'Eutopia nothing to it yields': Thomas Peyton on Paradise and the Fall, 1620

 

 

 

 

 

 

The youthful and pious Thomas Peyton published two books of his intended verse paraphrase of Genesis, The Glasse of Time, in 1620. Peyton was not a very inventive narrator of the sparse story given in Genesis (he got as far as Noah), while as a versifier, it is easy to suspect he was pushing on too quickly, often filling out his lines to meet obvious rhyme words, achieving no sustained style. But his reflections on other people’s reflections on what might have happened to Adam and Eve must have catered to a taste not even the scale of Du Bartas’s Divine Week could satisfy, and his work was reprinted in 1623 and 1625. One can imagine the young Milton looking at it for maybe five minutes, at least until he read something like this suggestion of the devil lying in wait to accost Eve alone
 … watching Time, when Adam stept aside, 
Even but a little from his lovely Bride, 
To pluck perhaps a Nut upon the Trees, 
Or get a combe amongst the honey Bees…

(as stepping aside ‘to pluck a rose’ was a euphemism of the time, this was doubly inept).

 

Peyton hoped that “my speech as generall to all, /May like a Sermon in the Pulpit fall: /And not to wade in curious questions deepe…” - that he would be instructive and not over-curious. “In God’s book we love to pry and peeke’, he wrote, deploringly, while doing exactly that himself. But he was unable to inhabit mentally, and so fill out the life of Adam and Eve in Eden and afterwards; instead he is drawn into rabbinical lore and all the other speculations about their lives after the Fall, as well as such matters as the location of Paradise, or what the forbidden fruit actually was.

His own multiple retelling of possible events after the Fall follows a distraught Adam after his expulsion all the way east (Adam’s quest is to reconnect with the divine light) to the final insurmountable barrier of the River Ganges, where Adam (“some say”) circumcised himself, and then stood in the river until he was “overgrown with green”. Then Peyton withdraws all this agreeably zany rabbinical legend with a comment that it’s unlikely Adam was so long separated from his wife, or even be able to bear to be so far away from Paradise itself, but have stayed close to her and their former dwelling place.

The quest for the site of Paradise takes Peyton rather willingly back on another excursion to the Far East, this time to Zeilan (Ceylon), and Adam’s Peak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam’s_Peak

which Peyton says is surrounded by a freshwater lake eighteen miles across and four foot deep, ‘distilled’ from the tears of the penitent Adam and Eve (we can be generous and imagine that distilling their tears would make the lake freshwater), while a ‘flaming hill’ nearby symbolized the flaming sword guarding paradise (Ceylon does not have volcanic activity).

Describing Ceylon and its climate makes Peyton as paradisal in description of a place as he ever gets – but his account then moves on to Mount Amara in Ethiopia, and finally to Assyria ‘the likeliest place indeede’, and also equipped with a ‘smoky hill’ to memorialize the sword guarding the Tree of Life. On the great mystery of the nature of that carefully guarded ‘Tree of Life’ Peyton offers a suggestion that the tree was probably not yet ripe: for it was a symbol of the Christ to come.  

 

These long sections of his poem where he canvasses various possibilities are only remarkable as illustrations of that characteristic mix of Bible history and world travel they went in for in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. When it comes to the Forbidden Fruit, Peyton learnedly opts, in the end, for the banana, which has to his mind the right combination of taste, scent and multiple cropping, and has a built-in ‘signature’ which shows its nature:

            more like and probable it is: 
If that their iudgements do not erre amis, 
The dainty tree that in their country growes, 
And twice a yeare his pleasant fruite that showes, 
Yeelding a fragrant and a lovely scent, 
If but the same be either crusht or rent: 
A Cucumber much like it is in shew, 
Of pleasing taste, and sweet delightfull hew. 
If with a knife the fruite in two you reave, 
A perfect crosse you shall therein perceave: 
The spatious leaves are full a fadome long· 
In breadth three spans…

It is rather a pity that no artist ever adopted this identification – an Eve by Titian or Rubens tempting Adam with a banana would have been glorious.

But what gives Peyton some individual interest is his gradual superimposition of his own story onto his retelling of Genesis. Evil came into the enclosed and ideal world he shared with his beloved Urania (meaning, of course, the muse of Christian poetry he shared with Du Bartas). Peyton, identifying himself strongly with innocence and true faith, inserts his account of what envious folk did to him, into the main narrative of the Fall under Lucifer’s envious assault.

It is not certain that Peyton would have seen any incongruity in this, had it been pointed out to him, rather, it is all one (as far as he’s concerned), and his own life experience validates the Bible truths. Peyton is not in the least abashed about his faith, which is of the right kind, as is his art: God sends Urania down to him on a mission up there in importance to Peyton with the ministry of Christ: 

That thou my Breast dost with Urania fill, 
Sending her Downe as thou didst send thy Son … 

Whatever it was happened to Peyton, it was clearly something he felt very aggrieved about, but it is never made entirely clear what it actually was. A self-righteous and touchy man (I infer), it may have been the case that adverse comment on his opinions, which he considered to distort them, prompted him to sound off about Envy, whose venom which has besmirched even his beloved Urania:

Urania (deere) thy very case is mine, 
How did my Foes still to this day combine, 
Backe sliding friends (much like to slippery Eels) 
Have undermin’d, to turne up both mine heeles: 
With fawning tearmes my company have sought, 
Inverted that (which yet) I never thought; 
Reported words, the which were never spake… 

Nothing about The Glasse of Time itself strikes me as heterodox. When he invents, he tends to do so under the influence of Spenser, in highly descriptive allegory. We hear a lot about the daughters of God, the allegorical figures of Mercy, Justice, Charity and Truth. Here, God just sounds indecisive when faced by female tears (of course, the compassion is His own, talked out of Him by His justice):

But God himselfe his daughter deare that sees, 
With weeping eyes before his face to crave, 
That but on Eve he would compassion have: 
Began to stay his minde, to alter cleane, 
And to the woman now began to leane: 
But that hard by stood Justice in the place, 
And urg’d him much to prosecute the case: 
When all the reason Mercy well could render, 
Was that her selfe was of the female gender …

And this following passage is not well handled, in which a fit of papal petulance about a lost peacock (Peyton repeatedly denounces both Catholics and ‘Puritants’) unluckily collides with God’s reaction to the disappearance of the Forbidden apple (wasn’t it a banana?):

What may we thinke of that ambitious Pope, 
Which dar’d to scoffe under heauens glorious Cope, 
Against that God, that in his sacred frowne 
Turns up his heeles, and hurles his pride soone downe? 
When having mist a simple childish toy, 
A Peacocke bird which seem’d his onely joy. 
Distempered much began in heate to chide, 
That few men could his holy presence bide. 
And afterward asham’d of what was past, 
To shew his choller not long time did last; 
Excusde himselfe, that he might angry be, 
As well for that, as was the Trinitie. 
When discontented for an Apple lost, 
Both Eve and Adam to their paine and cost, 
From Paradise were thrust quite out and beaten, 
And much disgrac’t for one poore Apple eaten …

Peyton’s major problem was most likely vexatious litigation, causing him great losses to his estate, and spells in prison (I assume that people he had thought his friends, turned legal opponents, had paid for him to be arrested).

Nay thou thy selfe, noble Urania deere, 
Since first thy landing and arrival heere, 
Hast thou not beene on every side turmoyl’d, 
Tost too and fro, by Envy overtoyl’d? 
Whose viprous tongue within a sacred place, 
Hath belcht her venome, aim’d at thy disgrace; 
Like to the Divell in Paradise at first,  
That banefull poyson in his Brest hath nurst, 
To wrong thy person, weaken much thy state, 
Enrich himselfe to satisfie his hate, 
 Tooke all advantage working on thy youth, 
Suggested lies instead of naked truth: 
Lock’t thee up close (Immur’d) within a Wall, 
When not a Groate was due to him at all; 
But by the order of this noble Land, 
He in that place for debt to-thee should stand. 

But holy God, what will become of those, 
Which in an open publike place shall chose, 
To give occasion first to shew their gall, 
Do call a man both this and that and all, 
And afterwards shall lye upon the catch, 
Their friends estate, into their hands to snatch, 
By Deedes, Conveyance, Obligations, Bonds, 
To wring and wrest, to make them sell their Lands, 
Before such time as any thing is due, 
To clap up such with Cerberus his crue, 
In wofull prison sick to lye and rot … 

Complaints about how he had been treated continue, and with him, his Muse suffers

 … all the spight against me she [Envy] can use, 
May waste my State, and hinder thee my Muse. 

