The explorer or the pilgrim? Modern critical opinion and the editorial
methods of Richard Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas
Studies in Philology; Chapel Hill; Spring 1997; James P Helfers

Volume:
94
Issue:
2
Start Page:
160-186
ISSN:
00393738
Subject Terms:
Philology
Renaissance period
Literary criticism
Travel
Personal Names:
Hakluyt, Richard (1552-1616)
Purchas, Samuel

Abstract:
Two critical opinions of Richard Hakluyt's "Principal Navigations" and Samuel Purchas'
"Hakluytus Posthumus" rehearse the relative importance given by modern scholars to the
two greatest English Renaissance collections of travel and exploration narratives. The
collections and their editors are described, and modern critical opinion about Hakluyt and
Purchas is discussed.

Full Text:
Copyright University of North Carolina Press Spring 1997

VICTORIAN critic J. A. Froude calls Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations l "the
prose epic of the English Nation."2 On the other hand, G. B. Parks characterizes
Samuel Purchas, editor of Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, as a
"mere worker in archives" who "arranged a museum," in contrast with Hakluyt,
who "gathered the materials of a history and dealt so cunningly with them that
they became a history while retaining the guise of raw materials."3

These two critical opinions rehearse the relative importance given by modern
scholars to the two greatest English Renaissance collections of travel and
exploration narratives. Such estimates of relative importance have changed over
the years, however. The critics of the eighteenth century thought more of
Purchas's collection than they did Hakluyt's.4 These changes in critical appraisal
have come about in part because of changing attitudes toward the use and
purpose of travel narratives. This study will describe the collections and their
editors, and sketch modern critical opinion about Hakluyt and Purchas. These
critical opinions will be examined in light of the explicit and implicit editorial aims
and practices expressed in the two collections. Such an examination, taking the
aims of the collections' editors as the philosophical benchmark, will show that most
modern critical appraisals have castigated Samuel Purchas because they have
not taken into account his expressed editorial aims and the way those aims are
played out in his editorial practices.

BACKGROUNDS: HISTORICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, AND CRITICAL

By the time Hakluyt began his work, the excitement of exploration and discovery
had been "in the air" of Western Europe for over a hundred years, since the days
of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal. England had had an early opportunity
to participate in exploration; Columbus's brother, Bartholomew, had come to
Henry VII's court, probably in 1489 to enlist support for his brother's westward
venture? In 1498 the English commissioned John Cabot to make a western
voyage of discovery. During this voyage Cabot claimed the eastern coast of
Canada for England.

Although English voyages to North America languished for a time after Cabot's
pioneering effort, other voyages that mixed trade and exploration went on during
the sixteenth century-sea voyages in search of the Northeast Passage (which
almost incidentally opened commercial relations with Russia), and overland travels
to Persia and points east. English entrepreneurs, beginning in 1562, began to take
what would become a major role in the slave trade between Africa and the
Caribbean.6 Finally, by the last quarter of the sixteenth century, North American
exploration began in earnest again with Sir Humphrey Gilbert's colonizing efforts
and Martin Frobisher's attempt to find the Northwest Passage. This flurry of
exploration at the end of the sixteenth century produced a large amount of
ephemeral literature-especially pamphlet accounts of various voyages. The
exploring traders and their associates, the economic geographers of the Muscovy
Company, produced much material, both published and unpublished, before
Hakluyt's collection.

The new practical geography spawned by the European exploratory effort was
imported to England by John Leland in 1549 with the publication of his New Year's
Gift.7 Between 1547 and 1561, a new set of geographers evolved in England,
trained first by foreign sources of information and then by domestic ones as
England's land and sea expeditions reached out northeast and southeast. Richard
Hakluyt the elder (cousin and inspirational model of our editor), a lawyer of the
Middle Temple, was one of these commercial geographical consultants to the
merchant explorers who dominated England's exploratory ventures during the
sixteenth century. These commercial geographical consultants made the first
attempts to collect and codify practical foreign geographical information. The older
Richard Hakluyt specialized in mercantile information.8 Richard Hakluyt the
younger was born in 1552, a year before the first Northeast Passage expedition, a
year before Richard Eden translated Munster's Treatise of the Newe India
(concerning the American discoveries) into English. He was, in fact, the youngest
in this line of practical geographers.

Hakluyt's apprenticeship, as it were, in the art of practical geography occurred
after his matriculation from Christ Church, Oxford, where he had learned and
lectured about geography. In 1582 he published Diverse Voyages Touching the
Discovery of America, which collected information in English for a wide audience
of his countrymen. Ironically, this initial collection of voyage materials was
designed to give English explorers information which might be useful in their
attempts to circumvent the American continent; the same motivation underlay
Hakluyt's edition of the Decades of Peter Martyr, another collection of American
voyage narratives. Not until later did Hakluyt become interested in America for its
own sake. He was posted to France between 1583 and 1588 as secretary and
chaplain of Edward Stafford, the queen's ambassador.

During this time, he collected and translated, both from written sources and
interviews with Portuguese exiles, information about America.

The younger Hakluyt became a potent catalyst for the exploration movement at
least in part because he was born at a critical time. When he began his career as
a practical geographer, England's exploratory ventures were beginning to regain
the impetus that they had lost since the beginning of the sixteenth century. He was
instrumental in colonization and trading efforts, and so became one of the
conduits for much of the ephemeral information then circulating, both in pamphlet
and oral form. He collected, arranged, and published much of this information in
the Principal Navigations. Hakluyt became an important consultant on travel: "As a
classifying intelligence [Hakluyt] ranged the experience of the past and supplied it
to the men of action." 9

But Hakluyt was more than just a behind-the-scenes chronicler and consultant. He
was one of the twelve directors of the company formed to back Sir Walter
Ralegh's abortive 1587 attempt to plant a colony in Virginia.lo He also played a
seminal role by outlining what would become the English methodology of
colonization. In 1584 he presented his treatise, Discourse of Western Planting, to
Queen Elizabeth; in it he outlined a new approach to colonial expansion, unlike
that of the Spanish. Instead of concentrating on the conquest of indigenous
peoples and the commandeering and feudal administration of their wealth and
land, as in the Spanish approach, Hakluyt proposed exporting the discontented
and underemployed of England to new and relatively empty lands, with their
abundance of raw materials. The colonists would harvest these resources, which
would feed the growing manufacturing capability of England. Hakluyt's view stands
in marked contrast to those of earlier English explorers. George Parks remarks
that treasurehunting "effectually wrecked the first colonies." ll Hakluyt opposed to
that a sense that staple and renewable commodities provided a better basis for
colonization.

The Reverend Samuel Purchas, M.A. of St. John's College, Cambridge, appointed
himself heir to Hakluyt's place in the history of travel literature, both concretely and
intellectually. He wrote two treatises on the history and ethnology of the world's
religions, Purchas his Pilgrimage (first published in 1614) and Purchas his Pilgrim
(published in 1619), before embarking on his monumental capstone work
Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes (first published in 1625). The
details of his life need not concern us here, except to observe that Purchas, like
Hakluyt, was a historian of travel rather than a traveler himself. Even more than
Hakluyt, Purchas was an observer rather than a participant (or even a consultant)
in the momentous events of exploration and trade then taking place.

