volume was, in 1782, ruthlessly revised by another than Crèvecoeur. In the unpublished volumes there are some corrections by the same hand, and some by Crèvecoeur, while other parts remain uncorrected. The text with its corrections raises interesting questions concerning the practice of this Frenchman, educated in England, and living in colonial America. Some of these are: his rendering of dialect phrases and colloquialisms; his eighteenth century orthography; or his retention of French words, like colon or agricole. These problems are complicated by the fact that Crèvecoeur is patently a slovenly speller and a weak grammarian. His long sentences are often clumsily constructed, wretchedly punctuated, and verbose.

Three questions in connection with Crèvecoeur take on new significance from a study of these manuscripts: the original appearance and character of Crèvecoeur's manuscripts and writing; the dates of certain essays; and the question of his Canadian service.

The complete set of papers, written by Crèvecoeur while he was a farmer in Orange County, New York, are bound in three volumes measuring sixteen by nine inches. The binding was evidently made after the arrival of Crèvecoeur in France, as we find collected in the first volume the letters sold to Thomas Davies and Lockyer Davis in London,10 with the well-known entry written on the flyleaf:

Being 15 letters which were sold to Mrs. Thomas et 11 Lockie Davies, booksellers in London, May 20th, 1781, for 30 guineas with promise of a present if the publick likes the book.

If we deduct from the first volume the essay which was left unpublished, we find that one hundred and seventeen pages of the writings of the American Farmer went into print, while four hundred and seventeen remained buried in the archives of the family. The manuscripts are in an excellent state of preservation and are all in the hand of Crèvecoeur except four essays which were recopied by a strange hand. Yet as we possess one of these in a loose

10 With the exception of an essay numbering twenty-three pages and entitled An Happy family disunited by the Spirit of Civil War. This essay is a second copy and has been corrected like all the other essays of the printed volume by a strange hand. The original in the hand of the author exists in a loose quire in vol. II.

11 Sic.

quire in the original hand of the author, there can be no doubt about the authenticity of the others. The writing is fairly legible, but the lack of punctuation, the erratic use of capitals, besides the fondness of Crèvecoeur for inversions, make the reading of the papers a delicate task.

Only four essays are dated, and the difference in the shades of ink would suggest that these dates were added later, probably at the time when Crèvecoeur wrote his French adaptations. In any case the complete inaccuracy of the author in the matter of dates is too well known to enable us to make capital of such indications. But allusions to historical events incorporated in the text may lead us to date certain portions of the manuscripts and divide the entire production into the parts written before and those written after the beginning of the Revolution.

Another interesting fact which was brought to light by the discovery of those papers is that sometimes an account of a journey was written long after this journey had taken place. Such is the case in respect to the journey along the Susquehanna River. According to internal evidence Crèvecoeur made two trips in that valley about 1772 and 1774, but the relation cannot have been written in its definite form before 1778, as it includes a narrative of the Wyoming massacre. The precision of certain details suggests that the traveller scribbled hurried notes while on his journey and with their help wrote the final drafts after he returned to his farm, sometimes after rather long periods had elapsed.

Several transparent allusions to Canada throughout the papers would be sufficient to dissipate any doubt about the stay of Crèvecoeur in that country previous to his coming to New York. Besides these indications a letter of the Marquis de Lotbinière, which will be published in the introduction to the new essays, admits no doubt about the identification of the Canadian Crèvecoeur with our American Farmer. This once settled, other documents have established the date of the arrival of Crèvecoeur in New York as December 1759.12 Thus it is definitely proved that the author of the

12 A letter from M. Bernier to Mr. de Bougainville dated October 21st, 1759, states that Crèvecoeur will said from Quebec for New York with General Monckton. In the Dictionary of National Biography the date set for the arrival in New York of Lieutenant General Monckton is December 16th, 1759.

Letters from an American Farmer lived in this country for a period of twenty years from 1759 to 1779. As he probably did not write before he was married in 1769 18 we may safely say that his production extends over a period of ten years, beginning in 1769 and ending in 1779. Such is a summary of the new facts about the American Farmer revealed by the discovery of these Crèveceour manuscripts.

Yale University.

18 This date of 1769 is also the earliest found in the papers.