THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



II 



Richard RicHARD Hakluyt, the recorder of all these matters, 

 akuyt. desired no memorial save his book. His relics lie buried 

 under the ' star-ypointing pyramid' which, by his own 

 incessant labour, he erected to the honour of his country. 

 ' Master of Arts,' he calls himself, ' and sometime 

 Student of Christ Church in Oxford.' Except to show 

 that he is not unqualified for his task, and to express 

 his gratitude to the learned foundations where he had 

 his training, he does not speak of himself. He is a 

 Scholar, Bibliographer, and Editor, and so has a threefold 

 title to modesty and self-renunciation. On the title-page 

 of his first book, the Divers Voyages of 1582, his name 

 does not appear ; in the second and third volumes of 

 the Voyages he pays his tribute to the Church of which 

 he was a minister by describing himself as ' Richard 

 Hakluyt, Preacher.' He was less of a preacher than 

 was his disciple, Samuel Purchas, and his book is the 

 gainer by it. No biography of him, in any full sense 

 of that word, is possible. Except for a few bare facts 

 and dates, all that we know of him is told us by himself, 

 in his Prefaces and his few extant letters. No portrait 

 of him has been recovered. He was buried in West- 

 minster Abbey, but no inscription marks his grave, nor 

 is it known in what part of the Church he lies. 



His modesty. There can be no doubt that this obscurity was of his 

 own choosing ; and belonged, as of right, to his character 

 and temper. He had many famous and influential 

 friends, and was constantly in traffic with them for the 

 enrichment of his book. They answered his questions, 



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