Around1610 Purchas scraped an acquaintance with an aging and ailing Hakluyt,
who was at that time collecting narratives for a further edition of the Principal
Navigations. The contacts and interactions between Hakluyt and Purchas are
unclear, but Purchas talks in his introduction to the Pilgrimes about being
promised the legacy of Hakluyt's unpublished papers upon the latter's death. This
apparent agreement was never put into writing, and Purchas ended up having to
purchase Hakluyt's literary remains for an unspecified yet substantial sum in 1617.
For all the apparent legal complications and disappointments Purchas must have
experienced in acquiring these papers, he conscientiously acknowledges his debt
to Hakluyt's research in the Pilgrimes. He also gained access to the records of the
British East India Company (on condition of a promise to print no accounts of the
East which reflected negatively on the English), records which he also used in
compiling the Pilgrimes. One can easily see that Samuel Purchas was perceived
differently from Richard Hakluyt, and that his career unfolded in a markedly
different way. The differences between the collections that they constructed
parallel their biographies.

That the Principal Navigations is an important set of documents is generally
agreed, but critics disagree over the specific kind of importance it has. Froude's
statement that the Principal Navigations is a prose epic sums up one side of
Hakluyt's appeal. His narratives are powerful communicators of a national ethos to
a wide audience. On the other hand, E. E. Speight characterizes the collection as
"one of those monumental outcrops of miscellaneous literature" of the Elizabethan
period; Parks affirms that lack of focus is Hakluyt's characteristic weakness.12
These views stress the inclusiveness and heterogeneity of the materials collected,
though the criticisms of Speight and Parks point out a certain lack of focus.

In literary terms, there is at least something to be said for calling the Principal
Navigations an epic. Parks sums up the arguments this way: the book embodies
"a theme of consequence" (as enunciated by its title and evidenced by its
contents); "it . . . fill[s] its frame with the events of the moment," and it "possess[es]
dignity." It "tell[s] a noble story of heroic characters."'3 The reader who examines
specific narratives will see these requirements largely fulfilled.

But Hakluyt has, in literary terms, his shortcomings as well, chief among them
what many commentators label his "diffuseness." This is a natural consequence of
Hakluyt's propensity as an archivist/historian for complete coverage of exploratory
history in certain areas. His treatment of the Russian voyages illustrates that not
only finished narratives are included, but also ships' logs, ambassadors' reports,
and business and diplomatic documents. Besides adding a more complete picture,
these non-narrative materials add tediousness for the reader conditioned to more
conventionally literary expectations.

The reader who comes to Hakluyt's Principal Navigations sees a variety of
narrators, each telling his own story in his own style. But the Principal Navigations
contains more genres of communication than travel narratives-it contains maps,
lists, instructions to merchantexplorers, and legal documents, among other things.
The heterogeneity of the Principal Navigations makes it what it is: the supreme
chronicle of the English Renaissance age of discovery, and a new kind of literary
document as well. Hakluyt's organization of the collection is broadly directional
("Voyages to the North and Northeast Quarters," etc., my emphasis) and, within
that organization, chronological; it provides at least a broadly narrative movement,
if not the strict beginning, middle, and end favored by some commentators. In
addition, Hakluyt's editorial principles allow for other broadly literary effects: the
completeness of the record, which includes many different kinds of written artifacts
as well as graphic representations (maps), impresses a sense of specificity,
factuality, and comprehensiveness upon the reader. One has almost a novelistic
sense of the minute examination, not only of surface events and concrete facts in
temporal progression, but of hidden motivations and conflicts not given by the
surface narrative, and finally, of a comprehensive (or as comprehensive as
historically possible) panorama of a geographical area, though in strictly personal
terms.

The chronological ordering gives the reader a sense of both the sweep and the
inchoateness of history, especially history as told in the terms of individual
participants. Here the material runs counter to the literary expectation for
closure-Hakluyt was collecting the primary material of an ongoing enterprise.

The simple prose style of many narratives and most of the supporting documents
also frustrates literary expectations of layers of meaning and allusion, and
symbolic representation of theme. Instead, the reader is confronted by
straightforward, concrete description for the most part, and the narration of conflict
based on confrontation with elemental situations, such as the struggle to keep a
small ship afloat in the heavy seas of a storm, or among the ice floes of the north;
the intrinsic difficulties of initiating contact with natives; the unexamined excitement
of the quest for wealth and wonder; or the often fatal strains that result between
expedition members confronted with unknown and threatening situations. All these
characteristics, however, point the way to the simplicity and directness of the
realistic tradition in the novel. Actually, writers do reach for symbols, comparisons,
and allusions to relate their sense of wonder at the new to audiences at home. But
in these narratives of discovery and exploration the wonder is based firmly in the
concrete reality of the situation. The imagination must come into play less to
create the reality than to bridge the gap between the new and wonderful
environment and the familiarity of home.

Most of Samuel Purchas's Pil rimes parallels Hakluyt's Principal Navigations in
content as well as overall structure. One critic's comment that "the plan of the
Pilgrimes is essentially the plan of the Principall Navigations" is quite right; the
narratives are still arranged by geographic area, and within that scheme, by
time.l4 Purchas's material, however, is overwhelmingly narrative in form; there are
few lists, original contracts, or other legal/historical documents. Because of this
difference in material, Purchas somewhat modifies Hakluyt's structure and departs
significantly from Hakluyt's editorial methods. The Pilgrimes' opening section
concerning the ancient authorities on the validity and spiritual significance of
travel, for example, does not fit into Hakluyt's framework. Purchas also
concentrates more than Hakluyt does on contemporary narrators, and includes
narrators from other countries (much of his South American information is Spanish
and his African information, Portuguese). Yet, though Purchas writes for the
armchair traveler, much Renaissance exploration information remains the same
as what Hakluyt probably would have published had he decided not to concentrate
mostly on British exploration. It is in the historical/legendary information that he
epitomizes, in his inclusion of contemporary prototourists, and in his marginal
editorializing that Purchas reveals his essential difference of aim most fully.
Finally, the Pilgrimes contains around twenty-five percent more material than the
second edition of Hakluyt's Principal Navigations.

Hakluyt's reputation as a geographer of travel is justly preeminent; as a literary
source, the compilation captures the imaginations of the writers in more
conventional genres, as Robert Cawley's Unpathed Waters chronicles at length.15
Further, Hakluyt's compilation works as a geographical reference, source of
information for new exploration, and even a kind of propaganda, in the sense that
the information given in the book is designed to feed the impulse to explore
among its readers.

Many critical evaluations of Hakluyt's collection have come from historians of
geography; these analysts are primarily concerned with Hakluyt's adherence to
principles of objective historiography; they react favorably to his explicit editorial
aim of inclusiveness, and they repeat the commonplace that Hakluyt as editor
tampers very little with the material he uses. How far these commendatory
opinions are accurate is another matter.

