RICHARD HAKLUYT 



liberties with them. He omits nothing that tends to His omissions. 

 knowledge, though he has a ready pen to excise 

 what tends merely to edification. It was the habit of 

 his age to begin even a nautical diary with a few 

 remarks on the origin of the world, the history of 

 man, and the opinions of Plato. To these excrescences 

 the Preacher gives short shrift. If he was as severe 

 a critic of himself as of other men, his sermons must 

 have been models of terse and pointed exhortation. 

 Master George Best's Discourse of the three voyages 

 of Frobisher begins, in the original, with a dissertation 

 on the sundry employments and delights of men. 

 ' Man is born ' — so the overture runs — ' not only to 

 serve his own turn (as Tully saith) ; but his kinsfolk, 

 friends, and the commonwealth especially, look for 

 some furtherance at his hands, and some fruits of his 

 labour : whereupon sundry men finding themselves as 

 it were tied by this bond and duty of human society, 

 have willingly endeavoured sundry ways to show them- 

 selves profitable members of their commonweal.' All 

 this, and much more, Hakluyt omits, to get on with 

 the practical business of the voyage : — ' First, it may be 

 gathered by experience of our Englishmen in Anno 

 1553,' and so forth. No doubt, by thus stripping off Utility his 

 the graces and ornaments of some of his pilgrims, he has 

 diminished the attraction of his book for a student of 

 our older literature ; but, on the other hand, he has 

 condensed within the covers of his three folio volumes 

 a far larger amount of valuable practical information 

 than could have been brought within the same compass 

 by a reverent modern editor. It was utility that he 

 valued ; more than the thanks of lovers of elegant 



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