Historical view of the progress of discovery on the more northern coasts of America from the earliest period to the present time / by Patrick Fraser Tytler ; with descriptive sketches of the natural history of the North American regions. By James Wilson. To which is added an appendix. Containing remarks on a late memoir of Sebastian Cabot, with a vindication of Richard Hakluyt ; illustrated by a map and nine engravings by Jackson.

Patrick Fraser Tytler

Date:: 1832

Credit: Historical view of the progress of discovery on the more northern coasts of America from the earliest period to the present time / by Patrick Fraser Tytler ; with descriptive sketches of the natural history of the North American regions. By James Wilson. To which is added an appendix. Containing remarks on a late memoir of Sebastian Cabot, with a vindication of Richard Hakluyt ; illustrated by a map and nine engravings by Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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charity of criticism with which he would wish that every liberal mind should regard his own.* The author of the Life of Cabot was perfectly entitled to maintain the theory that Sebastian, the son, and not John Cabot, the father, was the discoverer of North America; but he was not entitled to adopt, what we must denominate the disingenuous method of making an impression upon the reader’s mind by silently drop- ping the name of the latter out of passages where, if he had stated the whole truth, he ought to have men- tioned both. Thus, at page 174 we find this remark: “ At his return [Sebastian] Cabot settled in Bristol, oy Se) © fifty-three years after ‘the tdatevorencs first commission from Henry VII.” Again, page 222, we find this notice: ‘ Sixty-one years had now elapsed since the date of the first commission from Henry VII. to Sebastian Cabot, and the powers of nature must have been absolutely wearied out.” Again, page 235, we have another more glaring example of thisdetermination to keep the father entirely out of view: “‘ The bare men- tion of these dates will establish the impossibility that he could have been ignorant of the great discoveries of Ca- bot [it is Sebastian he is speaking of |, which, commen- cing at the point seen on the 24th June 1497, had extended over the ‘ londe and isle’ recited in the second patent.” In the first and second of these sentences John Cabot’s name is entirely suppressed, although the commission spoken of was directed to him, along with his three sons ; and in the last, the entire merit of the discovery is ascrib. ed to Sebastian, at the moment the biographer is quoting the words of the second commission, which positively at- tributes it to John. dence” contained in the inscription upon an ancient por- trait of Sebastian Cabot ; but we must be allowed, for a moment, to add a few words upon this proof, which is very important and conclusive. There is now in existence a portrait of this navigator by Holbein, for a minute his- * In the same passage from Pasquiligi, another oversight occurs : “ Nelaterraloronon hanno ferro: ma fanno cortelli dealcune pietre.” Memoir of Cabot, p, 240. “In their country they do not possess iron—but they make /rnives of particular kinds of stones.” The biographer translates cortelli swords.

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