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so in Wales the greatest number (as I said) retain still their own ancient language, that of the north part of the said country being less corrupted than the other, and therefore reputed for the better in their own estimation and judgment. This, also, is proper to us Englishmen, that since ours is a middle or intermediate language, and neither too rough nor too smooth in utterance, we may with much facility learn any other language, beside Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and speak it naturally, as if we were home-born in those countries; and yet on the other side it falleth out, I wot not by what other means, that few foreign nations can rightly pronounce ours, without some and that great note of imperfection, especially the Frenchmen, who also seldom write any thing that savoureth of English truly. But this of all the rest doth breed most admiration with me, that if any stranger doth hit upon some likely pronunciation of our tongue, yet in age he swerveth so much from the same, that he is worse therein than ever he was, and thereto, peradventure, halteth not a little also in his own, as I have seen by experience in Reginald Wolfe, and others, whereof I have justly marvelled. The Cornish and Devonshire men, whose country the Britons call Cerniw, have a speech in like sort of their own, and such as hath indeed more affinity with the Armorican tongue than I can well discuss of. Yet in mine opinion, they are both but a corrupted kind of British, albeit so far degenerating in these days from the old, that if either of them do meet with a Welshman, they are not able at the first to understand one another, except here and there in some odd words, without the help of interpreters. And no marvel, in mine opinion, that the British of Cornwall is thus corrupted, since the Welsh tongue that is spoken in the north and south part of Wales doth differ so much in itself, as the English used in Scotland doth from that which is spoken among us here in this side of the island, as I have said already. The Scottish-English hath been much broader and less pleasant in utterance than ours, because that nation hath not, till of late, endeavoured to bring the same to any perfect order, and yet it was such in manner as Englishmen themselves did speak for the most part beyond the Trent, whither any great amendment of our language had not, as then, extended itself. Howbeit, in our time the Scottish language endeavoureth to come near, if not altogether to match, our tongue in fineness of phrase and copiousness of words, and this may in part appear by a history of the Apocrypha translated into Scottish verse by Hudson, dedicated to the king of that country, and containing six books, except my memory do fail me.

Hakluyt is another of the laborious compilers of this period, to whom the world is indebted for the preservation, in an acceptable form, of narratives which would otherwise, in all human probability, have fallen into oblivion. The department of history he chose for his labors was that which is descriptive of the naval adventures and discoveries of his countrymen.

Richard Hakluyt was born in the city of London in 1553, and received his elementary education at Westminster school. From Westminster he entered Christ Church College, Oxford, where, besides the regular studies of the university, he engaged in an extensive course of reading in various languages, on geographical and maritime subjects, toward which he had early evinced a strong inclination. He soon acquired, in these departments of knowledge, such reputation, that he was appointed to lecture at Oxford on cosmography and the collateral sciences; and he carried on, at the same time, a correspondence with the celebrated continental geographers, Ortelius and Mercator. Having taken orders he obtained a desirable parish in Suffolk, but resigned it for the chaplaincy to the English ambassador at Paris, where he continued to reside for five years, during which time he cultivated

the acquaintance of all persons there, eminent for their knowledge of geography and maritime history.

On his return from France, in 1588, Hakluyt was appointed by Sir Walter Raleigh one of the society of counsellors, assistants, and adventurers, to whom he assigned his patent for the prosecution of discoveries in America. He had, a few years previously to this appointment, published two small volumes of voyages to America; but these are now included in a much larger work in three volumes, the last of which was published in 1600, and the other two during the two previous years. The title which the whole bears is, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or Over Land, to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth, within the compass of these 1500 years. In the first volume are contained accounts of voyages to the north and northeast; the true state of Iceland; the defeat of the Spanish Armada; and the expedition of the Earl of Essex to Cadiz. In the second, the author relates accounts of voyages to the south and south-east; and in the third he gives the particulars connected with expeditions to North America, the West Indies, and round the world. The work contains narratives of nearly two hundred and twenty voyages, beside many relative documents, such as patents, instructions, and letters. To this collection all the subsequent compilers in this department of history have been largely indebted. In his preface, the author strongly evinces the ardor of his feelings, and presents the following interesting summary of the foreign relations of England at that period. 'Which of the kings of England before Her Majesty,' he remarks, 'displayed their banners in the Caspian Sea? Which of them have traded with the emperor of Persia, and obtained for her merchants numerous and important privileges? Who, at any time before, beheld an English regiment in the stately porch of the Grand Signior at Constantinople? Who ever found English consuls and commercial agents at Tripolis in Syria; at Aleppo, at Babylon, at Balsara: and still more, who, before this period, ever heard of Englishmen at Goa? What English ships did heretofore anchor in the great river Plate, pass and repass the straits of Magellan, range along the coasts of Chili, Peru, and all the western side of New Spain, farther indeed than the vessels of any other nation had ever ventured; traverse the immense surface of the South Sea, land upon the Lazones, in despite of the enemy; enter into alliances, amity, and traffic with the princes of the Moluccas, and the Isle of Java; double the famous Cape of Good Hope, arrive at the isle of St. Helena, and last of all, return home richly laden with the commodities of China.' This work, however, as a whole, embracing five quarto volumes, is too prolix to be interesting.

