66 from it Shakespeare caught the inspiration which produced the weirdly beautiful Tempest. The manner of telling the story is rapid, arousing, and always vivid, while, in the description of the mighty storm at sea, it rises to extraordinary effectiveness. a dreadful storm and hideous began to blow from out the Northeast, which, swelling and roaring as it were by fits, some hours with more violence than others, at length did beat all light from heaven, which, like an hell of darkness, turned black upon us, so much the more fuller of horror, as in such cases horror and fear use to overrun the troubled and overmastered senses of all, while (taken up with amazement) the ears lay so sensible to the terrible cries, and murmurs of the winds and distraction of our Company, as who was most armed and best prepared, was not a little shaken. "For four and twenty hours the storm, in a restless tumult, had blown so exceedingly, as we could not apprehend in our imaginations any possibility of greater violence, yet did we still find it, not only more terrible, but more constant, fury added to fury, and one storm urging a second, more outrageous than the former, whether it so wrought upon our fears, or indeed met with new forces. Sometimes strikes in our Ship amongst women, and passengers not used to such hurly and discomforts, made us look one upon the other with troubled hearts, and panting bosoms, our clamors drowned in the winds, and the winds in thunder. Prayers might well be in the hearts and lips, but drowned in the outcries of the Officers,—nothing heard that could give comfort, nothing seen that might encourage hope." Strachey went back to England in 1611, and, although he did not return to Virginia, he always seemed intensely interested in the welfare of the struggling settlement. Perhaps the most ably written account of the movement is his Historie of Travaile into Virginia, produced probably in 1612 but not published until 1845. Alexander VI The clergyman who baptized Pocahontas and performed her marriage ceremony was ALEXANDER WHITAKER (1585-1613). Of all the figures in early colonial history, with the possible exception of Roger Williams, this man showed the most god(1585-1613) like characteristics, the most sincere spirit of sacrifice, and the most unflagging zeal for the uplifting of his brother men. For, all the comforts that a well-to-do clergyman might enjoy were his in his parish in Northern England, while influential relations, native ability, and learning bid fair to make him a leader in the English Church. His father was the celebrated divine, William Whitaker, master of Saint John's College, Cambridge, and he himself had received his degrees from the same university. Yet, the conviction gradually settled upon him that his was the duty of converting the Indians, and, "to the wonder of his kindred and amazement of them that knew him," he sailed, in 1611, with Sir Thomas Dale's party. For more than three years this good man, "the Apostle of Virginia," labored among the red men, and then, in 1613, met death by drowning. The work which calls our attention to Whitaker as a writer is his Good News from Virginia, published in London in 1613. It was written after the missionary had been in America two years, and consequently whatever it records has an accurate and authoritative character. As the book is the production of a preacher, we should naturally expect it to smack somewhat of the pulpit, and we are not surprised to find it, as Crashawe declares, a "pithy and godly exhortation interlaced with narratives of many particulars touching the country, climate, and commodities." In fact, Whitaker actually takes a text and, expounding upon it, shows that there is a commanding call for religious men in America. Yet, despite the sermonizing trait, it is a book full of cheer, enthusiasm, and far-seeing hope for the future. Showing, throughout, the carefulness of the man of letters, it is beautiful, moreover, because of its spirit of human kindness. "They acknowledge," he writes of the Indians, "that there is a great God, but know him not. wherefore they serve the devil for . . If this be . fear, after a most base manner. their life, what think you shall become of them after death but to be partakers with the devil and his angels in hell for evermore?" Turning toward that beloved England, from which he was a voluntary exile, he exclaims, "Awake, you true-hearted Englishmen remember that the plantation is God's and the reward your country's.' Earnest and ever zealous in spirit, his work has, at the same time, the simplicity and the refinement of the Cambridge scholar that he was. His productions are, from a literary standpoint, more than good, and in any other period than the Elizabethan era might have brought him into note as a prose writer. He stands as does John Smith, both a doer and an expresser, the man of action and the man of letters, ever wholesome, ever satisfied with today and its labors. VII In April, 1619, there came over with Governor George Yeardley, a man of surprising brilliancy and John Pory ability, yet one whose life had not fulfilled the brilliant prophecies of his earlier days. For now, in his fiftieth (1570-1635(?) year, his friends gently hinted that he too zealously "followed the custom of strong potations"; for his many winning qualities had made life a trifle too easy for his own good. His name was JOHN PORY. With a Bachelor's and a Master's degree from Cambridge, he had continued, after his college days, a special study of geography and commerce, and had gained very favorable notice along this line through his translation of an Italian work, A Geographical Historie of Africa. In 1605, when he was thirty-five years of age, he was a member of Parliament, and at that time he counted his influential friends by the hundreds. But the convivial spirit was gradually growing upon him, and those interested in him, considering it best to get him away from England, procured for him the position as secretary of the Virginia colony. Here, as in England, the same traits of strength and of weakness showed themselves. He at once became a general favorite, was made a member of the colonial council, and was chosen speaker of the general assembly. But continuous work was becoming more and more distasteful, while he "followed the custom of strong potations" to an extreme alarming even in that Golden Age of the ale-house. At length, in 1621, he gave up all his offices and during the next year sailed for England. The following year found him again in Virginia, as a commissioner to investigate colonial affairs; but in 1624 he returned to London and there spent his remaining days. The life of comparatively meagre fulfillment ended in September, 1635. Although Pory found it indeed difficult to follow the straight and narrow path, there was one thing that he could do with a most happy facility: he could write. Brilliant and witty to a remarkable degree, his accounts of his American experiences are exceedingly entertaining specimens of spicy, racy English. One of his best pieces is his letter to the English statesman, Sir Dudley Carleton: for in this is such a mixture of heterogeneous facts, satire, history, and scientific notes as rarely occurs in one paper. The raw settlers seem to afford him much amusement, and they are frequently the object of his wit. He writes of them thus: "Nowe that your lordship may know that we are not the veriest beggars in the worlde, our cowekeeper here of James Citty on Sundays goes accowtered all in freshe flaming silke; and a wife of one that in England had professed the black arte, not of a scholler, but of a collier of Crogdon, weares her rough biver hatt with a faire perle hattband and a silken suite thereto correspondent. But to leave the Populace and to come higher :-the Governor here, who at his first coming besides a great deale of worth in his person, brought only his sword with him, was at his late being in London, together with his lady, out of his meer greetings here able to disburse very near three thousand pounds to furnishe himselfe for his voyage. And once within seven years I am persuaded (absit invidia verbo) that the Governor's place here may be as profitable as the Lord Deputies of Ireland." VIII Thus far all the literature of the New World had been written mainly for geographical and other George Sandys scientific purposes. But now, for the first time on the American continent, a work written for Literature's own. sake was produced. GEORGE SANDYS (1578-1644) (1578-1644), a polished gentleman who walked the straggling streets of Jamestown, decorated with a fashionable lace collar |