Captain John Smith and the Bishop of Sarum

Abstract

TN I624 Captain John Smith's major work, The Generall Historie Iof Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles . . ., finally appeared in print.' That it was hurried through the press is suggested by the absence of a printed title page and the omission of Signature O (pages 97 through 104). Yet it was the product of at least three years of application and comprised two hundred and forty folio pages. The Generall Historie was essentially a compilation, containing little that was new. Its sixe Bookes are a hodgepodge of reprints, excerpts, abridgments, minutes, arguments, conspectuses, and notes, as John Smith's acquaintance Robert Burton might have put it. Yet it has a unity more reminiscent of Hakluyt's Principall Navigations than of Samuel Purchas' less purposefully designed and executed Pilgrimes. This unity is largely supplied by Smith's twofold aim: propaganda on behalf of Virginia (sorely tried by the massacre of I 622 and the dissolution of the Virginia Company in I 624), and apologia pro John Smith (sorely tried by a mercantile vote of no confidence). But in addition, by way of polish, the work is rounded out by the use of a happy, if not exactly lofty, literary device. The purpose, veracity, morality, and significance of the Generall Historie have been repeatedly analyzed and will be reassessed in a study of John Smith which is now nearing completion; the present intention is to analyze the literary device. Scattered through the Generall Historie are brief bits of second-