What contemporary critical opinion there is (both literary and historical) on
Purchas's editorial efforts, and especially on the Pilgrimes, is decidedly negative.
Philip Barbour says that "Purchas labored piously in a religious and
proto-ethnological vein," then goes on to give evidence for Purchas's bad editorial
judgment." W. A. Raleigh castigates Purchas's handling of materials inherited from
Hakluyt, saying that Purchas "scattered them about the four volumes of his
Pilgrimes, after his irregular and curtailed or contracted manner, interspersed with
remarks often silly, and always little to the purpose." 17 Critical opinion of Purchas
rehearses two major themes: he is an active editor in ways that Hakluyt is
not-specifically, Purchas edits out portions of his source materials in irregular
ways; and Purchas comments on his materials in ways that Hakluyt does not,
often preaching or making other inappropriate remarks. The sum effect of critical
comment like this, comment which assumes principles of objective and scientific
historiography as its criteria of quality, gives Samuel Purchas less than his due as
a literary figure. Purchas intends something different from Hakluyt's revolutionary
effort; the younger man stands within a consciously literary tradition embodied by
late medieval pilgrimage narratives. Purchas's different audience and purposes
are reflected by the specific editorial choices he makes.18 Most assessments of
Purchas's accomplishment in the Pilgrimes are based on the assumption that his
aims were primarily those of Hakluyt. But Purchas's style and aspects of his book's
structure, as well, differ from Hakluyt's; his editorial style produces a work which
has a greater affinity with pilgrimage writings than it does with the new kind of
work that Hakluyt had produced. The relatively little recent critical attention that
Purchas's collection has received proceeds on assumptions about his editorial
aims and method which this analysis will show have been mistaken.

EDITORIAL AIMS AND PRACTICES

Hakluyt's editorial aims, as expressed in the dedications and prefatory epistles to
the volumes of the Principal Navigations, are closely tied to certain biographical
events which he retells. The most significant of these relates to his cousin, who
indoctrinated him early with the wonders of geographical study:

I do remember that being a youth. . . it was my happe to visit the chamber of M.
Richard Hakluyt my cosin . . . at a time when I found lying open upon his boord
certeine bookes of Cosmographie, with an universall Mappe: he seeing me
somewhat curious in the view therof, began to instruct my ignorance, by shewing
me the division of the earth. . . he pointed with his wand to all the knowen . . .
Territories of ech part, with declaration also of their speciall commodities, &
particular wants, which by the benefit of traffike, & entercourse of merchants are
plentifully supplied. From the Mappe he brought me to the Bible, and turning to
the 107 Psalme, directed mee to the 23 & 24 verses, where I read, that they which
go downe to the sea in ships, and occupy by the great waters, they see the works
of the Lord, and his woonders in the deepe, &c. Which words of the Prophet
together with my cousins discourse (things of high and rare delight to my yong
nature) tooke in me so deepe an impression, that I constantly resolved, if ever I
were preferred to the University, . . . I would by Gods assistance prosecute that
knowledge and kinde of literature.... (PN, 1 : XVii--xviii)

In this description, we can see implicit many motivations for the collecting activities
and editorial practices of our compiler. Foremost is an academic and scientific
curiosity about geography, which Hakluyt's cousin fleshes out and renders
practical by talking about new geographical theories and the commodities of
countries he points out. All this curiosity is validated by a reference to the
Scriptures, which vindicate it as a primary motive.

As we look at Hakluyt's lifework, it is easy to see that complex motives underlie his
collecting of this monumental group of voyage materials; among the principal of
these motivations is patriotism, a new kind of patriotism implicit in Hakluyt's
references to "the English Nation." Hakluyt says that he was at first moved to
collect his documents after he both heard in speech, and read in books other
nations miraculously extolled for their discoveries and notable enterprises by sea,
but the English of all others for their sluggish security, and continuall neglect of the
like attempts especially in so long and happy a time of peace, either ignominiously
reported or exceedingly condemned.... Thus both hearing, and reading of the
obloquie of our nation and finding few or none of our owne men able to replie
heerin. . my selfe . . . determined notwithstanding all difficulties, to undertake the
burden of that worke wherin all others pretended either ignorance, or lacke of
leasure, or want of sufficient argument.... (PN, 1 :xviii-xix)

This telling passage in Hakluyt's introduction underscores a point also made
implicitly in the description of his personal introduction to geography-that Hakluyt's
motives in publishing this record are at least partially emotional. At a basic
emotional level, Hakluyt is motivated by his curiosity as a geographer; beyond
that, he is moved by love for his country to redress a wrong of which he has
become aware during his foreign sojourn. Later on he will disclaim all motivation
from considerations of fame or profit: instead he pictures the process of collecting
and translating these documents as monetarily profitless toil. But, he says,
someone must undertake this necessary task of historical documentation.

Not only can one see clearly in the dedications to both the first and second
editions of the Principal Navigations that patriotism is the overarching motivation
behind the publication of these records; the contents of both editions bear out this
enunciated goal. The overwhelming majority of documents and narratives are
English. G. B. Parks sees a slight change in focus between the first and second
editions (the second edition includes some foreign narratives, most about places
in America unexplored by the English), but acknowledges that these new changes
in editorial policy are "implicit in the original plan." 19

Since during the interval between the publication of the first and second editions of
the Principal Navigations England had developed a maritime power equal in might
to Spain, Hakluyt was in the second edition more concerned to give information
helpful to the main work of his life-furthering English colonial expansion. In fact,
Hakluyt explains that he has included foreign information about areas of the world
"where our owne mens experience is defective."Zo Hakluyt intends at least the
second edition of his compilation to provide as much information as possible
(whether foreign or domestic) for English explorers and colonists to use. He does
not, however, explicitly state this motivation.

Hakluyt's patriotic motive of silencing the foreign critics of England's maritime
might comes out both in the narratives he includes and in the kind of editorial
changes he makes. He includes many accounts of sea battles with Spain, some of
which are irrelevant as exploration, and which are only nominally concerned with
trade. The most noticeable of these is the account of the 1588 defeat of the
Spanish Armada21 In fact, it is in the inclusion of such a great mass of material
that Hakluyt's patriotic motive is most clearly evident. He wants to disprove foreign
notions about English "sluggish security" by the rhetorical expedient of simple
accretion. During his introductory remarks, Hakluyt provides a catalogue which
shows, by its sheer bulk, that English mariners and explorers have gone to all
parts of the globe. Finally, Hakluyt wants

to speake a word of that just commendation which our nation doe indeed deserve:
it can not be denied, but as in all former ages, they have bene men full of activity,
stirrers abroad, and searchers of the remote parts of the world, so in this most
famous and peerlesse governement of her most excellent Majesty, her subjects
through the speciall assistance, and blessing of God, in searching the most
opposite corners and quarters of the world, and to speake plainly, in compassing
the vaste globe of the earth more then once, have excelled all the nations and
people of the earth. (PN, 1:xx)

As expressed here, this view of English activity is grandiose and even unrealistic in
scope, rather polemical than objective. Hakluyt was versed enough in voyage
information to realize that at least three other countries had as strong a claim to
have excelled more than any other in exploration. Spain had discovered the
American continents in the first place, and within the ninety years since that
discovery and the 1589 edition of The Principall Navigations had explored much of
the coast of South America and a significant amount of southern North America,
planting colonies along the way. Spain had also accomplished the first
circumnavigation of the globe, as well as many Southeast Asian discoveries.
Portugal, too, had explored the African coast and established a foothold on the
Indian subcontinent on its way to trade with the Far East. France, another relative
latecomer to the colonial scene, had already begun exploring the interior of North
America, using the Saint Lawrence River and Great Lakes as routes of
transportation. In the face of these historical facts, however, Hakluyt's sentiment
most clearly expresses a mindset fixed upon positive achievement and possibility
rather than on limitations. Such a mindset would comport well with forwarding the
enterprise of English colonial expansion.

