Volume 1

Travels and works of Captain John Smith, President of Virginia, and Admiral of New England / edited by Edward Arber.

  • John Smith
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Travels and works of Captain John Smith, President of Virginia, and Admiral of New England / edited by Edward Arber. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    394/552 (page 234)
    [It is evident from Smith’s letter &c. printed at p. cxxi, that the substance of this tract was written so early as 1618. It was thus entered for publication at Stationers’ Hall: ii Hmmbris [1620] William Jones Entred for his Copie vnder the handes of Master Doctor Goade and Master Lownes warden, A booke Called Newe Englands try all, by Iohn Smith. .vjd A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554-1640 A.D., Ed. by E. Arber, iv. 43., 1877. For the bibliography of this tract, see p. cxxx. It was, in the first instance, written to the Peers of the realm. “ I present this vnto your Lordship, and to all the Lords in England, hoping (by your gracious good liking and approbation) to moue all the worthy Companies of this noble City, and all the cities and Countries in the whole Land to consider it.’3 p. 247. Other copies were afterwards struck off with the dedication to the Fishmongers Company at p. 236. Our Author says, in 1624 : “ Now all these proofes and this relation I now call New-Englands triall. I caused two or three thousand of them to be printed : one thou¬ sand with a great many Maps both of Virginia and New-England, I pre¬ sented to thirty of the chiefe Companies in London at their Halls desir¬ ing either generally or particularly (them that would) to imbrace it . . . “ Neere a yeere [1621] I spent to vnderstand their resolutions, which was to me a greater toile and torment than to haue been in New- England about my businesse but with bread and water, and what I could get there by my labour; but in conclusion, seeing nothing would be effected, I was contented as well with this losse of time and charge as all the rest,” p. 748. And again, in 1630. “Yet for all this, in all this time [1616-1621], though I had divulged to my great labour, cost, and losse, more than seven thousand Bookes and Maps, and moved the particular Companies in London, as also Noblemen, Gentlemen, and Merchants for a Plantation, all availed no more than to hew Rocks with Oister-shels ; so fresh were the living abuses of Virginia and the Summer lies in their memories,” p. 941. Within four months of the publication of this tract, our indefatigable Author had already planned out the General History, see p. cxxv. Mr. Charles Deane, in the Preface to his fifty-copy reprint of this tract, in 1873, states— “On my first visit to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, in 1866, the first book I asked to look at was Hariot’s Virginia, 1588 ; and the second was the first edition of Captain John Smith’s New England Trials, 1620 ; both of which I had understood to be in that library. These books are of exceeding rarity ; and though the British Museum also has a copy of each, I am not aware that either can be found in this country [the United States].”]