At Michaelmas, 1609, the stern soldier and strong writer and true patriot set sail for England. He had brought only his sword to Virginia, and he took thence nothing more. Not an inch of the ground he had dug nor a plank of the houses he had built belonged to him.
"What shall I say,"[60] writes the old historian, "but thus we lost him, that in all his proceedings made Justice his first guide, and experience his second, ever hating basenesse, sloath, pride, and indignitie more than any dangers; that never allowed more for himselfe than his soldiers with him; that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead himselfe; that would never see us want, what he either had or by any means could get us; that would rather want than borrow or starve than not pay; that loved action more than words, and hated falsehood and covetousness worse than death; whose adventures were our lives and whose losse our deaths."
Nobody denies the services John Smith rendered to the infant colony—and yet such was his arrogance, his boastfulness, his intolerant, dogmatic temper, that men took offence, and grudgingly yielded him the honour which was his due. It is true he never failed to put himself well to the fore, and never omitted an opportunity to record his fine achievements. For this men hated him. Diligent as were his enemies, they could not crush him utterly. He filled positions of trust after he left Virginia, visited the northern colony, was allowed to name it "New England," gave the name to Boston and other places on the coast; and thus proved that his colonial career was highly esteemed at home. Whether he deserves it or not, he still holds the foremost place in the early history of Virginia.
With all his hauteur and arrogance, he knew how to be gracious and winning, especially to women. We know of the supreme moment between the raising and falling of the club to beat out his brains when
"An angel knelt in human form
And breathed a prayer for him."
But there were others—one indeed in every crisis, in every country he visited—"Princesses and Madams," who befriended or saved him, and we cannot but suppose that with them his personality possessed the charm of fascination. But in regard to his soldierly qualities nothing is left to inference or supposition. We know him to have been beyond compare brave, enduring, capable of bearing extreme misery and danger with noble fortitude. He was pitiful to the sick and weak, tender to children, watchful of the comfort and rights of the unfortunate. His writings sound a clear, high note of patriotism and devout aspiration. They bear the impress of the rough mariner and soldier, but nobler writing I know of nowhere. "The rude sentences rise to the height of eloquence, as he exhorts his contemporaries in noble words to noble achievements." We give a few of them.
"Seeing we are not born for ourselves, but each to help the other," he writes, "and our abilities are much alike at the hour of our birth and the minute of our death; seeing our good deeds or our bad, by faith in Christ's merits, is all we have to carry our souls to heaven or hell, ... let us imitate the virtues of our ancestors to be worthily their successors."
"Who would live at home idly or think in himself any worth, to live only to eat, drink and sleep, and so die?"
"Who can desire more content that hath small means or but merits to advance his fortunes than to tread and plant the ground he hath purchased by the hazard of his life? If he have but the taste of virtue and magnanimity, what to such a mind can be more pleasant than planting and building a foundation for his posterity, got from the rude earth by God's blessing and his own industry without prejudice to any?"
"What so truly suits with honour and honesty as the discovering things unknown, erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue and gain to our native mother country:—so far from wronging any as to cause posterity to remember thee, and, remembering thee, ever honour that remembrance with praise?"