Besides his strictly patriotic and pragmatic motivations, Hakluyt had a historian's
goal as well: he wanted to publish a complete record of England's involvement in
maritime and exploratory ventures, as well as a general record of the historical
sweep of England's foreign trade. This goal also leaves its mark on the contents
and structure of the compilation. The bulk and scope of both editions of the work,
and the huge increase in size between them (from approximately 7oo,ooo words
in the first edition to almost 1,7oo,ooo words in the second edition), attest not only
to Hakluyt's yen for completeness but also to his indefatigability as a collector of
documents. As we have seen, Hakluyt's pragmatic and patriotic motives are
mentioned explicitly in his introductions as impetuses. One must deduce Hakluyt's
historical motives from other evidence: by his expressed admiration for the
chroniclerhistorians who preceded him, and by the increasing size and
comprehensiveness of the second edition of the Principal Navigations.3

Only one other motivation is explicitly mentioned by Hakluyt in his introductions,
and this motive is less an impetus to his writing than an underlying reason for
exploration. We have already seen that, by his own admission, Hakluyt saw
Scripture as both a source of inspiration for and a validation of his desire to study
geography. As a man whose training and early occupation were the Christian
ministry, this inspiration and validation must have been emotionally important. This
emotional importance, however, only indirectly concerns the religious motive for
exploration that Hakluyt mentions.

This motivation has two aspects: first, the chance that exploration gives to bring
pagans to Christianity, and second, a sense of the Providence of God at work in
England's history. Both of these aspects can be seen in this excerpt from Hakluyt's
introduction to the second edition of the Principal Navigations:

Which action [exploration and colonization], if . . . it shal please the Almighty to
stirre up her Majesties heart to continue with her favourable countenance. . . with
transporting of one or two thousand of her people, and such others as upon mine
owne knowledge will most willingly at their owne charge become Adventurers in
good numbers with their bodies and goods; she shall by Gods assistance, in short
space, worke many great and unlooked for effects, increase her dominions, enrich
her cofers, and reduce many Pagans to the faith of Christ. The neglecting hitherto
of which last point our adversaries daily in many of their bookes full bitterly lay
unto the charge of the professors of the Gospell. (PN, z:lxvii)

The relative importance of the two reasons for exploration and colonization
mentioned is readily apparent from the relative amounts of space that Hakluyt
gives them here. Pragmatic reasons for exploration have been mentioned
continually through the introduction; here Hakluyt puts in an argument for his own
specific method of colonization, emphasizing its importance to the nation. This
discussion of pragmatic motivations takes up most of the paragraph of which this
quotation is a part. In context, the pragmatic arguments bracket the religious
motive, which seems to be mentioned primarily out of obligation. The religious
motive itself comes last in a list of advantages to the queen of colonization. Even
the reason of proselytizing is curiously secondhand: other countries are criticizing
England for its lack of religious zeal.

But the other aspect of the religious motive, God's providential working in the
affairs of the English nation, runs through Hakluyt's discussion in a strong
undercurrent. The Almighty must work in the queen's heart, stirring her up to
sponsor expeditions; these expeditions, in their turn, need God's assistance to
work great and surprising effects for the queen (who is in the second portion a
metonymy for the country at large). The underlying point seems to be that God's
assistance is needed in order to secure material and political benefits for the
nation. It illustrates well the fact that for Hakluyt evangelism becomes a convenient
and conventionally admired motive for exploration, though the reader senses that
the editor's actual motives lie elsewhere.

Hakluyt's conditional sense of God's providence (that is, that certain things must
be done so that God will bless the nation's exploration) is turned on its head
elsewhere in his introductions. Talking about the Spanish Armada, he says,

I thinke that never was any nation blessed of JEHOVAH, with a more glorious and
wonderfull victory upon the Seas, then our vanquishing of the dreadfull Spanish
Armada, 1588. But why should I presume to call it our vanquishing; when as the
greatest part of them escaped us, and were onely by Godes out-stretched arme
overwhelmed in the Seas, dashed in pieces against the Rockes, and made
fearefull spectacles and examples of his judgements unto all Christendome? (PN,
1:lviii)

There is here almost an Old Testament sense of England as the chosen nation
protected by God. Hakluyt says that God predestined the English to be victorious;
by implication the astute and religiously inclined reader could have come to further
conclusions as implied by earlier references to providence-if England is chosen by
God for victory, under his direction victory in exploration (especially by sea) is also
certain. Given this mindset, every successful exploration, sea battle, political
advantage, or profit only serves as further evidence of God's providential care and
glorification of the nation. This sense of destiny could only inflame exploring
fervor. In this way, Hakluyt's rather naive patriotic confidence about England's
exploratory efforts is reinforced by his religious sense of the nation's grand destiny
in the scheme of divine providence.

A concentration on the religious dimension of travel and exploration is also
apparent in the compilations of Samuel Purchas. Even the titles of his major works
make clear that he conceived of travel in the spiritual terms of pilgrimage. These
titles suggest Purchas's aim: first, to supply an explicit overall structure to
disparate groups of travel narratives, groups that in Hakluyt had remained
inchoate. Second, Purchas hopes to edify. The reader can see indications of this
from his introductions and the reasoned defenses of travel that his collection
includes; they contend that travel in books is better (or less open to miscarriage at
least) than the real thing. But often for Purchas the edification of travel history can
be specifically religious. Left to himself, Purchas explicitly revives the older
pilgrimage tradition in his writing, as when he retells legends of Old Testament
figures:

Of Salomon the holy Scriptures have thus recorded. I. Kings 9. 26, 27, 28. And
King Solomon made a Navie of Ships.... And Hiram sent in the Navie his servants,
Shipmen that had knowledge of the Sea with the servants of Solomon. And they
came to Ophir and sent from thence Gold 420. Talents, and brought it to King
Solomon. And Cap. lo. ii. The Navie also of Hiram, that brought Gold from Ophir
brought in from Ophir great plenty of Almug trees and precious stones; 12. And
the King made of the Almug trees Pillars for the house of the Lord, & for the Kings
House; Harps also and Psalteries for Singers: there came no such Almug Trees,
nor were seen unto this day....

This is an extract of Solomons Story, so much as concernes our present purpose,
the authoritie whereof is Sacred, a Divine, infallible, inviolable, and undenyable
veritie; the fitter ground for many high and worthy consequences hereafter to be
delivered. I shall here leave to the Divinitie Schooles, in more leisurely
contemplation to behold the Allegoricall sense (shall I say, or application?)
wherein Solomon seemes to signifie Christ, his Navy the Church (long before lively
represented in that first of Ships, the Ark of Noah) which in the Sea of this variable
World seekes for the golden Treasures of Wisdome and Knowledge, with (that
plentifull riches) the rich plentie of good workes . .24

This passage harks back to the tradition of pilgrimage guides, which included
travel information with an edifying spiritual sense, if read rightly. Purchas's use of
allegory completely switches style and emphasis from the specific descriptions of
Hakluyt's narrators, and even the nonreligious political allegories of late medieval
travel writers. Instead of concrete details, the reader gets lists of
commodities-certainly concrete in themselves, but not part of a picturable scene.
The names are bare with no adjectival modifiers but those of quantity. Purchas
concentrates here not on physical objects but on his attempt to allegorize a
spiritual meaning for the story. The reader sees the Church as navy, as Noah's
ark, with a cargo of golden treasures-godly wisdom and knowledge. Purchas is
more concerned here with making a moral lesson vivid than he is with concrete
descriptions of this journey.