Hakluyt was the author, also, of translations of two foreign works on Florida; and, when in Paris, he published an enlarged edition of a history in the Latin language, entitled De Rebus Oceanicis et Orbe Nevo, by Martyr, an Italian author. This work was afterward translated into English by one Lok, a person of whom no farther mention is made. In 1601, Hakluyt

published the Discoveries of the World, from the First Original to the Year of our Lord 1555, translated, with additions, from the Portuguese of Antonio Galvano, governor of Ternate, in the East Indies. In 1605, he was made prebendary of Westminster, which, with the rectory of Wetheringset in Suffolk, already alluded to, was the only ecclesiastical promotion that he ever received. Hakluyt died on the twenty-third of November, 1616, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, amid the tombs of other illustrious dead. At his death, his manuscript remains, which were very numerous, fell into the hands of Purchas, a brother clergyman, by whom they were afterward dispersed through his own four volumes of voyages and discoveries.

SAMUEL PURCHAS was born at Thaxstead, Essex, in 1577, and was educated at Cambridge; but in what college does not appear. Soon after he left the university he entered into holy orders, and, in 1604, obtained the vicarage of Eastwood in Essex. This, however, he soon resigned in favor of his brother, and removed to London, the better to prosecute his studies. In 1615, he was incorporated at Oxford, bachelor of divinity, having previously received the same honor from the university of Cambridge. He was, at about the same period, made rector of St. Martin's, Ludgate, in London, and chaplain to Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Though Purchas, during his whole clerical life, strictly fulfilled the sacred functions of his ministry, yet he still devoted much time to the reading of accounts of voyages, and travels, and to the study of the geography of foreign countries. In 1613, before Hakluyt's death, he published a volume under the title of Purchas his Pilgrimage; or Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in all Ages and Places Discovered from the Creation unt this Present; and, in 1625, appeared his great work, a history of voyages in four volumes, entitled Purchas his Pilgrimage. These two works form a continuation of Hakluyt's collection, but on a more extended plan, and in point of merit they are strikingly similar. Purchas has, however, one trait peculiar to himself, that of interlarding theological reflections and discussions with his narratives. His death occurred in 1628, not in prison, as has often been asserted, but at his own residence in London, and in the fifty-second year of his age.

Besides his great work, Purchas wrote Microcosmus, or the History of Man, and a Funeral Sermon, both of which were published in 1619: he also produced the King's Tower and Triumphant Arch of London, which appeared in 1623. He was a writer of much ingenuity, of which the following quaint analogy of the sea from his 'Pilgrimage' is certain proof:

THE SEA.

As God hath combined the sea and land into one globe, so their joint combination and mutual assistance is necessary to secular happiness and glory. The sea covereth one half of this patrimony of man, whereof God set him in possession when he said, 'Replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea,

and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.' Thus should man at once lose half his inheritance, if the art of navigation did not enable him to manage this untamed beast, and with the bridle of the winds and saddle of his shipping, to make him serviceable. Now, for the services of the sea, they are innumerable: it is the great purveyor of the world's commodities to our use; conveyor of the excess of rivers; uniter, by traffic, of all nations: it presents the eye with diversified colours and motions, and is, as it were, with rich brooches, adorned with various islands. It is an open field for merchandise in peace; a pitched field for the most dreadful fights of war; yields diversity of fish and fowl for diet; materials for wealth, medicine for health, simples for medicines, pearls, and other jewels for ornament; amber and ambergrise for delight; the wonders of the Lord in the deep' for instruction, variety of creatures for use, multiplicity of natures for contemplation, diversity of accidents for admiration, compendiousness to the way, to full bodies healthful evacuation, to the thirsty earth fertile moisture, to distant friends pleasant meeting, to weary persons delightful refreshing, to studious and religious minds a map of knowledge, mystery of temperance, exercise of continence; school of prayer, meditation, devotion, and sobriety; refuge to the distressed, portage to the merchant, passage to the traveller, customs to the prince; springs, lakes, rivers to the earth; it hath on it tempests and calms to chastise the sins, to exercise the faith, of seamen; manifold affections in itself, to affect and stupify the subtlest philosopher; sustaineth movable fortresses for the soldier; maintaineth (as in our island) a wall of defence and watery garrison to guard the state; entertains the sun with vapours, the moon with obsequiousness, the stars also with a natural looking-glass; the sky with clouds, the air with temperateness, the soil with suppleness, the rivers with tides, the hills with moisture, the valleys with fertility; containeth most diversified matter for meteors, most multiform shapes, most various, numerous kinds, most immense, difformed, deformed, unformed monsters; once (for why should I longer detain you?) the sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, the world to the world, all parts thereof to each part, by this art of arts, navigation.

