Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 3 (of 8): English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 3 (of 8): English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
1627., Prince Library in Boston Public Library. Massachusetts
Historical Society. See the _Crowninshield Catalogue_, no. 992.
1631., The _Huth Catalogue_, p. 1367, gives, perhaps by error, an
edition of this date. I have noted no other copy.
1632., Harvard College Library.
The two portraits of the Duchess of Richmond and of Matoaka are usually
wanting. See the note to chapter v. Average copies without the genuine
portraits, which in Rich’s day (1832) were worth five guineas, are now
valued at more than three times that sum. The portrait of Smith, which
is shown reduced on the map of New England already given, has been
similarly reproduced full size in the _Memorial History of Boston_, i.,
and is engraved in the Richmond edition of the _Generall Historie_, in
Bancroft, Drake’s _Boston_, Hillard’s _Life of Smith, N. E. Hist. and
Geneal. Reg._, Jan. 1858, etc.
The _Generall Historie_, in conjunction with the _True Travels_, was
carelessly reprinted at Richmond, in 1819, at the cost of the Rev. John
Holt Rice, D.D., who lost by the speculation. (_N. E. Hist. and Geneal.
Reg._, 1877, p. 114.) A large part appeared in Purchas’s _Pilgrims_,
iv. 1838. It is given entire in Pinkerton’s _Collections of Voyages_,
xiii.
It is the sixth book of this _Generall Historie_ which relates to
New England, and in this Smith supplements his own experience, and
brings the details down beyond the limits of this present chapter,
by borrowing from _Mourt’s Relation_ and reporting upon other
accounts, as he did in his still later publication, the tract called
_Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England_, which
brings the story down to 1630.
Dr. Palfrey has a note on the confidence to be reposed in Smith’s
books, in his _History of New England_, i. 89.
Smith was born in 1579 at Willoughby, as the parish records show.
(_Hist. Mag._, i. 313; _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, ix. 451.) He died
June 21, 1631, signing his will the same day (_Ibid._ ix. 452), and
was buried in St. Sepulchre’s, London, where the inscription above
his grave is said to be now illegible. A committee of the American
Antiquarian Society was appointed in 1874 to see to its restoration,
but were prevented from acting by the demand of a fee for the privilege
from the vestry of the church. (_N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._, 1874,
p. 222.) In Sparks’s _American Biography_ is a memoir of him by George
S. Hillard; another, by W. Gilmore Simms, was printed in 1846; and a
recent study of his life and writings has been made by C. D. Warner,
who says that the inscription, with the three (Turks’?) heads in St.
Sepulchre’s, long supposed to mark the grave of Smith, is proved to
commemorate some one who died in September, aged 66, while Smith died
June, 1631, aged 51. Stow’s _Survey of London_, 1633, gives the long
epitaph which could be read on the walls of the church previous to its
destruction in the great London fire in 1666. Cf. Deane in _Mass. Hist.
Soc. Proc._, Jan. 1867, p. 454.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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