1581. T. Nicholas published an English translation, now very rare, of Zarate’s account of the Conquest of Peru.
1582. Hakluyt began his active participation in furthering English maritime exploration by his first publication, the little Divers Voyages, dedicating it to Sir Philip Sidney; and in this he says: “I marvaile not a little ... that we of England could never have the grace to set fast footing in such fertill and temperate places as are left as yet unpossessed.” Again he says: “In my public lectures I was the first that produced and showed both the olde imperfectly composed and the new lately reformed mappes, globes, and spheares, to the generall contentment of my auditory.” See further in Mr. Deane’s chapter on “The Cabots.” Cf. W. C. Hazlitt’s Bibliog. Coll. and notes, 1st ser. p. 101.
There is, unfortunately, no sufficiently extended account of Hakluyt, and the most we know of him must be derived from his own publications. The brief account in Anthony Wood’s Athenæ Oxonienses is the source of most of the notices. Mr. J. Payne Collier has added something in a paper on “Richard Hakluyt and American Discovery” in the Archæologia, xxxiii. 383; and Mr. Winter Jones in his Introduction to the reprint of the Divers Voyages has told about all that can be gleaned, and in his Appendix he gives some papers before unprinted, including Hakluyt’s will. The subject has had later treatment, with the advantage of some recent information, in the Introduction to the Westerne Planting, by Dr. Woods and Mr. Deane.
With the exception of the criticism of John Locke,—if he be the editor of Churchill’s Collection,—who wished Hakluyt had condensed more, and of Biddle, who accuses him of perversions in his account of the Cabots (see Mr. Deane’s chapter), the general opinion of Hakluyt’s labor has been very high. Locke’s explanatory catalogue of voyages, which appeared in Churchill, is reprinted in Clarke’s Maritime Discovery. Oldys in the British Librarian, p. 136, analyzes Hakluyt’s books, and there is a list of them in Sabin’s Dictionary and in the Carter-Brown Catalogue, p. 448. An account of the set in the Lenox Library is printed in Norton’s Literary Gazette, i. 384.
Of the Divers Voyages, perfect copies are excessively rare, and the two maps are almost always wanting. The two British Museum copies have them, but the Bodleian has only the Lok map, and the same is true of the Carter-Brown copy (Catalogue, p. 290). The other copies in America belong to Harvard College (imperfect), Charles Deane, and Henry C. Murphy. Of the maps, that by Lok is given in reduced fac-simile in the Carter-Brown Catalogue (as also in chapter i. of the present volume), and both are given full size in the reprint of the Hakluyt Society.
1583. Captain J. Carleill’s little Discourse upon the entended Voyage to the hethermoste Partes of America, a tract of a few leaves only, in Gothic letter, was probably printed about this time with the aim to induce emigration and the fixing of commercial advantages. Hakluyt thought it of enough importance to include it in his third volume seventeen years later. Carter-Brown Catalogue, p. 292.
1583. Sir George Peckham’s True Report of the late Discoveries, etc. See further on this tract on a preceding page.
1583. M. M. S. published at London a small tract giving a translation of Las Casas’ story of the Spanish deeds in the New World. Carter-Brown Catalogue, p. 293.
1588. What is called the second original work published in England on the New World is Hariot’s New Foundland of Virginia, a small quarto of twenty-three leaves, imprinted at London. Heber had a copy; and Brunet, the first to describe it, took the title from Heber’s Catalogue. There are copies in the Lenox, Huth (Catalogue, ii. 652), Grenville (British Museum) and the Bodleian libraries. Sabin, Dictionary, viii. 30377, who says this, adds that there was a copy sold surprisingly low at Dublin in 1873, escaping the attention of collectors. It was reprinted at Frankfort in 1590. See chapter iv.