                        … by her I am misused, 
Hurried about by slandrous tongues abused, 
Kept long from home, unto my great expence, 
Weakened my Lands and living ever since, 
On all sides crost (by Greatnesse) over sway’d, 

… So deerest Muse here in this mortall life,  
That swarmes in troupes of those delight in strife, 
Which never rest till all my state be spent, 
But at my Ruine all their aime is bent, 

The importance to Peyton of money, and hanging on to the wealth you have, impinges on his Paradise narrative. His Garden of Eden is surprisingly opulent; Adam has wealth just lying about. Then of course he loses it all, and hangs about in the vicinity, hoping to get it back:

.. all the world thou hadst in ample store, 
Plenty of wealth and gold at thy command, 
And all the creatures in the earth to stand, 
Before thy face subjected to thy will, 
And thou the Lord of Paradise yet still.

 … How is thy ground exceeding rich and faire· 
A region seasoned with a temperate aire, 
Thy channels crawling full of golden Ore …

One might think the excluded Adam could pick wealth enough off the outside walls of this opulent Paradise:

The lofty walls were all of Jasper built, 
Lin’d thick with gold, and covered rich with gilt 
Like a quadrangle seated on a hill, 
With twelve brave gates the curious eye to fill, 
The sacred luster as the glistring Zone, 
And every gate fram’d of a severall stone…

I deduce that Peyton got married too. He makes some passing remarks about having, regrettably, less time for Urania than he’d wish: “And what if Hymen something doe annoy / Thy tender Fruit, yet shalt thou live in joy…” 

One of his favourite motifs as he deals with the Bible patriarchs is to praise their continence of life until marriage at mature years, marriage contracted out of a spirit of duty to the church rather than any youthful lust. 

 

Though I can’t quite see exactly how it connects to his legal problems, Peyton seems to have got into a quarrel about Eve, perhaps with a clergyman who then litigated with a mind to “Enrich himselfe to satisfie his hate”.

Prior to the Fall, Eve is (conventionally enough), for Adam a “Glittring sugred hooke, / She drawes thy love to mind her speeches more, / Then God himselfe that gave thee her in store.” Peyton does not attempt to describe her, he actually pays more attention to the beauty of Adam:

As the two lights within the Firmament,  
So hath thy God his glory to thee lent, 
Compoz’d thy body exquisite and rare, 
That all his works cannot to thee compare, 
Like his owne Image, drawne thy shape divine, 
With curious Pencill shadowed forth thy line: 
Within thy Nosthrils blowne his holy breath, 
Impal’d thy head with that inspiring wreath, 
Which binds thy front, and elevates thine eyes …

I suppose Peyton imagines Adam with a kind of Bacchic wreath. But the second book includes a sudden upsurge of sympathetic interest in Eve. As Peyton tells it, Adam (after the Fall), quite ignorant of what he is doing, has sex with his wife:

                                    upon a time it fell, 
The circumstance I must forbeare to tell, 
Playing with Eve within that shady bowre, 
And in his armes his loveliest sweetest flowre, 
Embracing, toying, smiling, kissing sweete, 
The sports most chaste unto a Spouse bed meete, 
Thinking the time he had with her beguil’d, 
Forgets himselfe, and she conceives with child. 

Peyton is fond of projecting innocence onto Adam – alone in Paradise prior to the creation of Eve, in one of the many similes Peyton proudly points out to us in his margins, he’s like a school boy, peeking in every bush for birds’ nests. Adam’s eyes do not seem very much opened by having tasted the Fruit of Knowledge. After this inadvertent coupling, Adam is baffled by Eve’s behaviour – she keeps eating bizarre things, and demanding that Adam find a way back into Paradise and get her the stuff she really has a fancy for:

Strange is the change she in her selfe doth find, 
An extreme Passion working in her mind, 
Longing oft times some sops in Tarre to lick, 
Her bodies altred, and her stomack sick, 
Black ugly Berries, fulsome unripe Plums, 
And every thing that in her way next comes, 
The goodly fruits which are within the walls, 
Of Paradise, she to her husband calls, 
Desires, intreates him, as he loves his Wife, 
Forth with to hast, and fetch to save her life. 

But this erratic and conventionally anti-feministic Eve, cursed by God after the disobedience with ‘Sick loathsome vomits’ in pregnancy, suddenly starts to receive what seems to be Peyton’s sincere tribute. When Adam returns from one of his excursions for Twiglets, he finds that she has given birth in his absence, and Eve explains to Adam:

She knew not well how first to her it came, 
But that she thought although her sence was weake, 
This was the Seed the Serpents head should breake, 
Told him in words and gentle speeches mild, 
That by the Lord she had conceiv’d that Child.

Peyton underlines his point, insisting that Eve would not have known where her baby had come about, and that her deduction was pious and correct. He suddenly breaks out in anger:

How damn’d prophane are those accursed lips,  
Which in Gods Church shall make such dangerous slips, 
Within the same to belch to thy disgrace, 
Even in a sacred and most publike place, 
Behinde thy back when thou art dead and past, 
And canst not answere what their mouth out cast, 
Thus to be lye, mens soules to sin allure, 
Wresting thy speech with banefull breath impure: 
Not terrifide with Heavens all threatning Rod, 
But dares to teach (that thou didst sweare by God  
Thou hadst a Child) and oftentimes to speake it, 
If it were true, unto the world to breake it, 
Is worse then was that Serpent damn’d accurst, 
In Paradise which wrong’d thy Person first. 

As far as this is coherent, it indicates a fierce dispute about Genesis 4, 1 (“And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord”), in which Peyton took the text at face value, and someone else, a clergyman, asserted that Eve was telling a profane lie (with the possibility that this other person asserted the common enough notion that the real father of Cain was the devil).

For Peyton, however, such opinions are another assault upon well-meaning inexperience: it’s what happened at the Fall, it is what happened when he was ensnared by litigants. The plain words of a pure mind, such as his, or Eve’s, get ‘inverted’ or ‘wrested’ into something scandalous to the person that uttered them. He continues with a vision of Eve in heaven:

Deare Eve, thy worth I ever must admire, 
Thou sitst above within the Angels Quire, 
Tuning thy voyce unto their sacred layes, 
To sound forth Glory to the Prince of prayse.

while her detractors (like his, for so we can extrapolate)

“headlong downe to damned divels shall reele: 
Whilst Eve shall sit triumphant on the skies, 
Viewing their fall, hearing their moanes and cryes, 
Joying to see the sacred Truth prevaile, 
Her meaning clear’d, her foes to weepe and waile.

Eve goes on to have “about some threescore more / Of sons and daughters”. For Peyton, Cain’s story is just another example of the poisonous nature of Envy, a man who set out well, but was then polluted (Peyton makes a parallel with Faustus).

I’m sorry to say that Peyton opts completely for the mark of Cain as being black skin:

That Cains most fearefull punishment and marke, 
For raking up his brother in the darke 
Was that his skin was all to blackensse turn’d, 
Like to a Coale within the fire halfe burn’d.

He scoffs at the notion that dark skin is something to do with climate:

If this be true, how is it that there bee 
In Africa, America, to see 
Under the line both people white and faire, 
As many men that now in Europe are …(?)

Here’s early modern racism in a couplet:

“The Southerne man, a black deformed Elfe, 
The Northerne white like unto God himselfe …”

I will end with Peyton at his most paranoid. In this personal anecdote, even as he is working with Urania on this divine poem of his (it’s a wonder he didn’t get it printed in white ink), his enemies gather outside, just as happened to Lot in Sodom. But his good friend God (that would be the white one) sends him a dream that makes him wake up, secure his doors, and escape:

(Ah dearest God) even whilst my Muse was working 
Upon this Place, how were my foes all lurking 
About my house, to undermine my state, 
With secret traines, close to my dores and gate. 
But thou didst wake when I was fast asleepe, 
To make me know that thou dost alwayes keepe, 
Thy sheepe from danger of a Wolfe most fierce, 
Which in my bloud (next to my state) would pierce 
Then didst thou give me at that instant howre, 
A Vision strange to shew thy secret powre, 
That in a dreame when once my body wak’t, 
My inward thoughts and all my sences shak’t; 
But Reason guides and swayes me downe her streame, 
To make me prize it 'bove an usuall dreame. 
Whereat I went, lockt up my dores most sure, 
To keepe me safe from treacherous pawes impure, 
Which never yet in all my life was done, 
The hatefull lawes of cruell foes to shun; 
But (Heavenly God) when least I knew of harme, 
How did they then about my house all swarme 
On every side, with raving speeches hot, 
Like Sodomits about the walls of Lot,  
Till thou protectedst broughtst me safely out, 
From the curst fury of that griping Rout; 
Stroke them with blindnesse all like Tygers lay; 
While thou conveydst my body sure away, 
To sound thy prayse, and blaze thy glorious name, 
To end (this worke) to thy renowned fame. 

