The books of André Thevet which contain the accounts of his visit to this country are the Singularitez de la France antarctique and the Cosmographie universelle.[121] Besides these works Thevet published an account of his journey to the East, Cosmographie du Levant, at Lyons, in 1554, and a series of portraits and lives of great men, ancient and modern, in two volumes, at Paris, in 1584. He left also several manuscripts, which are now preserved in the National Library at Paris.
The Singularitez passed to a second edition,[122] and was translated into Italian by Giuseppe Horologgi,[123] and into English[124] by M. Hacket. A reprint of the original edition was published at Paris in 1878, with notes, and a biographical preface by M. Paul Gaffarel of Dijon.
The Cosmographie was not reprinted, nor was it, so far as I know, translated into any other language. In the Magazine of American History for February, 1882, however, Dr. De Costa published a translation of the part of the book which relates to New England.
It seems quite probable that Thevet never made the voyage along the American coast of which he pretends to give an account. He gives nothing at all from Florida to what he calls the River of Norumbega, and is generally very indefinite in all his statements. He may easily have taken his stories from other travellers’ books, and it is known he used Cartier and others; and indeed he is said to have been ill nearly all the time of his stay in Brazil, and to have scarcely stirred out of the island where the fort was, waiting for the ship to make ready for home.
Thevet’s reputation for veracity is poor, particularly among his contemporaries. Jean de Léry, who was one of the party which went out to Villegagnon, in response to his appeal for Protestant ministers in 1556, after Thevet’s return home, wrote an account of the Brazil enterprise. This, first published at La Rochelle in 1578, passed through several editions. The preface of the second edition is occupied with an exposure of the “errors and impostures” of Thevet, and that of the fifth edition contains more matter of the same kind. De Léry calls Thevet “impudent menteur,” and speaks of his books as “vieux haillons et fripperies.” Again he says, “Il fait des contes prophanes, ridicules, pueriles, et mensonges pour tous ses escrits.” Possibly some allowance may be made for the odium theologicum of the writer, a Calvinist, disputing with a monk; and it may be remembered that both had been disappointed in any hopes they had entertained of the conversion of the Indians, through the treachery of Villegagnon.
Belleforest and Fumée have also written in harsh terms about Thevet. De Thou, a historian of far more dignified and impartial character than these others, is nearly as abusive. He says: “Il s’appliqua par une ridicule vanité à écrire des livres, qu’il vendait à des misérables libraires: après avoir compilé des extraits de différents auteurs, il y ajoutait tout ce qu’il trouvait dans les guides des chemins et autres livres semblables qui sont entre les mains du peuple. Ignorant au-delà de ce qu’on peut imaginer, il mettait dans ses livres l’incertain pour le certain, et le faux pour le vrai, avec une assurance étonnante.”[125]
Even Thevet’s latest editor, M. Gaffarel, is forced to begin his notice of the monk by allowing that he was not “un de ces écrivans de premier ordre, qui, par la sûreté de leur critique, le charme de leur style, ou l’intérét de leurs écrits commandent l’admiration à leurs contemporains, et s’imposent à la postérité. Il passait, au contraire, même de son temps, pour ne pas avoir un jugement très sur,” etc. M. Gaffarel claims for Thevet the credit of introducing tobacco into France, and hopes that this may balance the imperfections of his books.
Dr. Kohl gave some credence to Thevet’s narrative, but admits that he is “not esteemed as a very reliable author.” Still, he translated the account of his visit to Penobscot Bay, and inserted it entire in his Discovery of Maine.[126] Dr. De Costa in 1870 criticised this view of Dr. Kohl.[127]
Note.—Harrisse, in his recent Discovery of North America (p. 234), cites for the first time a long passage about Gomez’s voyage from the Islario of Alonso de Santa Cruz, preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna, and finds it to be the source whence Cespedes (see ante, p. 24) drew his language; and in it he finds somewhat uncertain proof that Gomez went as far north as the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and corrected some cartographical notions respecting those waters. A map showing Gomez’s discoveries is attached to the Islario, and Harrisse gives this map in fac-simile.