Purchas often uses the allegorization of concrete situations to teach moral and
theological lessons. But he is a Protestant, and from that viewpoint pilgrimage has
become less a concrete journey than a metaphor for spiritual growth. Depending
on the individual's inner spiritual condition, any journey can become a pilgrimage.
It is the job of the Protestant minister (or clerical editor of travel narratives) to
explicate in words this inner devotional act for his parishioners. Thus, as in a
sermon, the reality symbolized by these words may be quickened to life in the
mind of the hearer or reader. In a corollary to this, any ordinary life event or
journey can be imbued with moral and spiritual significance, given the right
interpreter. Purchas takes upon himself the task of spiritual interpreter for the
history of English travel and exploration.

Given these essentially spiritual motivations, his work intends something quite
different from the promotion of colonization, though the detail in which he treats
the pioneering voyages of the English East India Company suggests that he does
wish to promote sympathy for the difficulty of the new entrepreneurial trading
ventures in the East. (The detailed treatment he gives the East India voyages also
implies his special access to East India Company records.) But he mainly wants to
offer his readers "a World of travellers to their domestike entertainment, easie to
be spared from their smoke, Cup, or Butter-flie vanities and superfluities, and fit
mutually to entertaine them in a better Schoole to better purposes."' That is,
Purchas writes for the edification of the leisure class, which by his day had already
begun to turn exploration into other kinds of travel.26 Some of Purchas's prefatory
comments to the Pilgrimes make clear that the debate which the development of
the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European "Grand Tour" would raise in
earnest had begun:

Travell is accounted an excellent Ornament to [gentlemen]; and therefore many of
them comming to their Lands sooner then to their Wits, adventure themselves to
see the Fashions of other Countries, where their soules and bodies find
temptations to a twofold Whoredom, whence they see the World as Adam had
knowledge of good and evill, with the losse or lessening of their estate in this
English (and perhaps also in the heavenly Paradise) & bring home a few
smattering termes, flattering garbes, Apish crings, foppish fancies, foolish guises
and disguises, the vanities of Neighbor Nations (I name not Naples) without
furthering their knowledge of God, the World, or themselves. (Pilgrimes, 1: xliv)
Purchas hopes to offer all the advantages of travel through his book, with none of
these disadvantages.

But he also has another, and higher, purpose. He wishes to promote wisdom, in
this case, wisdom about the natural world. He describes his intentions in his
epistle to the reader:

Naturall things are the more proper Object [of this work], namely the ordinary
Workes of God in the Creatures, preserving and disposing by Providence that
which his Goodnesse and Power had created, and dispersed in the divers parts of
the World, as so many members of this great Bodie. (Pilgrimes, 1 :xxxix) This
statement, of course, tells the reader that Purchas will emphasize the theological
implications of the works he edits (its oblique references to theological concepts
are an implicit example here). Purchas's explicit acknowledgment of this purpose
opens a great gulf between him and Hakluyt, although both are preachers27
Lessons in divinity and theology were never Hakluyt's real concern, but they are
Purchas's. The sense of the difference between the two becomes even stronger
when the reader discovers Purchas's conception of his role as editor. And well
may the Author [Purchas is speaking of his role as compiler here] be ranked with
such Labourers (howsoever here a Master-builder also) for that he hath been
forced as much to the Hod Barrow and Trowel, as to contemplative survaying:
neither in so many Labyrinthian Perambulations thorow, and Circumnavigations
about the World in this and his other Workes, was ever enabled to maintaine a
Vicarian or Subordinate Scribe, but his own hands to worke, as well as his head to
contrive these voluminous Buildings.... (Pilgrimes, 1 :xl-xli, bracketed interpolations
mine) Purchas's reference to himself as the "Author" expresses his sense of the
importance of the editor's role. He sees it as an active part, analogous to that of
the architect and supervisor of a building under construction. Purchas's religious,
even medievally religious, conception of his role is borne out by the comparison of
himself to a master-builder (or master-mason), the coordinator of and head
laborer in the construction of a Gothic cathedral. Many of Purchas's comments,
then, and all of his titles accentuate the moral and theological purposes behind his
editing of the Pilgrimes. All these evidences remind the reader that this verbal
cathedral, with its "labyrinthian Perambulations," is built by many workmen like a
medieval stone construction but given coherence by the presence of a supervising
designer, the master-mason. This didactically theological intention, ancillary to
(but not usually at odds with) the intentions of the travelers themselves, profoundly
affects Purchas's editing process.

Explicit statements of editorial intention are only a part of the story, however.
Actual editorial practices can either bear out or subvert those stated aims. Hakluyt,
for example, explicitly states that he prefers to have his narrators speak for
themselves: And to the ende that those men which were the paynefull and
personall travellers might reape that good opinion and just commendation which
they have deserved, and further, that every man might answere for himselfe,
justifie his reports, and stand accountable for his owne doings, I have referred
every voyage to his Author, which both in person hath performed, and in writing
hath left the same.... (PN, l:xxiii-xxiv) This preference has educational and
pragmatic value; the specificity of personal accounts is more profitable (in terms of
scientific knowledge and personal survival) than the generalizations of theoretical
geography. Into the bargain, the attachment of information to a specific narrator
gives the opportunity to place either praise or blame; the individual becomes
guarantor of his words. Such a policy creates an important, though implicit,
editorial stance: it makes the direct telling of stories the focus of interest, a focus
punctuated by supporting documents which flesh out the background of action.
The editor, though invisible, has an important adjudicating role.

The primary way that Hakluyt accomplishes his patriotic goal of showing the grand
scope of English exploratory activity, for example, is through the simple accretion
of material. He piles narrative upon narrative, document upon document, to
provide an overwhelming impression of English vitality. And he does all this in the
words of the protagonists themselves. Though Hakluyt tampers relatively little with
the narratives he does publish, considerations of politics and trade sometimes
cause him to abridge materials or even omit them entirely. All these factors point
to the pragmatic as well as patriotic thinking which dominates all of Hakluyt's
editorial work. On the subject of Hakluyt's pragmatic emendations of narratives,
critical opinions vary. William Boring states that Hakluyt eliminated wordy
preliminaries yet never tampered with any of the narratives themselves. D. B.
Quinn will not go so far, although he states, "If [Hakluyt] tampered with those
words [of the voyage narrators] it was almost always to clarify, not to distort."29
Other critics, however, point to Hakluyt's judicious use of the editorial pencil on
George Turberville's satiric poem about Russian customs and morals. Charles
Armstrong comments as well on the excision of "The Voyage to Cadiz" from the
second edition of The Principal Navigations, speculating that the disgrace of
Essex, the commander of the voyage, prompted the censorship. Further, several
critics comment that Hakluyt has chosen only narratives that reflect favorably or at
least neutrally on the participants, although in some cases he had less flattering
accounts available. G. P. B. Naish comments that "the most brilliant exploit is not
always the one best recorded. Nor does everyone get his deserts." 31 For
example, E. G. R. Taylor states that Hakluyt used his "blue pencil" on the narrative
accounts of Edward Fenton's abortive 1582-83 voyage around Cape Horn.32 The
voyage was spoiled by Fenton's unfitness for command and by internal squabbles
about how and where to plunder Spanish shipping. Luke Ward's narrative of his
part in the voyage (printed in full in the 1589 Principall Navigations) is only part of
the story, and not even the most perceptive account available. Richard Madox,
appointed the Official Registrar of the voyage, penned an account which Parks
says "contains as much sharp personal observation of the conflicts on board as
any novelist would make." 33 Parks notes that observations like Madox's could not
be published, since they described in detail Fenton's growing paranoia and the
crew's mutinous behavior.

