THE

PRINCIPAL NAVIGATIONS, VOIAGES, TRAFFIQVES AND DISCOueries of the English Nation, made by Sea or ouer-land, to the remote and fartheft diftant quarters of the Earth, at any time within

the compaffe of thefe 1500. yeeres: Deuided

into three feuerall Volumes, according to the

pofitions of the Regions, whereunto

they were directed.

This first Volume containing the woorthy Difcoueries, &c. of the English toward the North and Northeast by fea, as of Lapland,Scrikfinia,Corelia,the Baie of S. Nicolas, the Ifles of Colgoiene, Vaigar, and Noua Zembla, toward the great riuer ob, with the mighty Empire of Rusia, the Caspian sea,Georgia, Armenia, Media, Perfia, Boghar in Bactria, and diuers kingdoms of Tartaria:

Together with many notable monuments and teftimo

nies of the ancient forren trades, and of the warrelike and
other shipping of this realme of England in former ages.
VVhereunto is annexed alfo a briefe Commentarie of the true
ftate of land, and of the Northren Seas and
lands fituate that way.

And lastly, the memorable defeate of the Spanish huge
Armada, Anno 1588. and the famous victorie
atchieued at the citie of Cadiz, 1 5 96.
are described.

By RICHARD HAKLVYT Master of
Artes, and fometime Student of Chrift-
Church in Oxford.

Imprinted at London by GEORGE
BISHOP, RALPH NEWBERIE
and ROBERT BARKIL

1398

Title-page of Hakluyt's "Voyages" 1598

these appeared to his purpose. He took up this idea at Oxford, whither he proceeded from Westminster School in 1570, reading eagerly “whatever printed or written discoveries and voyages I find extant, either in Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portugal, French, or English languages." Entering the Church he obtained a prebend at Westminster and other preferment, but nothing diverted him from the main purpose of his life. After translating French accounts of voyages to Florida and editing Peter Martyr, he published in 1589 his Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation: a collection enlarged to three volumes in the edition of 1598-1600. The first volume contains voyages to the northern regions, Russia and Tartary; the second, voyages to India and the East in general; the third, which is considerably the largest, voyages to the New World. The collection begins somewhat inauspiciously with a grave notice of King Arthur's expedition against Iceland, A.D. 517, but, this little tribute to Myth discharged, we find ourselves traversing Tartary with the no less authentic than picturesque Carpini, and the book is henceforth a treasury of delight, be the narrators English or foreign. The former, nevertheless, so greatly preponderate that no English book after Shakespeare's historical plays better deserves the character of a national epic, and, notwithstanding the diversity of style, similarity of subject and community of spirit supply the needful unity. It has always exerted, and in the more popular edition recently announced must exert still more signally, the happiest influence upon the national character. Besides this great end, Hakluyt aimed at organising discovery under a central authority, resembling the Spanish Casa at Seville; but such methodical control was too alien to the English genius to be carried into effect. He continued to interest himself in mercantile and colonising enterprises, advising the directors of the East India Company, largely concerned in the settlement of Virginia, and translating De Soto's travels in that country. He died in 1616, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Hakluyt is so excellent a writer that it is to be wished he had written more. The following is from a letter to Raleigh, dated May 1, 1587, encouraging him. to persevere in his Virginian enterprise, and indulging in over-sanguine anticipations of the liberality of good Queen Bess :

Moreover there is none other likelihood but that her Majesty, which hath christened and given the name to your Virginia, if need require, will deal after the manner of honourable godmothers, which, seeing their gossips not fully able to bring up their children themselves, are wont to contribute to their honest education, the rather if they find any towardliness or reasonable hope of goodness in them. And if Elizabeth, Queen of Castile and Aragon, after her husband Ferdinando and she had emptied their coffers and exhausted their treasures in subduing the Kingdom of Granada and rooting the Moors, a wicked weed, out of Spain, was nevertheless so zealous of God's honour that (as Fernando Columbus, the son of Christopher Columbus, recordeth in the history of the deeds of his father), she laid part of her own jewels, which she had in great account, to gage, to furnish his father food upon his first voyage, before any foot of land of all the West Indies was discovered, what may we expect of our most magnificent and gracious prince Elizabeth of England, into whose lap the Lord hath most plentifully thrown his treasures; what may we, I say, hope

LITERATURE OF TRAVEL

85

of her forwardness and bounty in advancing of this your most honourable
enterprise, being far more certain than that of Columbus, and tending no
less to the glory of God than that action of the Spaniards? A wise philosopher
noting the sundry desires of divers men writeth, that if an ox be put into a meadow
he will seek to fill his belly with grass, if a stork be cast in she will seek for snakes,
if you turn in a hound he will seek to start a hare so sundry men entering into
these discoveries propose to themselves several ends. Some seek authority and
places of commandment; others experience, by seeing of the world, the most part
worldly and transitory gain, and that oftentimes by dishonest and unlawful means,
the fewer number the glory of God and the saving of the souls of the poor and blinded
infidels. Yet because divers honest and well-disposed persons are entered already
into this your business, and that I know you mean hereafter to send some such good
Churchmen thither as may truly say with the
Apostle, to the savages, We seek not yours
but you, I conceive great comfort of the
success of this your action, hoping that

PVRCHAS his PILGRIMAGE.