My illustrations are from the book: the title page ‘vinnet’, as he calls it (‘vignette’), with Time leading forth Truth, Noah’s Ark, either Paradise or the heavenly Jerusalem, pious scenes, and himself. Then we have bowlers sinfully bowling on the Sabbath when others are in church (Peyton has much to say about this, and how God has punished even Geneva, which allowed shooting on Sundays, by bringing war to it), a temptation scene with Time and his glass rather oddly intruded, and the death of Adam and Eve, four of Seth’s sons bearing them away.

 

 

 

 

'With the sudors of thy industry shalt thou spend thy days'. Loredano's 'Life of Adam', 1659.

Writing purported or speculative biographies of Adam had gone on since pre-Christian times. The Vita Adae et Evae, as Brian Murdoch in his edition (with J.A. Tasioulas) of The Apocryphal Loves of Adam and Eve (two early middle English poems) explains has no originatory text, but was a set of related narratives with common elements, the ‘Adambooks’, recorded all over Pre-Reformation Europe, into the Balkans, the Middle East, and Christian parts of Africa.

The early and medieval narratives tended to focus on penance. After the Fall, Adam and Eve attempt penance for Original Sin: they fast, and stand in rivers for days at a time. Eve is again deceived by the serpent, who truncates and ruins her penance by disguising himself this time as an angel, and falsely telling her that the penance she has done is sufficient. Adam, more successful in continuing penitent, does win a kind of remission – they will die and go to hell, but be saved from hell after 5,600 years. The ‘Adambooks’ tend to continue with the adventures of Seth, sent by the dying Adam to follow back along the footprints they left when driven from Eden – for no grass has grown in these prints. If Seth follows them back to Paradise, he is to ask for the oil of mercy. Depending on the telling, Seth sometimes meets the serpent on the way, and is wounded in the face. He reaches Paradise, but is debarred entry. But the Cherubim guarding Paradise gives him seeds, or a branch of fruit. Seth hurries back, but his father has died in the meantime. The seeds, or the fruit, will be buried with Adam, and grow into the tree that will provide wood for the cross, for these stories connect to a set of legends about the Holy Cross.

I’ve been reading a late example and atypical, by Gian Francesco Loredan, published in Venice in 1640, and appearing in England, translated by ‘J.S.’ in 1659. This 17^th century ‘Adambook’ omits the theme of penance: indeed, it is so anti-Eve that Adam barely seems to have anything to be penitent for.

Loredan was widely translated into English, with five different works appearing between 1654 and 1682. As for The life of Adam, it’s hard to define what the original appeal was: was it, beneath its ostensible subject, actually enjoyed as a wittily anti-feminist work using that age-old target, Eve? Maybe in a work like this we get some sense of how many pictures of Adam and Eve (or some of the manifold other depictions of them) were received, in a mixture of salacity and moralization. If you think of Loredan himself as accustomed to seeing the two Tintoretto paintings of the Fall of Man in Venice (in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and that in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, above), well, they are both Eve-centered versions. Adam has his back to us in both paintings, provoking us to our own incriminating reaction to the temptation offered by Eve.

Loredan was born into a minor branch of the Venetian clan who provided three Doges. He was founder of the Accademia degli Incogniti, noblemen who were in their way free-thinkers (and promoters of opera). Loredan’s writings emerge from that group: novellas, collections of witty essays, a romance, and a ‘scala sancta’, an ascent of the soul based on fifteen psalms.

The tone of ‘The Life of Adam’ - at least in English - is of bland moralization, as God’s intentions behind each detail of that scanty narrative in Genesis are speculated upon in a series of ‘because’ / ‘or else…’ extrapolations. Like the medieval example, the work is utterly anti-feminist, an aspect it has in common with other parts of Loredan’s writings. His view of women seems to compound an exaggerated sense of the persuasive power of female beauty with an extreme view of female moral frailty - nothing very novel about that, of course. He was himself forced into marriage (apparently).

‘The Life of Adam’ deals with Adam’s fall after some general scene-setting which seems to have been derived as much from Ovid’s Metamorphoses as from the Bible: “God had, with Ideas suitable to his own omnipotence, compiled the machine of Heaven and of the World. The Chaos retained no longer either confusion, or darkness. The Elements, though proud of their variety of qualities, united themselves for the conservation of the Whole …”

After a speech of suitable gratitude for having been created, Adam names the animals: “His Divine Majesty made all Birds and other Animals of the earth to come before Adam, that from him (who had received from God the knowledge of their Natures) they should receive their Names. The Lord did this, to make Adam see by comparison how much he was obliged, in seeing himself so different, and so upright above all other Creatures. Or, because God having created Man Prince of all creatures, would have him know his vassalls and the Animals reverence him as their Prince…” Again, the detail about the distinct human erectness among the animal creation is Ovidian, though it was a common enough observation about humankind. (Obviously, there are lots of animals you have to ignore: plenty of flightless birds are upright in stance.) Milton makes much of it.

But we progress rapidly to the nemesis of this grateful and knowledgeable Adam, his wife. Loredan has a speculation about why Adam was made to fall asleep prior to the removal of his rib: Adam had after all been granted a prophetic spirit by God, and so, if he had been awake, he might well have objected:

“Or else it might be, that he cast Adam into a sleep, as if he feared that he would contradict him; whilst with the spirit of prophesy given him, he might foresee the mischiefs accruing to mankind in the making of Eve.”

Loredan wonders why God, wanting his new world populated, didn’t create multiple humans. As answers to his own idle question, he produces both a democratic and an anti-feminist speculation: “God for the more expeditious population of the World, could have made many men, & many Women, but would, that all should descend from one Father, and one Mother, to the end Men should conserve Love, peace, and concord amongst themselves. And who knows … he would not permit Adam multiplicity of Wives for that he might not thereby multiply his miseries…”

Eve once created, and Adam revived (with his opportunity for prophetic objection missed), Loredan now turns to the dangerous and total allure of women, which he expresses in Petrarchan or Marinist cliches: “Adam stood stupefied in contemplating two Suns under one pair of eyebrows, whilst he saw no more but one in Heaven … The by-Nature-plaited tresses, so nearly resembled Gold in tincture, and purity, that they pleaded Adams excuse, if he did not refuse so honourable a prison … Her flesh appearing like a lovely composure of scarlet and milk, although at the touch it would be taken for marble. Her age was about the fourth lustre, (accompting five years to a Lustre) proper for a woman in reference to Procreation and Love.”

Adam nearly idolizes her: “Adam was about to have adored her as a Goddess. For but only that it was infused into him by revelation, that the woman was a part of himself, doubtless disobedience should not have been the first of his sins.”

Once acquainted, Adam duly informs Eve about the one prohibition under which they are to live. Eve immediately sets off, on her own, in quest to see the forbidden fruit. The novelisation of Genesis treats this as yet unfallen Eve as though all post-lapsarian accusations of women apply to her: “The Woman became at those prohibitions the more curious. To forbid a woman, is to increase her appetite … The Woman therefore, transported by those impatiencies, that interposed between them and their felicity, left Adam; desiring to enjoy … the sight of that fruit, which being forbidden, was to be supposed the more exquisite.”

In a particularly breathtaking piece of misogyny, Loredan manages to imply that Eve provokes her own temptation: “Having found the tree, she beheld the fruits with so much curiosity, that it induced the Devil to tempt her.”

