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with the volume with which Mr. Poole has now so creditably connected his own name. A loyal son of the old Bay State, with strong Puritan instincts, Mr. Poole regards it as a most presumptuous thing for Gorges to attempt to defend his title to the territory which Massachusetts had laid claim to,- being about all the patrimony which had descended to him from his grandfather. He calls him "a needy expectant, a seedy gentleman," with "no one to listen to his whine for remuneration but cowed exiles and royalists," &c. (pp. xlviii., xlix.) To make it appear that F. Gorges, Esq. was a person morally capable of perpetrating such a literary fraud as that which has been referred to, Mr. Poole endeavors to show that, in his subsequent negotiations for the establishment of his claims as proprietor for the Province of Maine, he was unscrupulous; that he told the king an "unmitigated falsehood" in saying that the Massachusetts Colony had offered him "many thousand pounds" for his interest in that Province, as but five hundred pounds had been offered to him from that source; and, a few years later, he sold his claim to that Colony for £1,250.

As to the grounds on which this latter charge is preferred, we think that Mr. Poole has unintentionally misread his authority. In the synopsis of the document from which he quotes, Gorges is not made to say that the Massachusetts Colony had offered him many thousand pounds for his claims. The language is: "That the Massachusetts have endeavored to enter into terms with petitioner, that he has been offered many thousand pounds for his interest in the Province," &c.* He does not say by whom the offer was made. There were probably others besides "the Massachusetts" who at that time stood ready to negotiate, if terms could be made and the title fully established. In the difficult part which he had to play in the defence of his rights, surely Gorges's counsel would instruct him, if his own common sense did not teach him, that he was under no obligation to shew his whole hand.

Another charge is brought against Gorges, of having violated his promise to the king, by selling out to "the Massachusetts" without his consent. Of course, such a promise on the part of Gorges, to be of any force, implies another promise on the part of the king. It might be an interesting subject of investigation to ascertain if the king kept his

This synopsis is found in Folsom's "Catalogue of Original Documents in the English Archives," pp. 22, 23. These two clauses standing together here, may be, and probably are, quite distinct in the original petition of Gorges, which consists of fourteen folios, here abridged to one page.

"Should any purchase his pretensions in the expectation of profit," writes Governor Leverett to Major Thompson at London, "they would miss in their expectation." Hutchinson's Collection of Papers, p. 466.

promise to Gorges. How long was Gorges to wait? For seventeen weary years he had had a full experience of that "hope deferred, which maketh the heart sick," and at the end he realized the force of the saying of the Psalmist, "Put not your trust in princes." The final decision of the Chief Justices, in 1677, practically deprived Gorges of his title to the soil of his Province, and left him but the barren title to the government. Charles wanted Maine (as well as New Hampshire) for his illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, but he had been impoverished by his extravagance, and was "not apt to have ready money," and the agent of "the Massachusetts" stepped in and bought the claim of Gorges.

The consideration of the character of Ferdinando Gorges, Esq., and the reference to his claims as the heir of his grandfather to the Province of Maine, having been introduced into the volume before us, incidentally, in connection with a question of bibliography, this can hardly be regarded as a fit occasion for a full discussion of those claims, or of the manner in which they were presented. We cannot forbear, however, to say, that we have failed to observe in the whole conduct and bearing of the younger Gorges, during the twenty years which followed the Restoration, anything to tarnish his character, or to derogate from his standing as a high-toned and intelligent gentleman.

We dissent from Mr. Poole's opinion, that the preface "To the Reader," placed before the "Wonder-Working Providence," among the Gorges tracts, is fictitious, and was written for purposes of deception. Its style and its contents clearly show, we think, that it was written by the author of the "Briefe Narration," that is, by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, as a preface to that important tract; and it was probably misplaced, either by accident or design, in the "copy" before printing. It begins thus: "I thought it a part of my duty in this, my briefe Narration," &c. It then proceeds to speak of matters discussed in the "Briefe Narration," but which are quite foreign to the pages of the "Wonder-Working Providence." We think the publishing committee of the Massachusetts Historical Society were quite right in their judgment concerning it thirty years ago.

Mr. Poole says that the allusions in this preface to "trenching or intruding upon the rights and labors of others," of "reaping what they had not sown," of "possessing the fruit another hath labored for," &c., indicate that Sir F. Gorges was not the writer of it, as in his lifetime "the question of jurisdiction and encroachment had not arisen." (p. xlvi.) Surely Mr. Poole must have forgotten the old knight's long controversy with Sir Alexander Rigby, the proprietor of the Plough Patent," under which he claimed the "Province of Lygonia,"

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a controversy which was settled in 1646 by the "Commissioners of Foreign Plantations," who gave their award against Gorges, thereby establishing the grant of Rigby, which extended from Cape Porpoise to Casco, and included both. By this decision the "Province of Maine " was cut in two, and a slice of from twenty to twenty-five miles wide taken from the heart of it. The poor old knight had been in arms, fighting for his king, and was in no condition to protect his interest against a Puritan Parliament and its Commissioners. He died soon after.*

The editor, on page xxxv., referring to the authorities cited by F. Gorges, Esq., in the preface to the volume of tracts, expresses some doubt as to who "Davity" was, a doubt shared by others who have written on the subject of these tracts. We suppose Pierre Davity is not so much read to-day as he was in the time of Gorges. He was a well-known author, and his history of "Le Monde, ou la description de ses quartre parties," &c. (Paris, 1637, 5 volumes folio), was a famous book in its day. The printer has made shocking work with another name in the preface. For "Champlain Sparbot and others," we should probably read, "Champlain, L'Escarbot, and others."