In fact, critics who concentrate on specific narratives in the Principal Navigations
often remark on Hakluyt's abridgment of texts, mainly for pragmatic
reasons-perhaps a hero loses favor, or perhaps publishing the whole of a specific
narrative about America might reduce its propaganda value, or perhaps Hakluyt
doesn't want to offend a trading partner like the Russians.34

One can see that the critical comments on The Principal Navigations have a
peculiar and contradictory quality. Most critics will remark on the specific
emendations they see in the material they study yet will repeat the commonplace
that Hakluyt almost never tampers with the narratives he collects. An examination
of scholarship on specific narratives reveals that Hakluyt did, in fact, exercise a
good deal of editorial judgment over his collected Renaissance narratives.
Specifically, his editorial intervention consists primarily of excision. He eliminates
narratives for specific political reasons, as we have seen. He eliminated The
Travels of Sir John Mandeville and David Ingram's narrative of his alleged
American journey from the 1598 edition of the Principal Navigations, possibly
because of his doubts about their veracity (although in the case of Mandeville
there is no explicit evidence to confirm this motivation; he may instead have
eliminated it because of its wide availability in print) .35 He kept out some versions
of journeys because they conflicted with his purpose of idealizing English
character. Finally, he eliminated almost all scholastic, deductive, geographical
argumentsanything that interfered with the direct thrust of personal description in
a narrative.

Purchas, on the other hand, lacks Hakluyt's overriding desire to let the travelers
speak for themselves, although he continues to organize his material historically
and regionally, as Hakluyt did. Instead, Purchas labors to reduce the "confused
Chaos" of his authors by pruning repetitions, except when these repetitions are
necessary for fuller testimony.: As editor, Purchas wants more than anything else
to provide an orderly exposition of natural wisdom, with a theological bent.
Further, just as a cathedral expresses the devotion of its builders, the compilation
and construction of the Pilgrimes expresses its editor's devotion. Abridgment of
narratives is necessary to achieve coherence, just as a concentration on the
religious side of exploration history achieves his theological aims.

Critics have minimized Purchas's style as tendentious and moralistic, and there is
no doubt that Purchas expresses an explicit and uncomplicated devotion to the
Protestant orthodoxy of his day throughout his editorial commentary. But the
critics, and especially the critics of Purchas's editorial methods, miss three
important extenuating factors: first, Purchas's style owes much to Euphuism, and
even to the complexity of the metaphysical conceit; second, Purchas is trying to
revive (with Protestant and secularizing modifications) the older, more literary
tradition of pilgrimage narrative, with its allegorical framework; and third, Purchas's
editorial practices are not radically different from those of Hakluyt.

First, Purchas, unlike Hakluyt, is affected by the Euphuistic style. The reader is
struck, even while reading Purchas's early introductions, with several features of
Euphuism: within long, periodic sentences, Purchas constructs extensive and
extended metaphorical structures. Some of these elaborate on a simile of natural
history, but more often elaborate on some scriptural or religious theme. Purchas's
marginal comments abound in alliteration, though not usually the more complex
transverse alliteration. Given the editor's religious orientation, the reader expects
the proverbs with which Purchas adorns his introductions, marginal comments,
and other summaries. He is fond of the rhetorical question as well." When Purchas
likens his collection to a labyrinthine set of buildings (which image he later
sharpens into a cathedral), characterizing himself as master mason, the reader
has one example of an extended metaphor on a religious theme. Other of his
metaphorical comparisons smack of the metaphysical conceit, as does this one
which parallels the compass image of John Donne's "Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning": And as in Geometricall compasses one foote is fixed in the Centre,
whiles the other mooveth in the Circumference, so is it with Purchas and his
Pilgrimes, in this Geographicall compassing: they have their own motions, but
ordered in this circumference, from, for, and by him which abideth at home in his
Centre, and never travelled two hundred miles from Thaxted in Essex . . . where
hee was borne. (Pilgrimes, 20:130)

Like Donne's works, as well as writings in the Euphuistic style, Purchas abounds
with sometimes alliterative puns, even puns upon his own name. Although
scriptural and religious metaphors make up most of Purchas's conceits, he
manages to inject a significant number of exempla of and proverbial statements
about classical figures, as well as Latin tags? Such ornateness suggests that
Purchas wrote with an awareness of, if not a complete facility in, the ornaments of
the Euphuistic school.

Second, Purchas is attempting to revive an allegorical framework within which to
interpret travel, a framework which has much in common with the one assumed by
the late medieval Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Whether or not this attempt is
wrongheaded or anachronistic, it shows Purchas's fundamentally literary
pretensions, pretensions less clouded by explicit and implicit pragmatic motives
than those of Hakluyt and his narrators. Within the explicitly didactic framework
that his religious values and allegorical tendencies set up, it is not surprising that
Purchas makes comments on the morality of actions within the narratives he
collects.

Modern critics see his editorial comments as evidence of unconscionable bias and
have been tempted to oversimplify his intentions. One critic, commenting on
Purchas's marginal notes and choice of incident in the East Indian narratives, says
that "while Hakluyt's villains are the Spanish, Purchas's are the Dutch."39 Purchas
himself, however, is careful to point out that he doesn't see the Dutch as a nation
of villains. If the Dutch have such [evil individuals] also, in the History of both I
must mention both, and yet protest before God (to whom I shall answere it with
the burning of bodie and soule, not these Bookes alone, if I bee perfidious) that I
am not guiltie to my selfe of hatred to that Nation.... (Pilgrimes, 1 :xlix-1) I would
be glad to see agreement betwixt the English and the Dutch, both because I
honour that Nation, as hath appeared in this whole work . . . of which the Dutch
are so great a part and because in Region, Religion, Originall Nation, ingenious
and ingenuous disposition, and (that which here brings both on our Stage) the
glory of Navigation, they are so neere us, and worthie to be honored. (Pilgrimes,
13:2)

Other similar passages about the Dutch preclude such simple conclusions about
Purchas's editorial aims. In fact, unlike the Principal Navigations, the Pilgrimes has
few strictly pragmatic motivations: Purchas is concerned to teach lessons, but
lessons of wisdom instead of colonial theory, lessons which stimulate interest and
right attitudes through wondrous yet trustworthy facts rather than encouraging
exploration through idealized portrayals. Wisdome is said to bee the Science of
things Divine and humane. Divine things are either naturall or supernaturall: these
such, as the naturall man knoweth not, nor can know, because they are spiritually
(with a spirituall Eye) discerned; called wisedome to salvation, the proper subject
of Theologie, and not the peculiar argument of this Worke . (Pilgrimes, :xxxix) But
Purchas does not lack fulsomeness. His almost sycophantic dedications show that
he would quickly stoop to the most exaggerated flattery if he thought it necessary
(how much of this can be excused as conventional Euphuistic rhetorical
complication is another matter). Nor is he above idealizing landscapes in
description. His encomium on the Virginia colony is an example: We hold it
[Virginia] to be one of the goodliest parts of the Earth abounding with Navigable
rivers full of varietie of Fish and Fowle; falling from high and steepe Mountaines,
which by generall relation of the Indians are rich with Mines of Gold, Silver, and
Copper: another Sea lying within sixe dayes journey beyond them, into which
other Rivers descend. The soile fruitfull and apt to produce the best sorts of
commodities, replenished with many Trees for severall uses, Gums, Dyes, Earths
and Simples of admirable vertues; Vines and Mulberry Trees growing wild in great
quantities; the woods full of Deare, Turkies, and other Beasts and Birds.
(Pilgrimes, 20:134) It is interesting to note, however, that this new idealization of
landscape concentrates more on the natural resources vital to colonization than
upon gold for the taking.