The serpent itself is in the shape of that familiar monster, the serpentine female: “Amongst the infinite forms of animals there was a Serpent with the face of a Damsel, which God had replenished with all subtility.” I think this notion goes all the way back to the Venerable Bede. It set off, no doubt, in a mixture of anti-feminism and crack-brained rationalization: for it provides an answer of sorts to questions about why Eve wasn’t alarmed by a serpent that spoke to her: the serpent-tempter had in part assumed her shape. As Loredan puts it: “She started not at the sight of a Serpent; for seeing it resemble her self in countenance she rather rejoiced then feared”. It seems nobody dared to suggest either to the Venerable Bede, or any of those who repeated him, that this half-human serpent would in fact be a far more alarming sight.

The serpent-maiden flatters Eve. Eve repeats the terms of the prohibition, and Loredan does not fail to score a point against women by exploiting the disparity between Genesis 2, 17 and Genesis 3,3: “His Divine Majesty had commanded only that they should not eat of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but the Woman moreover adds the Touching it: because as a Woman she could not discourse without aggravating or over-reaching.”

The narrative briefly pauses to suggest the more perceptive things Eve might have said to refute her tempter (“How came I to merit so much of thy affection that thou shouldst desire, that I should first obtain a benefit so great, a prerogative so rare, as to be divine?”) before noting her precipitate belief: “The unfortunate woman believed all for truth, because she desired all to be true.”

When Eve eats the fruit, Loredan introduces another piece of anti-woman needling, now taking offence that “She called not Adam to eat of the Apple before her, as was the duty of her subjection; because believing divinity to be reposed in that fruit, she would not admit any to have the precedence of her.”

When Eve, having failed in her duty to give the fruit first to her husband, eventually gets back to Adam with her story, Loredan gives Adam a firmly reasoned refusal to join her in disobedience:

“Content your self with having your self alone transgressed the commands of God’s law. Desire not company in evil. Lead not others into your precipices. I am your companion, I am your Lover; but will know how to be your Enemy.”

But Eve resorts (what else?) to “sighs and tears, the wonted artifices with which women betray the honour, liberty, and safety of men”, and to allurement: “Casting therefore her arms about the neck of Adam, she so besieged his constancy, with her glances, caresses, and kisses that, after some small resistance, he yielded himself overcome …What cannot women do in an amorous soul!”

As soon as Adam has a morsel of the fruit going down his throat, he repents, and he sees their nakedness. Loredan makes a firmly Augustinian point about how, previously, “lust had not ability to suscitate sensual affects, without the consent of Man”. Adam now knows his, and his wife’s, nakedness, and doesn’t like the effect it has.

God appears in the Garden, and finds Adam, in his fig-leaves, hiding with all the self-exculpatory wiles of, say, Captain Francesco Schettino, beneath the forbidden tree itself. Adam stoutly blames God for making Eve too alluring: “Who can resist the power of beauty? The commands of her, that thou gavest me for a Companion, hath in such manner tyrannized over my reason, and intellectuals, that I have not power to dispose of my self … He that can withstand the importunate solicitude of the fairest piece that ever came out of thy hands, either knows not how to Love or deserves not to be Beloved. Alone I should not have known sin, for bad-company is a fomenter of the greatest sins. Lord, turn against her thy reproofs and chastisements.”

Eve perhaps makes a rather better job of self-exculpation “I could not persuade my self that there were treacheries in Paradise, nor deceits in the face of a Damsel. Thunder therefore, O Lord, thy punishments upon the Serpent, as upon the author of all evil.”

God passes his curses on the serpent, the earth, Eve and Adam (“With the sudors of thy industry shalt thou spend thy days”), and expels them, addressing Adam in particular: “Get thee packing therefore out of the Paradise of delights, and fix thine abode where thou wast formed, cultivating that earth from whence thou hast derived thy being.”

Loredan asserts that the expulsion counts as one of God’s acts of mercy: “It was one of the wonted effects of God’s benignity to drive Adam out of Paradise, because, if he had continued amongst those delights without enjoying them, he would have received too much torment; there being no greater punishment to be found then to be in the midst of felicities and to be denied the fruition.”

He then proceeds to sum up. There’s the usual notion that Adam and Eve were only in Paradise for a few hours: “Poor Adam! that didst not scarce one whole day enjoy the gifts of Gods favour. His felicity being shorter then that of an Ephemeris [a mayfly]. About three of clock he was brought into the Garden; at six a clock, he sinned; and in the Evening, was expulsed.”

Once outside Eden, Eve is given a speech of thorough contrition, which is undermined by Adam turning lustful: “ ‘The sorrow for my sin shall die with my heart, which I believe shall be the last part of me alive’ … Adam, with a smile begot by the stimulations of sensuality, thus replied, ‘I need no longer now to fear your company (my Eve) since you become to me an incentive to good’ …Thus saying & with glances, and kisses having thrown his arms about his wife’s neck they gave themselves wholly up to delight, which peradventure for the time begot in them an oblivion of all the accidents past.”

Loredan then spells out the underlying belief, the prejudice that constrained the duration of man’s unfallen state to less than a day. You had to get them out of Paradise before they can have sex, and beget any offspring without the taint of original sin: “Till this instant Adam had been kept a Virgin, to intimate unto us that Matrimony fills the earth, but Virginity Paradise.”

After sex, Eve has an instant awareness that she is pregnant: “Scarce had Eve satisfied the instinct of nature, and appeased in part the allurements of sense, when with the signs of pregnancy, she was assaulted by repentance, the indivisible companion of fleshly delights.”

Loredan lobs in another of his quite appalling misogynistic observations. The pregnancy proves to be a difficult one: “Here I will not mention the extremes of her passions, in loathing, and longing for every thing; in the burden of her belly, in her vigils, and in the acerbity of those pangs, the more grievous, by how much the more strange: because the most that I can speak, would be the least part of what they were. Much less will I speak of the sufferance of Adam; because it is known that to have a wife, and a wife pregnant, is a species of martyrdom.”

Poor Eve gives birth to a boy and a girl. In these quotations, I suppose the daughters’ names are derived from Rabbinical lore: “Eve brought forth two births, Cain was the name of the male, and Calamana that of the female … Eve afterwards bore Abel, and Delbora, whereby she increased the joy of Adam.”

Meanwhile, Adam emerges as well worth a place on the radio show ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’: “Adam, not content with what the Earth repaid him with interest for the seed received, employed himself also in continual grafting. He transplants wild trees into the meliorated, makes the sterile fructiferous, and dulcorates the insipid … He transmutes one species into another, and inoculates many species upon one sole stock.” And he progresses from living in caves to mud huts: “Poor Adam sheltered himself (necessity constraining him) in certain Caverns, the palaces of Nature … He learnt, for his greater shame [his] first Architecture from the Swallow.”

After Cain slays Abel, Adam vows to give up being fruitful and multiplying, but God releases him from his vow, and so Seth is born, from whom Christ will descend.

Adam finally dies aged 930, and we get a specific day for his death: “It is the opinion of many that he dyed on Friday the 3^d of March, being the day on which he was created, to hint that misery comes in the very instant of our felicity.” We also are told where he was buried, and subsequently re-buried: “He was buried in Hebron, in a Sepulcher of Marble, and was afterwards transported to Calvary, to the very place where Christ died.”

Of Eve’s death, Loredan makes the following typically hostile remarks: “Of Eve’s age the Scriptures make no mention; perhaps because we ought not to know the death of her, that deserved to die before she was born; all the miseries of mankind taking rise from her. It’s probable that she was oppressed by age, and passion, for Adam’s death. It pleased his Divine Majesty, perhaps, that she should survive Adam to double her punishment, in beholding the death of the dearest part of herself.”

This suavely nasty work was, as I say, translated into English, and dedicated to the ‘Lady S.B.’, the translator affirming that the first of men made a suitable subject for the ‘best of women’. I suppose one should never be surprised at the crassness of 17^th century men, and their view of what women might want to read.

Adam's rib

Not much time in my weekly routine for blogging these days, now that teaching term has started. But I found this woodcut on EEBO, which says only this about it: “Illustration of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib Date: 1600-1699. Reel position: Tract Supplement E3:1[183]”.

I found it a quite remarkable version of the creation of Eve. It isn’t the usual unnatural obstetrics, where a full sized Eve rises upright from Adam’s side. God has extracted the rib, and is at work upon it, blessing it. Eve’s head has already taken shape, but has yet to fill out to full size, so it looks like a shrunken head, the rest of her is still rib. It’s a disconcerting image: even the elephant seems to be looking uneasy at these strange goings-on. No wonder this version of the moment is not the usual iconographic type.

