Thus disappears from our memory the certain identification of the S. G. pamphlet as an early issue of the press in Cambridge, and with it goes my identification of the Johnson pamphlet with the S. G. title-page—a veritable pipe dream. It might be urged that as White Kennett was collecting on America, it would be more than probable that he would have had an American issue; but his own catalogue of 1713 describes the nine-page tract, and that is our London edition. I might claim still that my Johnson was a Johnson, with a London title-page; but the typographical adornment on the first page of its text is just the same as the adornment on the first page of the London issue—three rows of fleur-de-lys, thirty-seven in each row, and the same kind of type characters.{2}
1 Lowndes indexes it under George Pine, and describes a
nine-page trait—probably the one now in the British Museum.
He quotes a sale of a copy in it 60 (Puttkk) for £4.10s. He
indexes the combined parts under Sloetten, and notes a copy,
with the plate, sold in the White Knights sale for 1s..
2 To attempt to reason from types or rule of thumb
measurements, however suggestive, leads to indefinite
conclusions. For example, the width of the type page of the
S. G. issue of the first part is exactly that of the English
issue of the second part, but the former has 33 tines to the
page and the latter a a. The width of the page in the
variant S. G. issue is narrower and there are 38 and 39
lines to the page. But in the London second part the width
of page varies by a quarter of an inch. We have Marmaduke
Johnson's issue of Paine's Daily Meditations y issued in
1670 in connection with S. G. The ornamental border of
fleur-de-lys is entirely different from those in the S. G.
Isle of Pines. A copy of Johnson's issue of Scottow's
translation of Bretz on the Anabaptists, printed in 1668,
the very year of the Isle of Pines, shows a different foot
of italics from that used in the Isle of Pines variant,
yet the roman characters in the two pieces seem identical,
and the width of page is exactly the same.
So I bid farewell to my theory, and can only congratulate myself on having cleared one point—the London issue—and on having introduced a new confusion by the discovery of a second London issue with an identical title-page, a problem for the future to solve. I much doubt if a true Johnson issue will ever be found, for I believe the action of the authorities prevented its birth.
In the library of Mr. Henry E. Huntington is a London issue of which I do not find another example. It contains sixteen pages, and the title-page gives neither printer's name nor place of publication. It may be the first issue, or it may be a later re-issue of the tract, for the type, especially the italic, is better than that in the S. G. issue. The punctuation also is more carefully looked after, and the whole appearance suggests an eighteenth century print. As the original was duly licensed, there was no reason to suppress the names of printer or booksellers. Nor could the contents of the piece call out controversy or hostility from any political faction or religious following. It was proper for the author to omit his name from the publication, if he desired to remain unknown; but the publisher, having the support of the licenser, had every reason to advertise his connexion with the tract, although he could not have anticipated so ready an acceptance by the public. While I place the Huntington pamphlet first in the bibliography, I am more inclined to regard it as a publication made at a later time.
THE COMBINED PARTS
The English edition of thirty-one pages in the John Carter Brown Library, with an engraved frontispiece,{1} offers still further proof that the S. G. issue was made in London. In place of being entirely different from the S. G. tract, it is precisely the same so far as text is concerned. For it is nothing more than the two parts combined, but combined in a peculiar manner. The second part was opened at page 6 and the first part inserted, entire and without change of text{2} This insertion runs into page 16, where a sentence is inserted to carry on the relation: "After the reading and delivering unto us a Coppy of this Relation, then proceeded he on in his discourse." The rest of the text of the second part follows, and pages 27-31 of the combined parts seem to be the very type pages of pages 20-24 of the second part{3} In this sandwich form one must read six pages before coming to the text of the first part, and a careless reader, comparing only the respective first pages, would conclude that a pamphlet of thirty-one pages could have no likeness to one of nine.
1 The plate in the copy in the John Carter Brown Library
does not belong to that issue, but is inserted in so clumsy
a manner as to prevent reproduction. The same plate is found
in a copy of the ten-page S.G. issue in the library of Mr.
Henry E. Huntington, and to all appearances belongs to that
issue.
2 The last sentence on page 6 of the second part read:
"Then proceeded he on in his discourse saying," and there
are no pages numbered 7 and 8, although there is no break in
the text, the catch-word on page 6 being the first word on
page 9. In the combined parts, the last words on page 6
constitute a phrase: "which Copy hereafter followeth."
3 The only change made is in the heading of the Post-script,
which was wrongly printed in the second part as "Post-
script." On page 26 of the combined parts the words "except
burning" were inserted, not appearing in the second part.
On typographical evidence it is safe to assume that the three pieces came from the same press, and to assert that the second part and the combined parts certainly did. The initials S. G. are found only on the first part.