Finally, Purchas has been criticized for the kind and extent of his editing. Yet it is
clear from the foregoing discussion of Hakluyt's editorial methods that the two
editors differ more in degree than in kind. Most of Hakluyt's editing consists of
excision, usually of entire sections of text. Yet Hakluyt is not above deleting
without comment small amounts of text which he saw as politically, commercially,
or philosophically inexpedient to publish. And Hakluyt sometimes speaks with his
own voice in his compilations. In a significant number of cases, Hakluyt has
concocted unified narratives from many sources in his own words. Purchas
describes his own editorial methods this way: I have . . . either wholly omitted or
passed dry foot things neere and common; Far fetched and deare bought are the
Lettice sutable to our lips.... My Genius delights rather in by-wayes then
high-wayes.

. . . humane affaires are by Eyewitnesses related more amply and certainly then
any Collector ever hath done, or perhaps without these helpes could doe.... and
yet (except where the Author or Worke it selfe permitted not) these vast Volumes
are contracted, and Epitomised, that the nicer Reader might not be cloyed.
(Pilgrimes, ii-xl-xli) This "contraction" of material is, of course, more extensive than
Hakluyt's; that is not to be wondered at, given the immense amount of material
(around three million words) that Purchas saw fit to publish and the even more
immense volume of material through which he had to sift. He certainly also
"epitomizes," but he makes clear that these passages are epitomes by using
chapter headings and running sidenotes. This does not differ in kind from
Hakluyt's practice of interviewing and collecting, then writing a coherent temporal
narrative in his own terms. Purchas gives more space to editorializing; this fits the
difference in intention between his collection and Hakluyt's. Purchas should not be
judged in terms of criteria more appropriate to a different type of collection, as
most critics have been prone to do. He is engaged on a project uniquely his own.
CONCLUSIONS Historical critical opinion agrees that Hakluyt is unique as a
promoter of early exploration and a chronicler in English of early journeys. He has
also tried to break new ground as a recorder of travel. The cumulative effect of his
revolutionary compilation of narrative and supporting contextual documents was to
interest and inspire-especially to interest and inspire the possible patrons of
voyages, but, more widely, to inspire the nation as a whole. Hakluyt realized, first
of all, that the primary inspiration for the Renaissance voyagers and their backers
was return on their investment. Ralegh characterizes the narratives of Hakluyt as
"a record of failure."40 Critics generally agree that the thirst for gold (inflamed by
the Spanish discovery of the golden empires of South and Central America), and
the sense of America as the roadblock to trade with East India generally kept the
English from effective colonizing efforts during most of the sixteenth century. None
of America yielded any golden empire for the English, except in the form of
Spanish ships to be plundered. And the plunderers, after early successes, soon
found themselves faced by a better-armed and prepared Spanish fleet. In many
ways, Hakluyt was forced to stress heroism and adventure as goals in themselves.
It is, in fact, necessary as well as commendable that in his promotion of schemes
for North American colonization he highlights the potential of the colonies to
supply more mundane goods-naval stores, raw cotton, food, and furs-instead of
the possibility of finding gold.

The motivations of Hakluyt's audience were diverse. The patrons of voyages,
wealthy merchants, longed for quick returns on their investments. But potential
voyagers themselves, nobles who longed for court advancement, had other
concerns as well. Hakluyt catered to the thirst for adventure of this second group
not by minimizing external hardships but by idealizing the internal relationships
between the members of England's exploring expeditions. W. A. Raleigh speaks of
the gentleman-adventurer as "a trouble-maker," a divisive personality always on
the lookout for gold and glory, often to the detriment of the expedition, yet
Hakluyt's narratives relate remarkably little (and that not in detail) about the
conflicts that arose.41 Instead, the narratives concentrate on the nobility involved
in actions of war and discovery. Seen in the light of these overarching motives,
Hakluyt's smallerscale editorial decisions fall into place: if one is to encourage
exploration as an end in itself, apart from material profit, the value of exploration in
and of itself as an experience must be emphasized. Hakluyt does this by carefully
selecting the narratives through which he chronicles specific voyages. Explorers,
however, need information, concrete and organized, as much as possible: Hakluyt
organizes his narratives, and tries to include all the latest reliable information
available, whether foreign or domestic. Thus, the huge increase in size of the
second edition, the inclusion of foreign narratives, and (possibly) the exclusion of
Mandeville and David Ingram's narratives from the second edition.

Even a decision that one could see as primarily aesthetic-Hakluyt's preference for
narrative over "universall cosmographie"-Hakluyt defends pragmatically. Reliability
and continuity are better assured when each narrator must "answere for himselfe,
justifie his reports, and stand accountable for his owne doings."4

The reader's comprehensive impression of the Principal Navigations as a unified
work, then, depends not only on the narratives themselves but also on the
editorial decisions that Hakluyt has made. The appearance that Hakluyt has
effaced himself as editor is belied by the reality of his decisions of selection and
excision. The impression that the compilation produces is much more consciously
designed than it appears on the surface. The sheer bulk of the collection produces
(again by design) a sense of completeness and national comprehensiveness for
the reader, as does the mixture of genres. Although the main literary interest of
the collection lies in the narratives, the aesthetic effect of the collection as a whole
is different from the effect of the narratives alone. Samuel Purchas's intentions as
an editor and his audience were quite different. He wrote to educate-in wisdom
about the natural world and other cultures, and in morality. He also collected and
epitomized the narratives of the Pilgrimes to provide an alternative to the possible
dangers (moral and physical) of the Grand Tour. As a fairly uninvolved spectator
of travel (unlike Hakluyt), Purchas wrote to an audience also composed of
"travellers" who might well never leave home. His collection's structure is
subservient to his organizing and moralizing purposes. His style reflects the less
narrowly pragmatic ends of his compilation. Its ornateness is probably meant to
delight, even if it does not always succeed.

Purchas does, however, seem to have other motives besides simply aesthetic and
moral ones. Loren Pennington points out that Purchas was concerned to provide a
philosophical and theological underpinning to the English colonial movement, and
to propagandize in favor of some admittedly problematic English ventures in the
East Indies? Yet, finally, Purchas is less interested in propaganda than Hakluyt
isthat is, if propaganda is defined as writing and editing slanted to sway opinion.
Pennington's analysis shows that if Purchas intended to propagandize in this
sense, he did a questionable job.4 His compilation of the tragic voyages of the
East India Company would certainly not encourage any new investors and
explorers, although they might help an English audience sympathize with the men
who faced such impossible odds. Nor are his narratives of America designed to
encourage would-be colonists. Included among accounts of sea battles and
captivity narratives is Anthony Knivet's relation of his adventures, which Purchas
expected would help the reader "learne to be thankefull for thy native sweets at
home."45 Given the ambiguity and indirection of what Pennington sees as
Purchas's attempts at propaganda, one can conclude that Purchas's main editorial
intention was not to generate propaganda in a narrow sense.