But I have possibly found a passage in Sylvester’s du Bartas that it just might have been cut to illustrate. Below is the creation of Eve as given in the sixth day of creation. That du Bartas says that God works with Adam under anesthetic, like a surgeon performing an amputation, is the first surprise. One tended to think that they just sawed away with the poor patient strapped or held down. But then again, they did know about opiates – and strong liquor. Once the rib has been extracted, God refines and carves ‘on the living bone’:

Even as a Surgeon, minding off-to-cut
Some cure-less limb; before in ure he put
His violent Engins on the vicious member,
Bringeth his Patient in a sense-less slumber,
And grief-less then (guided by use and Art)
To save the whole, sawes off th' infected part:
So, God empal'd our Grandsires lively look,
Through all his bones a deadly chilness strook,
Seal'd-up his sparkling Eyes with Iron bands,
Led down his feet (almost) to Lethè Sands;
In brief, so numb'd his Soul's and Body's sense,
That (without pain) opening his side; from thence
He took a rib, which rarely he refin'd,
And thereof made the Mother of Mankinde:
Graving so lively on the living Bone
All Adams beauties; that, but hardly, one
Could have the Lover from his Love descry'd,
Or known the Bridegroom from his gentle Bride:
Saving that she had a more smiling Eye,
A smoother Chin, a Cheek of purer Dye

A fainter voice, a more enticing Face,
A Deeper Tress, a more delighting Grace,
And in her bosom (more then Lillie-white)
Two swelling Mounts of Ivory, panting light.

Du Bartas’ narration of life in Eden is obsessed with Adam, whose small activities the narrative follows around. Adam even seems to sleep alone (though the narrative may at that point have drifted back imaginatively to the time before Eve’s creation). Here, all Eve’s beauty is secondary to Adam’s, which primary male beauty God merely reproduces in softer form as he carves.

Continuing with Eve, I was looking with my students at the moment when Eve’s pregnancy is announced. Adam has just mastered fire: he was trying to bring down an animal by throwing:

A knobbie flint that hummeth as it goes;
Hence flies the beast, th' ill-aimed flint-shaft grounding
Against the Rock, and on it oft rebounding,
Shivers to cinders, whence there issued
Small sparks of fire no sooner born then dead.

Adam instantly knows what he has:

This happy chance made Adam leap for glee,
And quickly calling his cold company…

His ‘cold company’ is of course Eve, and it falls to her to tend the spark to a flame. The narrative then passes swiftly to the birth of her first offspring:

Eve, kneeling down, with hand her head sustaining,
And on the low ground with her elbow leaning,
Blows with her mouth: and with her gentle blowing
Stirs up the heat, that from the dry leaves glowing,
Kindles the Reed, and then that hollow kix
First fires the small, and they the greater sticks.

[Note: Beginning of Families. ]
And now, Mankind with fruitful Race began
A little corner of the World to man:
First Cain is born, to tillage all addicted …

It’s a very telling transition: Adam supplies the spark; she tends the fire. Adam has supplied the seed (imagined then as being, in small, the complete child-to-be, which Eve’s role is merely to nurture).

Interesting work, du Bartas, and at least I may be the first person to try teaching extracts from it to undergraduates – this is in my ‘Paradise in Early Modern Literature’ course …

A reading edition of William Morrell's 'New England', 1625

In September I will start teaching a new course I have devised called ‘Paradise in Early Modern English Literature’. So I will on this blog occasionally look at texts that use the Garden of Eden as an idea or point of reference.

I intended to set off with an informal essay on William Morrell’s New-England. Or A briefe enarration of the ayre, earth, water, fish and fowles of that country (1625) but repeatedly found that I was stumbling over the sense of the text. No doubt a scholarly edition will have been produced by someone, but I had no access to such, nor will my students have one, so I here present a reading edition of the poem.

I have modernized spelling, made amendments as best I could where the printed text makes no obvious sense, and added some notes.

Morrell’s English version is an expansive version of his original Latin. I did spend a deal of time trying to compare the two texts, especially when trying to make sense of his English version (which sometimes or often has the stilted manner of a translation). I found this hard to do; I would need a Latinist to help me.

Things to look out for in this work are Morrell’s close attention to the native Indians (though, in his interested sympathy, he projects a lot of incipiently Christian belief onto them). His ethnographical account culminates with his description of the appearance, art, agriculture and personal politics of the Indian women. Morrell reports the Indian men mocking the Europeans for letting their women lead such leisured lives. New England (Morrell’s use of the term is actually an OED antedating) really emerges as a potential Eden. He tries to stress its natural abundance, but is too truthful to conceal either its extremes of weather or the potential danger of the native population. He represents New England as a sound business opportunity with resources which will repay “their Merchants debt and interest”.

New-England. Or A briefe enarration of the ayre, earth, water, fish and fowles of that country.[i]

Feare not poore Muse, 'cause first to sing her fame,
That’s yet scarce known, unless by Map or name;
A Grand-childe to earth’s Paradise is borne,
Well limb’d, well nerv’d, faire, rich, sweet, yet forlorn.
Thou blest director so direct my Verse,
That it may win her people, friends commerce;
Whilst her sweet air, rich soil, blest Seas, my pen
Shall blaze, and tell the natures of her men.[ii]

New-England, happy in her new true stile,
Weary of her cause she’s to sad exile
Expos’d by heirs[iii] unworthy of her Land,
Entreats with tears Great Britain to command
Her Empire, and to make her know the time,
Whose act and knowledge only makes divine.
A Royal work well worthy England’s King,
These Natives to true truth and grace to bring.
A Noble work for all these Noble Peers
Which guide this State in their superior spheres.[iv]
You holy Aarons[v] let your Censers ne’er
Cease burning, till these men Jehovah fear.
Westward a thousand leagues a spacious land,
Is made unknown to them that it command.
Of fruitful mould, and no less fruitless main[vi]
Enrich’d with springs and prey, high land and plain.

The light, well temp’red, humid air, whose breath
Fills full all concaves betwixt heaven and earth,
So that the Region of the air is blest
With what Earths mortals wish to be possest.
Great Titan darts on her his heavenly rays,
Whereby extremes he quells, and oversways.
Blest is this air with what the air can bless;
Yet frequent gusts do much this place distress
Here unseen gusts do instant onset give,
As heaven and earth they would together drive.
An instant power doth surprise their rage,
In their vast prison, and their force assuage.[vii]
Thus in exchange a day or two is spent,
In smiles and frowns: in great yet no content.

The earth grand-parent to all things on earth,
Cold, dry, and heavy, and the next beneath
The air by Natures arm with low descents,
Is as it were entrencht; again ascents
Mount up to heaven by Jove’s omnipotence,
Whose looming greenness joys the Seaman’s sense.
Invites him to a land if he can see,
Worthy the Thrones of stately sovereignty.[viii]
The fruitful and well watered earth doth glad
All hearts; when Flora with her spangles clad,
And yields an hundred fold for one,
To feed the Bee and to invite the drone.[ix]

O happy Planter[x] if you knew the height
Of Planter’s honours where there’s such delight;
There Nature’s bounties though not planted are,[xi]
Great store and sorts of berries great and faire:
The Filbert, Cherry, and the fruitful Vine,
Which cheers the heart and makes it more divine.
Earths spangled beauties pleasing smell and sight;
Objects for gallant choice and chief delight.

A ground-Nut there runs on a grassy thread,
Along the shallow earth, as in a bed,
Yellow without, thin, film’d, sweet, lily white,
Of strength to feed and cheer the appetite. [xii]
From these our natures may have great content,
And good subsistence when our means is spent.
With these the Natives do their strength maintain
The Winter season, which time they retain
Their pleasant virtue, but if once the Spring
Return, they are not worth the gathering.[xiii]

All ore that Maine the Vernant[xiv] trees abound,
Where Cedar, Cypress, Spruce, and Beech are found.
Ash, Oak, and Walnut, Pines and Juniper;
The Hazel, Palm, and hundred more are there.
There’s grass and herbs contenting man and beast,
On which both Dear, and Bears, and Wolves do feast.
Foxes both gray and black, (though black I never
Beheld,[xv]) with Muscats[xvi], Lynxs, Otter, Beaver;
With many other which I here omit,
Fit for to warm us, and to feed us fit.

