Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature,
Principally Belletristic .
of Richmond in The Generall Historie are almost surely Smith's own writing.
Egocentric as they are, they are graceful examples of balanced, antithetical,
Elizabethan prose designed to entice men and fortunes to America.
Take for example a few lines of Smith's dedicatory epistle to the Earl of
Hartford:
wherein having beene discouraged for doing any more, I have writ this
little: yet my hands hath been my lands this fifteene years in Europ, Asia,
Afric, or America.
In the harbour of your 1.0: favour, I hope I ever shall rest secure notwithstanding
all weathers; lamenting others, that they fall into such
miseries, as I forseeing have foretold, but could not prevent.
There were to be a host of letters with the same intent, for perhaps 90 percent
of the promotion books and pamphlets mentioned in Chapter I above
were introduced by such dedications, though some not so well expressed.6
Three more personal letters of the year 1608 inaugurate other patterns
and purposes long to be followed in colonial epistolary communication.
On June 16 Francis Perkins addressed a member of the household of Lord
Cornwallis, analyzing the character of the Council in Virginia and soliciting
the assistance of his addressee in obtaining for him a place among them.
On November 26 Captain Peter Wynne, a versatile young colonist, addressed
a "Most noble knight" at home. Writing in an easy, loose, swinging
prose, Wynne indicates that he is a man of some culture in an epistle comparing
an Indian language to Welsh, and announcing that the country
was so pleasant that he was "willing here to end [his} dayes." 7
In October Captain John Smith addressed a letter to the Treasurer and
Council for Virginia which sets a precedent for what was to become another
persistent colonial trait. It gave fair warning that the colonial administrator
would not then or later accept unfair or ignorant criticism from his
superiors at home without answering back. In it Smith refutes point by
point a series of accusations of intracolonial quarreling, summarizes the
shortcomings of his principal rivals in the governing body, and demonstrates
the impracticability of certain schemes of exploration and gold
hunting and the utter inadequacy of the supplies provided. He begins by
acknowledging the Council's letter and begging that they will pardon him
"if I offend you with my rude answers." The rest is the reply of a man
moved by righteous anger.
Though I be no scholar, I am past the schoole-boye; and I desire but to
know, what either you, and those here [his Virginia detractors} doe
know, but that I have learned to tell you by the continuall hazard of my
life. I have not concealed from you anything I know; but I feare some
cause you to believe much more then is true.