[6] When Mr. Biddle was issuing the second London edition of his Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, in 1832, he cancelled one leaf in the book, at pages 77, 78, that he might insert a notice of an early dramatic poem cited by J. Payne Collier in his then recently published History of English Dramatic Poetry ... and Annals of the Stage, London, 1831, ii. 319. The play was entitled, A new interlude and a mery of the nature of the iiij elements declaryinge many proper poynts of phylosophy naturall and of dyvers straunge landys and of dyvers straunge effects and causis, etc. Dr. Dibdin, in his Typogr. Ant., iii. 105, inserts it among the works from Rastell’s press, and in a manuscript note at the beginning of the copy in the British Museum, it is said to have been printed by him in 1519. This copy, the only one known, formerly belonged to Garrick. I saw it in London in 1866, and collated it with the brief extracts in Collier. It is imperfect; and, as the colophon is wanting, the imprint, including date, is gone. Different years have been assigned to the book according as the reader has interpreted the historical references in it. The citations from the “Interlude” which follow are taken from the publications of the Percy Society, vol. xxii. issued in 1848. Among the characters is one Experyens (Experience), who represents a practical navigator who had been a great traveller:—
“Right farr, Syr, I have ridden and gone,
And seen straunge thynges many one
In Affrick, Europe, and Ynde;
Both est and west I have ben farr,
North also, and seen the sowth sterr
Bothe by see and lande.
And, apparently pointing to a map, Experience proceeds:—
“There lyeth Iselonde where men do fyshe,
But beyonde that so colde it is
No man may there abyde.
This see is called the Great Occyan;
So great it is that never man
Coulde tell it sith the worlde began
Tyll nowe within this xx. yere,
Westewarde be founde new landes
That we never harde tell of before this
By wrytynge nor other meanys.
Yet many nowe have ben there;
And that contrey is so large of rome,
Muche lenger then all Crestendome,
Without fable or gyle;
For dyvers maryners had it tryed,
And sayled streyght by the coste syde
Above V. thousande myle!
But what commodytes be wythin,
No man can tell nor well imagin.
But yet not long ago
Some men of this contrey went,
By the Kynge’s noble consent,
It for to search to that entent,
And coude not be brought thereto;
But they that were they venteres
Have cause to curse their maryners,
Fals of promys, and dissemblers,
That falsly them betrayed,
Which wold take no paine to sail farther
Than their own lyst and pleasure;
Wherfor that vyage, and dyvers other
Such kaytyffes have destroyed.
O what a thinge had be than
Yf that they that be Englyschemen
Myght have ben furst of all
That there shulde have take possessyon,
And made furst buyldynge and habytacion,
A memory perpetuall!
And also what an honorable thynge
Bothe to the realme, and to the Kynge,
To have had his domynyon extendynge
There into so farr a grounde,
Whiche the noble Kynge of late memory,
The most wyse prynce, the VII. Herry,
Causyd furst for to be founde, ...”
Percy, in his essay on the Origin of the English Stage, 1767, supposed this play to have been written about the year 1510, from the following lines which he referred to Columbus:—
“... Within this xx. yeer
Westewarde be founde new landes.”
But Columbus is not named in the play, and the finding of America is attributed to Americus Vespucius, whose earliest alleged voyage was in 1497:—
“But this newe lands founde lately,
Ben callyd America, bycause only
Americus dyd furst them fynde.”
The date ascribed to the play by the writer of the memorandum in it, 1519, would seem to be not far from the truth. But the verses which speak of the discovery made for the late king, Henry VII., principally interest us here. They would seem to refer to the Cabots, who made the only authentic Western discovery for England in that reign. The whole poem has been reprinted by the Percy Society. See Winsor’s Halliwelliana, p. 8, and references there. Mr. J. F. Nicholls, in his Life of Sebastian Cabot, London, 1869, p. 91, prints these lines, and thinks “that the Experyens herein depicted was none other than Sebastian Cabot himself.”
[7] [A sketch of a portion of the North American coast is given in another chapter. It was reproduced in Sprengel’s translation of Muñoz’s Geschichte der neuen Welt, Weimar, 1795, and separately in his Ueber J. Ribero’s älteste weltcharte, size 50 by 65 centimetres, and shows the coast from Labrador to Magellan’s Straits. Cf. Humboldt’s Examen Critique, iii. 184. It is also given in Lelewel’s Atlas; in Murphy’s Verrazzano, p. 129; and in De Costa’s Verrazano the Explorer, p. 43. The original is at Weimar, with a replica at Rome.—Ed.]