The Fowls that in those Bays and Harbours breed,
Though in their seasons they do else-where breed,
Are Swans and Geese, Herne, Pheasants, Duck & Crane,
Culvers and Divers all along the Maine:
The Turtle, Eagle, Partridge, and the Quail,
Knot, Plover, Pigeons, which do never fail,
Till Summer’s heat commands them to retire,
And Winter’s cold begets their old desire.[xvii]
With these sweet dainties man is sweetly fed,
With these rich feathers Ladies plume their head;
Here’s flesh and feathers both for use and ease,
To feed, adorn, and rest thee if thou please.[xviii]

The treasures got, on earth, by Titan’s beams,
They best may search that have best art and means.[xix]

The air and earth if good, are blessings rare,
But when with these the waters blessed are,
The place is complete, here each pleasant spring,
Is like those fountains where the Muses sing.
The easy channels gliding to the East,
Unless oreflowed, then post to be releas’d,
The Ponds and places where the waters stay,
Content the Fowler with all pleasant prey.
Thus air and earth and water give content,
And highly honour this rich Continent.

As Nature hath this Soil blest, so each port
Abounds with bliss, abounding all report.
The careful Naucleare[xx] may a-far descry
The land by smell, as’t looms below the sky.

The prudent Master there his Ship may moor,
Past wind and weather, then his God adore,
Man forth each Shallop with three men to Sea,
Which oft return with wondrous store of prey;
As Oysters, Crayfish, Crab, and Lobsters great,
In great abundance when the Seas retreat:
Tortoise[xxi], and Herring, Turbot, Hake and Bass,
With other small fish, and fresh bleeding Plaice;
The mighty Whale doth in these Harbours lye,
Whose Oil the careful Merchant dear will buy.
Besides all these and others in this Maine:
The costly Cod doth march with his rich train:
With which the Sea-man fraughts his merry Ship:
With which the Merchant doth much riches get:
With which Plantations richly may subsist,
And pay their Merchants debt and interest.

Thus air and earth, both land and Sea yields store
Of Nature’s dainties both to rich and poor;
To whom if heavens a holy Viceroy give,
The state and people may most richly live:[xxii]
And there erect a Pyramy of estate,
Which only sin and Heaven can ruinate.[xxiii]
Let deep discretion this great work attend,
What’s well begun for’th’most part well doth end:
So may our people peace and plenty find,
And kill the Dragon that would kill mankind.[xxiv]

Those well seen Natives in grave Nature’s hests,
All close designs conceal in their deep breasts:
What strange attempts so ere they do intend,
Are fairly usher’d in, till their last end.[xxv]
Their well advised talk evenly conveys
Their acts to their intents, and ne’er displays
Their secret projects, by high words or light,[xxvi]
Till they conclude their end by fraud or might.
No former friendship they in mind retain,
If you offend once, or your love detain:[xxvii]
They’re wondrous cruel, strangely base and vile,
Quickly displeas’d, and hardly reconcil’d;
Stately and great, as read in Rules of state:
Incens’d, not caring what they perpetrate.
Whose hair is cut with greeces[xxviii], yet a lock
Is left; the left side bound up in a knot:

Their males small labour but great pleasure know,
Who nimbly and expertly draw the bow;[xxix]
Train’d up to suffer cruel heat and cold,
Or what attempt so ere may make them bold;
Of body straight, tall, strong, mantled in skin
Of Deer or Beaver, with the hair-side in:
An Otter skin their right arms doth keep warm,
To keep them fit for use, and free from harm·
A Girdle set with forms of birds or beasts,
Begirts their waste, which gently gives them ease.
Each one doth modestly bind up his shame,
And Deer-skin Start-ups reach up to the same;[xxx]
A kind of Pinsen[xxxi] keeps their feet from cold,
Which after travels they put off, up-fold,
Themselves they warm, their ungirt limbs they rest
In straw, and houses, like to sties: distressed
With Winter’s cruel blasts, a hotter clime
They quickly march to, when that extreme time
Is over, then contented they retire
To their old homes, burning up all with fire.
Thus they their ground from all things quickly clear,
And make it apt great store of Corn to bear.

Each people[xxxii] hath his[xxxiii] orders, state, and head,
By which they’re rul’d, taught, ordered, and lead.
The first is by descent their Lord and King,
Pleas’d in his name likewise and governing:
The consort of his bed must be of blood
Coequal, when an off-spring comes as good,
And highly bred in all high parts of state,
As their Commanders of whom they’re prognate[xxxiv].
If they unequal loves at Hymen’s hand
Should take, that vulgar seed would ne’er command
In such high dread, great state and deep decrees
Their Kingdoms, as their Kings of high degrees:
Their Kings give laws, rewards to those they give,
That in good order, and high service live.
The aged Widow and the Orphans all,
Their Kings maintain, and strangers when they call,
They entertain with kind salute for which,
In homage, they have part of what's most rich.[xxxv]
These heads are guarded with their stoutest men,
By whose advice and skill, how, where, and when,
They enterprise all acts of consequence,
Whether offensive or for safe defence.
These Potents do invite all once a year,
To give a kind of tribute to their peer.[xxxvi]

And here observe thou how each childe[xxxvii] is train’d,
To make him fit for Arms he is constrain’d
To drink a potion made of herbs most bitter,
Till turn’d to blood with casting, whence he’s fitter,
Enduring that to undergo the worst
Of hard attempts, or what may hurt him most.[xxxviii]
The next in order are their well seen men
In herbs and roots, and plants, for medicine,
With which by touch, with clamors, tears, and sweat,
With their curst Magic, as themselves they beat,
They quickly ease: but when they cannot save,
But are by death surpris’d, then with the grave
The devil tells them he could not dispence;
For God hath kill’d them for some great offence.[xxxix]

The lowest people are as servants are,
Which do themselves for each command prepare:
They may not marry nor Tobacco use,
Till certain years, least they themselves abuse.
At which years to each one is granted leave,
A wife, or two, or more, for to receive; [xl]

By having many wives, two things they have,
First, children, which before all things to save
They covet, 'cause by them their Kingdoms fill’d,
When as by fate or Arms their lives are spill’d.
Whose death as all that die they sore lament,
And fill the skies with cries: impatient
Of nothing more then pale and fearful death,
Which old and young bereaves of vital breath;
Their dead wrapt up in Mats to th’grave they give,
Upright from th’knees, with goods whilst they did live,
Which they best lov’d: their eyes turn’d to the East,
To which after much time, to be releas’t
They all must March, where all shall all things have
That heart can wish, or they themselves can crave.[xli]
A second profit which by many wives
They have, is Corn, the staff of all their lives.
All are great eaters, he’s most rich whose bed
Affords him children, profit, pleasure, bread.
But if fierce Mars, begins his bow to bend,
Each King stands on his guard, seeks to defend
Himself, and his, and therefore hides his grain
In earth’s close concaves, to be fetch’d again
If he survives: thus saving of himself,
He acts much mischief, and retains his wealth.
By this deep wile, the Irish long withstood
The English power, whilst they kept their food,[xlii]
Their strength of life their Corn; that lost, they long
Could not withstand this Nation, wise, stout, strong.
By this one Art, these Natives oft survive
Their great’st opponents, and in honour thrive.