OR

Lord, whose power is wont to be perfected RELATIONS

in weakness, will bless the foundations of this your building. Only be you of a valiant courage and faint not, as the Lord said unto Joshua, exhorting him to proceed on forward in the conquest of the land of promise, and remember that private men have happily wielded and waded through as great enterprises as this, with lesser meanes than those which God in his mercy hath bountifully bestowed upon you to the singular good, as I assure myself of this our Commonwealth wherein you live.

OF THE WORLD
AND THE RELIGIONS
OBSERVED IN ALL AGES
And places difcouered, from the
CREATION unto this
PRESENT

fr fure Partes.

THIS FIRST CONTAI
NETH A THEOLOGICALL AND

Geographicall Historie of ASIA, AFRICA,
and AMERICA, with the Flands
A discent.

Declaring the Ancient Religions before the FLOYD, the
Heatbuih, ferah, and Saracenicall in all Ages fince, in thefe
parts profiled, with their feuerall Opanions, Idols, Oracies, Temples,
Prafter, Fifts, Feafts, Secrifices, and hates Rebogen Thea
beginnings, Proceedings, Alterations, Scēts,

Orders and Scenfions,

With briefe Defcriptions of the Countries, Nations, States, Dikoueries,
Primate and Pubike Cuffomes, and the moß? Remarkable Larsises of
Nature, Humane idufire, in the fame.

By SANTEL PACH, Maußer at Eftwood in Effex

Unus Devs, vna Veritas.

LONDON.

Printed by WILLIAN STANEAT for Henrie Fethrone, and are to be
fold at his Shoppe in Pauls Church-yard at the
Signe of the Rofe. 1613.

Title-page of "Purchas his
Pilgrimage" 1613

The mantle of Hakluyt can hardly be said to have fallen upon SAMUEL PURCHAS (1575? -1626), even even though he became possessed of many of Hakluyt's manuscripts, continued his labours, and was, like Hakluyt, an Essex, afterwards a London, clergyman. But the abstracts he made of voyages, when they can be compared with the originals, seem meagre; and, when they cannot, he labours under the imputation of having suffered his materials to be lost. As, however, he died only a year after the publication of his collection, it may be reasonable as well as charitable to ascribe their disappearance to the negligence of his heirs. Purchas his Pilgrimage was published in 1613, in four volumes, and, with all its defects, there is magic in the his Pilsound. Though far inferior in interest and literary merit to Hakluyt, it has grimage preserved much that might have perished without it, and has laid English poetry under a great obligation by inspiring Coleridge with his Kubla Khan. The first line of this magical fragment is taken literally from Purchas, only altering "Xamdu" into "Xanadu," metri gratia; and the verbal resemblance for several lines is sufficiently close to arouse scepticism of the alleged origination of the poem from a trance. Alph the sacred river," however, does not run in Purchas, nor is the dulcimer of the Abyssinian maid audible in him.

66

"Purchas

Knolles and

Rycaut

Gerard's Herbal

The spirit of RICHARD KNOLLES (1550? -1610), the historian of the Turks, is so sympathetic with that of Hakluyt and Purchas, that he is, perhaps, better mentioned along with them than with historians. He translates and adapts, with no pretension to original research, but with the zest of a voyager or a romancer. Having distinguished himself at Oxford, he was brought by a patron to Sandwich as headmaster of the grammar-school, and filled the post until his death. His spirited style has earned him high,

John Gerard

perhaps exaggerated, praise from Johnson, Southey, and Byron, and some strokes in Shelley's sublime vision of the storming of Constantinople in his Hellas seem to indicate that Knolles's description was not unknown to him. Knolles's history was in 1680 continued to 1677 by Sir PAUL RYCAUT (1628-1700), a man qualified by long diplomatic experience in the country, who also accompanied it with a valuable commentary in his Present State of Turkey (1668).

An age in which both the objects of knowledge and the facilities for its acquisition had so greatly multiplied as the Elizabethan was certain to abound in technical treatises. Excellent books for the time, original and translated, were produced on medicine, agriculture, music, mathematics, map-making, horsemanship, fencing, and the military art; but few of them can be deemed entitled to a place in literature. An exception may be made in behalf of one of especial celebrity, the Herbal of JOHN GERARD (1545-1612). Gerard, a native of Cheshire, member, and ultimately Master, of the Company of Barber Surgeons, made and published (1596) a catalogue of the plants in his own garden in Holborn, the first instance on record. He was then Superintendent of the gardens of Lord Burghley, to whom he dedicated his Herbal, published in the following year. It is in the main a translation of the Pemptades of Dodoens, begun by another hand, and nearly all the eighteen hundred woodcuts are imported from Germany. Gerard's additions, nevertheless, are valuable, and no subsequent