We have still to notice, briefly, before we conclude our present remarks, two very remarkable travellers, the one by sea and the other by landDavis and Sandys-the former being one of those intrepid navigators of Elizabeth's reign whose adventures are recorded by Hakluyt, and the latter a son of the Archbishop of York, and author of a well-known metrical translation of Ovid's Metamorphosis.' We shall allude to Lithgow also, a Scottish contemporary adventurer.

JOHN DAVIS was born in the county of Devonshire, about the middle of the sixteenth century, but of what parentage is unknown. In 1585, and during the two following years, he made three voyages in search of a northwest passage to China, and discovered the straits at the entrance of Hudson's Bay, to which his name still remains attached. In 1595, he himself published a small and now exceedingly rare volume, entitled The World's Hydrographical Description, wherein,' as the title-page informs us, ‘is proued not onely by aucthoritie of writers, but also by late experience of trauellers, and reasons of substantiall probabilitie, that the worlde in all his zones, clymates, and places, is habitable and inhabited, and the seas likewise universally nauigable, without any naturall anoyance to hinder the

same; whereby appeares that from England there is a short and speedie passage into the South Seas to China, Molacca, Phillipina, and India, by northerly navigation, to the renowne, honour, and benefit of her maiesties state and communalty. In corroboration of these positions, he gives a short narrative of his voyages, which, notwithstanding the unsuccessful termination of them all, he considers to afford very strong arguments in favor of the north-west passage. The extract from this narrative, which follows, with its original spelling, forms an interesting specimen of the style in which such relations, in the age of Elizabeth, were written. Davis afterward made five voyages as a pilot to the East Indies, and was killed in 1605, in a skirmish with some Japanese, off the coast of Molucca.

FROM ONE OF DAVIS'S VOYAGES.

Departing from Dartmouth, through God's merciful fauour I ariued to the place of fishing and there according to my direction I left the 2 shipps to follow that busines, taking their faithful promise not to depart vntill my returne vnto them, which shoulde bee in the fine of August, and so in the barke I proceeded for the discouery, but after my departure in sixteen dayes the shippes had finished their voyage, and so presently departed for England, without regard of their promise. My selfe, not distrusting any such hard measure, proceeded in the discouerie and followed my course in the free and open sea, betweene North and Nor west, to the latitude of sixtie seuen degrees, and there I might see America west from me, and Desolation east; then when I saw the land of both sides, I began to distrust that it would prooue but a gulfe. Notwithstanding, desirous to knowe the full certaintye, I proceeded, and in sixtie eight degrees the passage enlarged, so that I could not see the westerne shore; thus I continued to the latitude of seuentie fiue degrees, in a great sea, free from yse, coasting the western shore of Desolation. The people came continually rowing out vnto me in their Canoas, twenty, forty, and one hundred at a time, and would giue me fishe dried, Samon, Samon peale, cod, Caplin, Lumpe, stone base, and such like, besides diuers kindes of birdes, as Partrig, Fesant, Gulls, sea birdes, and other kindes of fleshe. I still laboured by signes to knowe from them what they knew of any sea towards the North. They still made signes of a great sea as we vnderstood them; then I departed from that coast, thinking to discouer the North parts of America, and after I had sayled towards the west neere fortie leages I fell upon a great banke of yse; the wind being North and blewe much, I was constrained to coast the same towardes the South, not seeing any shore West from me, neither was there any yse towards the North, but a great sea, free, large, very salt and blue and of an unsearchable depth. So coasting towardes the South, I came to the place wher I left the shippes to fishe, but found them not. Then being forsaken and left in this distresse referring my selfe to the mercifull prouidence of God, shaped my course for England, and vnhoped for of any, God alone releuing me, I ariued at Dartmouth. By this last discouerie it seemed most manifest that the passage was free and without impediment towards the North, but by reason of the spanish fleete and unfortunate time of master Secretoryes death, the voyage was omitted and neuer sithens attempted.

GEORGE SANDYS was the youngest son of Sandys, Archbishop of York, and was born at Bishops-Thorpe, Yorkshire, in 1578. His mind developed at so early a period, that he entered Hart-Hall College, Oxford, when only in the eleventh year of his age. He afterward removed to Cor

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