Besides, their women, which for th’most part are
Of comely forms, not black, nor very fair:
Whose beauty is a beauteous black laid on
Their paler cheek, which they most dote upon.[xliii]
For they by Nature are both fair and white,
Enricht with graceful presence, and delight;
Deriding laughter, and all prattling, and
Of sober aspect, graced with grave command:
Of man-like courage, stature tall and straight,
Well nerv’d, with hands and fingers small and right.
Their slender fingers of a grassie twine,
Make well form’d Baskets wrought with art and line;
A kind of Arras, or Straw-hangings, wrought
With divers forms, and colours, all about.
These gentle pleasures, their fine fingers fit,
Which Nature seem’d to frame rather to sit.
Rare Stories, Princes, people, Kingdoms, Towers,
In curious finger-work, or Parchment flowers:
Yet are these hands to labours all intent,
And what so ere without doors, give content.
These hands do dig the earth, and in it lay
Their faire choice Corn, and take the weeds away
As they do grow, raising with earth each hill,
As Ceres prospers to support it still.
Thus all work women do, whilst men in play,
In hunting, Arms, and pleasures, end the day.
The Indians whilst our Englishmen they see
In all things servile exercis’d to be:
And all our women freed, from labour all
Unless what’s easy: us much fools they call,
'Cause men do all things; but our women live
In that content which God to man did give:[xliv]
Each female likewise long retains deep wrath,
And’s ne’er appeas’d till wrongs reveng’d she hath:
For they when foreign Princes Arms up take
Against their Liege, quickly themselves betake
To th’adverse Army, where they’re entertain’d
With kind salutes, and presently are dain’d
Worthy faire Hymen’s favours: thus offence
Obtains by them an equal recompense.[xlv]

Lastly, though they no lines, nor Altars know,
Yet to an unknown God these people bow;[xlvi]
All fear some God, some God they worship all,
On whom in trouble and distress they call;
To whom of all things they give sacrifice,
Filling the air with their shrill shrieks and cries.
The knowledge of this God they say they have
From their forefathers, wondrous wise and grave;
Who told them of one God, which did create
All things at first, himself though increate:
He our first parents made, yet made but two,
One man one woman, from which stock did grow
Royal mankind,[xlvii] of whom they also came
And took beginning, being, form and frame:
Who gave them holy laws, for aye to last,
Which each must teach his childe till time be past:
Their gross fed bodies yet no Letters know,
No bonds nor bills they value, but their vow.
Thus without Art’s bright lamp, by Nature’s eye,
They keep just promise, and love equity.
But if once discord his fierce ensign wear,
Expect no promise unless’t be for fear:
And, though these men no Letters know, yet their
Pan’s harsher numbers we may somewhere hear:
And vocal odes which us affect with grief;
Though to their minds perchance they give relief.
Besides these rude insights in Nature’s breast,[xlviii]
Each man by some means is with sense possess’t
Of heaven’s great lights, bright stars and influence,
But chiefly those of great experience:
Yet they no feasts (that I can learn) observe,
Besides their Ceres, which doth them preserve.[xlix]
No days by them discern’d from other days,
For holy certain service kept always.[l]

Yet they when extreme heat doth kill their Corn,
Afflict themselves some days, as men forlorn.
Their times they count not by the year as we,
But by the Moon their times distinguish’t be.
Not by bright Phoebus, or his glorious light,
But by his Phoebe and her shadowed night.[li]
They now accustom’d are two Gods to serve,
One good, which gives all good, and doth preserve;
This they for love adore: the other bad,
Which hurts and wounds, yet they for fear are glad
To worship him:[lii] see here a people who
Are full of knowledge, yet do nothing know
Of God aright; yet say his Laws are good
All, except one, whereby their will’s withstood.
In having many wives, if they but one
Must have, what must they do when they have none.
O how far short comes Nature of true grace,[liii]
Grace sees God here; hereafter face to face:
But Nature quite enerv’d[liv] of all such right,
Retains not one poor sparkle of true light.
And now what soul dissolves not into tears,
That hell must have ten thousand thousand heirs,
Which have no true light of that truth divine,
Or sacred wisdome of th’Eternal Trine.[lv]

O blessed England far beyond all sense,
That knows and loves this Trine’s omnipotence.

In brief survey here water, earth, and air,
A people proud, and what their orders are.
The fragrant flowers, and the Vernant Groves,
The merry Shores, and Storm-affronting Coves.
In brief, a brief of what may make man blest,
If man’s content abroad can be possessed.[lvi]

If these poor lines may win this Country love,
Or kind compassion in the English move;
Persuade our mighty and renowned State,
This poor-blind people to commiserate;
Or painful men to this good Land invite,
Whose holy works these Natives may inlight:[lvii]
If Heavens grant these, to see here built I trust;
An English Kingdome from this Indian dust.

FINIS.

Excuse this Postscript, perchance more profitable than the Prescript. It may be a necessary Caveat for many who too familiarly do Serò sapere[lviii]. The discreet artificer is not only happy to understand what may fairly and infallibly further his duly considered designs and determinations: but to discover and remove what obstacle soever may oppose his well-advised purposes, and probable conclusions. I therefore, desiring that every man may be a Promethius, not an Epimethius, have here underwritten such impediments as I have observed wonderfully offensive to all Plantations[lix]; Quae prodesse quant & delectare legentem.[lx]

First therefore I conceive that far distance of plantations produce many inconveniences and disabilities of planters, when as several Colonies consist but of twenty, or thirty, or about that number, which in a vast uncommanded Continent, makes them liable to many and miserable exigents[lxi], which weakens all union, and leaves them difficultly to be assisted against a potent or daily enemy, and dangerously to be commanded; when as some one Bay well fortified would maintain and enrich some thousands of persons, if it be planted with men, able, ingenious, and laborious, being well furnished with all provisions and necessaries for plantations. Besides, if one Bay be well peopled, it’s easily defended, surveyed, disciplined, and commanded, be the seasons never so unseasonable, and all their Forces in few hours ready in Arms, either offensively to pursue, or defensively to subsist convenient numbers ever at sea, and sufficient ever at home for all service, intelligence and discovery.

Secondly, Ignorance of seasons, servants, situation, want of people, provisions, supplies, with resolution, courage and patience, in and against all opposition, distress, and affliction. Vincit patientia durum[lxii]. Fishermen, manual artificers, engineers, and good fowlers are excellent servants, and only fit for plantations. Let not Gentlemen or Citizens once imagine that I prejudize their reputations, for I speak no word beyond truth, for they are too high, or not patient of such service: though they may be very necessary for Martial discipline, or excellent, (if pious) for example to the seditious and inconsiderate multitude.[lxiii]

Boats with all their furniture, as sails, hooks, and lines, and other appendences, afford the paineful planter both variety of comfort, and a sufficient competent, and an happy estate. Good mastiffs are singular defences to plantations, in the terrifying or pursuing of the light-footed Natives.[lxiv] Hogs and Goats are easy, present, and abundant profit, living and feeding on the Islands almost without any care or cost.

Plantations cannot possibly, profitably subsist without chattels and boats, which are the only means for surveying and conveying both our persons and provisions to the well advised situation. Without these, plantations may with much patience, and well fortified resolution endure but difficultly, though with much time flourish and contentedly subsist. For when men are landed upon an unknown shore, per adventure weak in number and natural powers, for want of boats and carriages, are compelled to stay where they are first landed, having no means to remove themselves or their goods, be the place never so fruitless or inconvenient for planting, building houses, boats, or stages, or the harbours never so unfit for fishing, fowling, or mooring their boats[lxv]. Of all which, and many other things necessary for plantation, I purpose to inform thee hereafter.[lxvi] Wishing thee in the interim all furtherance, all fortunateness.

Farewell.

---

[i] This is 1625: OED does not record ‘New England’ before 1638. See line 2, which implies a wider circulation of the term. ‘Enarration’, used in English between 1570 and the early 19^th century meant ‘A description, detailed story or narrative’ (OED).

[ii] Morrell will praise the land first, then simply ‘tell’ ‘the natures of her men’.

[iii] ‘heirs’ - ‘her’s’ in the 1625 text may be a misprint. New England, personified, begs Great Britain to take charge of governing her empire because ‘heirs’ unworthy of her are making her exile sad (?). This would seem to apply to the native peoples, as King James is then asked to undertake the worthy royal work of bringing the ‘natives’ ‘to true truth and grace’ – Christianity.

[iv] The Privy Council

[v] Aarons: churchmen

[vi] Via a contorted double negative, Morrell says that the ‘maine’, the sea, is there as fruitful as the ‘mould’, the soil.

[vii] Morrell starts on the air of New England, a typical early modern priority about the healthiness of a place. The air is good, but prone to sudden violent gusts of wind. But these sudden tempests are just as quickly stilled by an ‘instant power’ (Morrell implies a heavenly providence), which re-imprisons the air in its heavenly vault, and so any bad weather is over in a day or two. An alternation between great ‘content’ and unsatisfactory absence of ‘content’ seems to be intended.

[viii] Morrell now turns to the earth which, by nature’s power lies beneath the air, low as if entrenched. But then again, hills, ‘ascents’ reach up towards heaven; and the sea-farer sees these first.

[ix] The fruitful soil has many ‘spangles’ (flowers), and yields 100 grains for one seed grain planted. Morrell is thinking about corn.

[x] ‘Planter’ meant one who cultivated the soil, and then from 1587 onwards, a colonist.

[xi] Morrell says that New England has the Edenic quality of displaying nature’s bounty without crops having to be sowed.