On the general title-page of the volume containing these Gorges tracts is the following: "For the Reader's clearer understanding of the Countries, they are lively described in a complete and exquisite Map." This same language is also used on the false title-page of "Wonder-Working Providence." The map, which is usually placed near the beginning of the volume, is not original here, but was adopted from another work; and its history furnishes a good illustration of the manner in which book makers and book publishers availed themselves of the labors of others, not always making the proper acknowledgment. It is a map of the Western Hemisphere, six by eight and a half inches in size, and was originally published by Hondius in his edition of the "Atlas Minor Gerardi Mercatoris," &c. (Amsterdam, 1607, and Dort, 1610). It may also be seen in volume three, page 857, of Purchas's " Pilgrims" (London, 1625), and over it is printed, "Hondius his Map of America." was also published in Wye Saltonstall's English translation of Hondius's "Mercator" (London, 1635), and also in the second edition of Gage's "West Indies" (London, 1655). The use of this engraved plate for Nath: Brooke's publication of the Gorges tracts, four years later, is the last service we have seen it perform. This map of the Western Hemisphere is the earliest general map we have seen which has the name of "Virginia" upon it. De Bry's map of "America pars, Nunc Vir

See Williamson's History of Maine, Vol. I. pp. 295-303; 4 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., VII. 88-94; Folsom's History of Saco and Biddeford, pp. 58–61.

ginia," published in his "Admiranda Narratio Fida Tamen," &c., Frankfort, 1590, and Wytfliets' map of "Norvmbega et Virginia," in his "Descriptionis Ptolemaicæ Augmentum," &c., Lovanii, 1597, are fragmentary, and not maps of the Western World as far as then discovered.

We should add that the Introduction to this book contains the will of Edward Johnson, and abstracts of the wills of his sons; also a genealogy of the descendants of Edward Johnson, prepared by John Alonzo Boutelle.

Mr. Poole has affectionately dedicated this book to the memory of his friend George Livermore of Cambridge, a worthy tribute to a worthy man.

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The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse. Edited by

JOHN HARVARD ELLIS. Charlestown: Abram E. Cutter. 1867. 8vo. pp. lxxi., 434.

In this volume of luxurious typography Mr. Ellis has brought together all the writings extant of the earliest female poet of America. Some of these papers have never before been printed. The editor also, in a carefully written Introduction of seventy-one pages, has embodied what is known of her life and literary career.

....

The first edition of Mrs. Bradstreet's poems was printed through the agency of her brother-in-law, Mr. John Woodbridge, and without her knowledge, in London, in 1650, under the title of "The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America. . . . . By a Gentlewoman in those Parts." The second edition was printed in Boston in 1678, with the title "Several Poems compiled with great Variety of Wit and Learning, full of Delight. . . . . By a Gentlewoman in New England." A third edition was issued in Boston in 1758, with the same title, but without the name of the publisher or the printer.

From the fact that three editions of these poems were printed in those early days, we must infer that our ancestors read them with pleasure; but in our time the interest attached to them is other than literary. It is certainly a notable fact that such a volume was written and printed within the first twenty years after the settlement of the Massachusetts Colony, and under circumstances the most unfavorable for literary development. It is curious also to see what sort of poetic verdure could spring from such uncongenial soil.

The education and social position of Mrs. Bradstreet, the daughter of Thomas Dudley, and wife of Simon Bradstreet, both Governors of the Massachusetts Colony, and both eminent among its original founders,

were excelled probably by those of no other lady in the Colony. That she was an affectionate wife, a devoted mother, and a pattern of piety after the best Puritan models, is evident from her writings. She was born at Northampton in England in 1612-13. Nothing is known of her early life, except what is gathered from a few allusions made to it by herself. "As I grew up," she says, "to be about 14 or 15, I found my heart more carnal, and sitting loose from God; vanity and the follies of youth took hold of me. About 16 the Lord laid his hand sore upon me and smote me with the small-pox. When I was in my affliction, I besought the Lord, and confessed my pride and vanity, and he again restored me. But I rendered not to him according to the benefit received. After a short time I changed my condition, and was married, and came into this country, where I found a new world and new manners, at which my heart rose. But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it and joined to the church at Boston."

Her car

If her poems had been written before she renounced the pride and vanity of this world, and "joined to the church at Boston," they would doubtless have treated a class of topics of more interest to the modern antiquary than anything contained in the volume before us. nal heart, it seems, rebelled at first against the early experiences and new manners of this Western world. What a contribution to our knowledge of those times would have been her description, in humorous or satirical verse, of the experiences and manners which ruffled the serenity of her worldly mind! Early piety is perhaps always to be commended; but in this instance it was not favorable for that kind of literary effort in which the present age is interested, as showing the manners and customs of our ancestors.

We are in the habit of extolling the wisdom and foresight of our progenitors; and yet they seem to have had little conception of the kind of information respecting themselves which would be sought for in subsequent ages. A third-rate antiquary of to-day, if, by some eddy in the stream of time, he could be set back two centuries, would give us a more satisfactory account of the "form and pressure" of the time in which they lived than the best of those early writers have recorded. The incidents of every-day life they regarded as beneath the dignity of history and of poetry even.

Mistress Bradstreet's verses, not excepting the few on domestic themes, such as "the restoration of my dear husband from a burning ague," " upon my daughter Hannah Wiggin, her recovery from a dangerous fever," might as well have been written in England as in Boston, or Andover, so far as they shed light upon what was characteristic of New England. Even from her domestic verses she man

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