Richard Hakluyt intended to compile a new and eminently practical collection of
eyewitness accounts of travel and exploration for an audience not specifically
concerned with aesthetics. Purchas collected his material to fulfill the more
traditional goals of literature-to teach and delight an audience who themselves
might never travel far. Given these differences in purpose and audience, their
editorial approaches sometimes differ in method, but more often simply in their
level of explicitness. When read with these differences accounted for, each
collection takes on unique values of its own, values too often unrecognized in
modern critical comment.

[Footnote]
1 The publishing history of the Principal Navigations is somewhat complex: there are two editions, the
first published in 1589, the second between 1598 and1600 The exact title of the 1589 edition is The
Principall Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation. The second edition is titled The
Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. Note the addition of
the word "Traffiques" to the title of the second edition; possibly the title change reflects Hakluyt's
changing view of the scope and purpose of his compilation and English journeys in general. The two
editions have other significant differences. The second edition is more than double the size of the first;
the significance of this will be discussed later in this essay. But just as interesting are several excisions
from the second edition, some of which will also be discussed. All quotations from the Principal
Navigations in this article are from the second edition, zz vols. (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons,
1903). Subsequent references will be parenthetical in the text, abbreviated as PN.
2 This quotation from Froude comes from England's Forgotten Worthies, Short Studies on

[Footnote]
Great Subjects (London, 1891), 443-501, as cited in David Beers Quinn, The Hakluyt Handbook, 2
vols. (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1974), 2:582.
3 George Bruner Parks, Richard Hakluyt and the English Voyages, Special Publication no. lo (New York:
American Geographical Society, I928), 56 and xiv respectively.

[Footnote]
4 The Hakluyt Handbook, 1:79, citing booksellers' records of circa 17oo, asserts that during the
eighteenth century, Purchas's collection was more popular than Hakluyt's. 5 Ernle D. S. Bradford,
Christopher Columbus (New York: Viking, 1973), 71. 6 Michael Craton, Sinews of Empire: A Short
History of British Slavery (London: Temple Smith, 1974), 1-8.

[Footnote]
7 George Bruner Parks, The Forerunners of Hakluyt (i926), repr. in Washington University Studies,
Humanistic Series 13 (n.d.): 345. s Parks, Hakluyt and the English Voyages, 16-zo, 44, respectively.

[Footnote]
9 Ibid., 133. io Ibid., 134-35Ibid., 51.

[Footnote]
12 E. E. Speight, ed., Hakluyt's English Voyages (London: Horace Marshall and Son, ), xii; and Parks,
Hakluyt and the English Voyages, 157, respectively.

[Footnote]
13 Parks, Hakluyt and the English Voyages, 187, sgo, respectively.

[Footnote]
14 Ibid., 227.

[Footnote]
15 Robert Ralston Cawley, Unpathed Waters: Studies in the Influence of the Voyagers on Elizabethan
Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940).
ls Philip Barbour, "Samuel Purchas, the Indefatigable Encyclopedist Who Lacked Good Judgment," in
Essays in Early Virginia Literature Honoring Richard Beale Davis, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay (New York: Burt
Franklin, 1977), 36, 38 ff.
17 W. A. Raleigh, The English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons,
[1906] 1910), 133.

[Footnote]
le In Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their Posterity (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980), ni-12, Donald R. Howard alludes briefly to Purchas's kinship with the older
literary tradition of pilgrimage writing, as evidenced by the title of Purchas's compilation.

[Footnote]
19 Parks, Hakluyt and the English Voyages, 176. 20 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, i:lxxvi. 21 Ibid.,
4:197-235.

[Footnote]
22 Parks, Hakluyt and the English Voyages, 175.
23 An example of Hakluyt's expressed admiration of his predecessors can be found in the Principal
Navigations, I:xxiv.

[Footnote]
24 Samuel Purchas, ed., Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, zo vols., Hakluyt Society,
extra ser. vols. 14-34 (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905), 1 :4-5. Subsequent references
will be parenthetical in the text as Pilgrimes.

[Footnote]
25 Purchas, Pilgrimes, 1:lxiv.
26 William C. Boring, in "English Literature of Exploration, Discovery, and Travel as Genre:
1509-1625" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1979), 70-73, discusses Purchas's new audience and
some of his motivations.

[Footnote]
27 Specifically in the previous passage, Purchas alludes to Providence; in the unquoted context of this
passage, he also refers directly to wisdom in a theological sense, and to the idea that the natural world
is a spiritual body.

[Footnote]
28 Boring, "English Literature of Exploration," 69.
29 David Beers Quinn, intro., The Principall Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English
Nation, 1589 ed., ed. Richard Hakluyt, Hakluyt Society, extra ser. 34 (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society
i965), x.

[Footnote]
30 Respectively, Lloyd E. Berry, "Richard Hakluyt and Turberville's Poems on Russia," The Papers of
the Bibliographical Society of America 61 (1967): 350-51; and Charles E. Armstrong, "The Voyage to
Cadiz in the Second Edition of Hakluyt's Voyages," The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
49 (1955): 256-57.

[Footnote]
31 Quinn, Hakluyt Handbook, 1:32-33.
32 Eva Germaine Rimington Taylor, ed., The Troublesome Voyage of Captain Edward Fenton,
1582-1583: Narratives and Documents (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1959), vii. 33 Quinn, Hakluyt
Handbook, 1:120.

[Footnote]
34 Quinn, intro. Principall Navigations, xii-xiii, xxi-xxii, xxxi, xliii. 35 Quinn's introduction to the
Principall Navigations (p. 1) mentions Ingram's and Mandeville's exclusion. In the first edition, Hakluyt
apparently worked from a Latin version of Mandeville's Travels, even though English versions were
available (according to Andrew A. Tadie, "Hakluyt's and Purchas's Use of the Latin Version of
Mandeville's Travels," in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Turonensis, ed. Jean Claude Margolin [Paris:
Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 198o], 539), specifically Thomas East's 1582 translation. Almost
certainly both East's translation and Hakluyt's Latin manuscript were some form of the Defective
Version. The Latin manuscript Hakluyt used omits some passages contained in even the English
translation. (Tadie speculates that the translation contained passages of little interest to seafarers,
prompting Hakluyt's choice.) The Hakluyt Handbook (2:343-44) cites the Latin manuscript used by
Hakluyt as "n.d., n.p. B.M., IA 47355" This does not correspond to any entry in Malcolm Letts's
supposedly comprehensive bibliography in the study, Sir John Mandeville: The Man and His Book
(London: Batchworth Press, 1949).

[Footnote]
36 Purchas, Pilgrimes, 1:xliv.
37 For a list of the rhetorical distinctives of the Euphuistic style, see George K. Hunter, John Lyly, the
Humanist as Courtier (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), 265.

[Footnote]
3 See, for example, Purchas, Pilgrimes, 1:2.
39 Loren E. Pennington, "Hakluytus Posthumus: Samuel Purchas and the Promoters of English
Overseas Expansion,' The Emporia State Research Studies 14.3 (i966): 14.

[Footnote]
40 Ralegh, English Voyages, 193.

[Footnote]
41 Ibid., 86.

[Footnote]
42 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1 :xxiii-xxiv. 43 Pennington, "Hakluytus Posthumus," 13-14. 44
See ibid., 9.

[Footnote]
4 Purchas, Pilgrimes, 16:151.

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