on having cleared one point—the London issue—and on having introduced a new confusion by the discovery of a second London issue with an identical title-page, a problem for the future to solve. I much doubt if a true Johnson issue will ever be found, for I believe the action of the authorities prevented its birth.

In the library of Mr. Henry E. Huntington is a London issue of which I do not find another example. It contains sixteen pages, and the title-page gives neither printer's name nor place of publication. It may be the first issue, or it may be a later re-issue of the tract, for the type, especially the italic, is better than that in the S. G. issue. The punctuation also is more carefully looked after, and the whole appearance suggests an eighteenth century print. As the original was duly licensed, there was no reason to suppress the names of printer or booksellers. Nor could the contents of the piece call out controversy or hostility from any political faction or religious following. It was proper for the author to omit his name from the publication, if he desired to remain unknown; but the publisher, having the support of the licenser, had every reason to advertise his connexion with the tract, although he could not have anticipated so ready an acceptance by the public. While I place the Huntington pamphlet first in the bibliography, I am more inclined to regard it as a publication made at a later time.