[xii] Morrell’s use of ‘ground nut’ antedates the OED’s first recorded usage, which is from 1636. His reference is not to the peanut, but Apios Americana:

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1990/V1-436.html

“When European explorers first visited the New World they found the naives eating the seeds and tubers of Apios Americana.”

[xiii] See prior footnote - “The succulent vine is killed by freezing temperatures and will deteriorate during the winter.”

[xiv] Morrell’s Latin uses the same word, meaning ‘flourishing’, but ‘vernant’ itself was used in English c1440-1660.

[xv] Morrell’s Latin does not seem to specify two types of foxes, nor include the reservation that he didn’t himself witness a black fox. They would probably have been the same animals viewed from different angles. A black fox is also called a ‘silver’ fox because of white-tipped hairs on the rump. See

http://www.thefoxwebsite.org/ecology/ecologyfacts.html

“in North America, black foxes are relatively common”.

[xvi] ‘muscat’ means the musk cat or civet (which secretes musk).

[xvii] Morrell notes seasonal changes in the bird population. ‘Hernes’ are herons, ‘culvers’ doves or pigeons.

[xviii] i.e., feathers for feather beds.

[xix] Morrell refers to veins of gold, which was believed to be produced by the influence of the sun. He lets one infer that none have been found, but that a search by experienced prospectors has yet to be made.

[xx] Not in the OED, the word may relate to an ancient Greek word meaning ‘shipowner’. The detail of it being possible to smell the land before it comes into view (from a ship) does not seem to be in the Latin version.

[xxi] A large and heavy-shelled shell fish. The OED cites R. Eden, 1555, Decades of New World, “In Cuba, are founde great Tortoyses (which are certeyne shell fysshes) of such byggenesse that tenne or fyfteene men are scarsely able to lyfte one of them owt of the water.”

[xxii] New England requires only an appointed Viceroy to govern it.

[xxiii] And with a viceroy set in charge, New England will become a state as long lasting as the pyramids. Aware of the fragility of the North American colonies, Morrell says that it can last unless brought to ruin by sin or heaven (i.e., the latter punishing the former).

[xxiv] i.e., may the settlers enjoy an Eden, but here destroy Satan.

[xxv] Morrell has just reflected that such a fair beginning promises a good outcome for the colony. He now turns to the native Americans, who also seem promising, ‘well seen’ as he puts it, in appearance. But they conceal motives that end in fraud or violence.

[xxvi] The natives will appear neither angry (with ‘high’ words spoken) or merry (speaking ‘light’ words)

[xxvii] The native people will turn on you if you detain your former love from them, or offend them.

[xxviii] Morrell seems to be saying that their hair is cut in steps, ‘greeces’, apart from the longer lock on the left side.

[xxix] Morrell will pointedly contrast the way that in native cultures, the women do all the hard work, with the ease enjoyed by European women, in which culture men do all the physical labour. Perhaps because hunting was seen as a sport, Morrell does not credit the hunting carried out by male natives as work.

[xxx] ‘start-ups’ here seems to mean gaiters, leg bindings.

[xxxi] A ‘pinsen’ was a shoe without a heel or pump: Morrell is of course describing moccasins.

[xxxii] Morrell recognises different tribes.

[xxxiii] We would say, each tribe has its upper ranks.

[xxxiv] The text reads ‘they’rs prognate’. ‘Prognate’ (cited from here in the OED) means offspring, descendents. The offspring of a marriage between two high status individuals are accepted as leaders in their turn.

[xxxv] The kings, in return for entertaining visitors from other nations, receive gifts from them.

[xxxvi] Morrell notes annual ceremonies of homage.

[xxxvii] I have not modernized to ‘child’: Morrell seems to mean, ‘youth approaching manhood’, so I have retained the spelling with a final e, latterly used to distinguish from ‘child’.

[xxxviii] An initiation rite at which emetic herbs are drunk. From this ordeal, the brave emerges better able to face the hardships of battle, etc.

[xxxix] Medicine: their doctors are ‘well seen’ in arts that blend from knowledge of herbs 

into devil-inspired magic. When cures fail, the devil informs the patient 

(via the shamanic doctor) that he or she must die for some sin they have 

committed. There is possibly a faint memory here of Cornelius speaking to 

Faustus at the start of Marlowe’s play: “The miracles that magic will perform 

/ Will make thee vow to study nothing else. / He that is grounded in astrology, 

Enrich'd with tongues, well seen in minerals, / Hath all the principles magic doth require.”

[xl] Morrell asserts the willingness of the lowest orders to be given their orders. He seems to say that such people (and only such) may not marry till they have reached a certain age, nor may they smoke tobacco. Morrell may be reporting facts, but he may also be thinking of truculent English lower classes, apprentices who could not marry till they were out of their apprenticeships, and King James’s attempts to restrict tobacco taking.

[xli] Burial rites, and belief in a paradisal afterlife located in the East. Again, Morrell’s report of the native peoples may be tinged by Christian beliefs in a heavenly Jerusalem, etc.

[xlii] Morrell jumps from native American to native Irish practices of hoarding grain underground in times of war.

[xliii] So Morrell comes to the native Eve’s of this Eden. He tries to express the beauty of darker eyebrows and eye lashes against a skin of pale brown coloration. He is impressed by the taciturnity they share with their menfolk, and by their ‘well nerved’ (muscular) bodies. Their artistic basketwork comes next. I read ‘of a grassy twine’, the 1625 text reads ‘on a grassie twyne’. The wall hangings are both decorative and draft-excluding, like the European ‘arras’ (tapestries). Finally, their agriculture, growing corn, and tending the crop as it grows. He observes again that they do all the work, while the men merely hunt and fight.

[xliv] An interesting passage: there were not many women in the first American colonies, and it is hard to imagine that they enjoyed much leisure. The native men mock the European men for doing so much work; European women are seen as still enjoying the paradise of leisure God first gave to Adam.

[xlv] The women as politically independent: a wrong done to them and (perhaps) not dealt with adequately by their king will cause women to switch sides when war comes.

[xlvi] ‘Lines’ (‘lynes’ in the 1625 text) perhaps means any written sacred text. “Yet to an unknown God these people bow” – Morrell’s Latin text does not correspond to this. He probably puts ‘an unknown God’ as object of their devotion to bring to his reader’s mind St Paul in Acts 17:23: ‘For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.’

[xlvii] Morrell (in his English text) insinuates a creation story of a male creator God (himself uncreated), who brought to life an Adam and an Eve, parents of all humankind; a God who gave laws that must be followed. In the case of the native Americans, these beliefs are orally transmitted. Like More’s Utopians, they are represented as incipient Christians, lacking a revealed gospel, but by the light of nature alone, deriving basic religious truths.

[xlviii] Their ‘insights’ in (‘into’) Nature’s secrets. They are aware of what a 17^th century astrologer would have called the ‘greater luminaries’, particularly their most experienced observers.

[xlix] They observe no regular feast days apart from a ‘Cerealia’ (as the Latin version has it), a feast in honour of the harvest, Ceres being the goddess of the harvest.

[l] They observe no Sabbath day.

[li] Their calendar is lunar, not solar.

[lii] Here, the native Americans are represented as dualists, with two Gods, one good, one evil: susceptible to the basic Christian heresy.

[liii] Morrell seems to imply that the native people are quite receptive to initial conversion attempts, but that they cannot contemplate an end to polygamy. Again, the native Americans may be accurately described, but there is also a hint of More’s Utopia, where the Utopians, acting by human reason alone, allow divorce and remarriage.

[liv] The text has either ‘encru’d’ or ‘eneru’d’. I have emended to ‘enerved’, to suggest ‘deprived of the strength of revelation’.

[lv] Morrell laments that all these people will go to hell, being unaware of such things as the knowledge of the Holy Trinity, a truth loved in England, though it is in itself ‘far beyond all sense’.

[lvi] Morrell starts his peroration with a summary.

[lvii] He hopes his verses may move ‘painful’ (painstaking) men to sail to America and enlighten the native people. Like Samuel Sewall would be after him (see Richard Francis’ excellent Judge Sewall’s Apology (2005), Morrell is an optimistic promoter of the possibility of mass conversion. Sewall was ready to believe that the Indians were descended from the lost tribes of Israel, that they ‘fear God, and are true believers’. Francis explains how the ‘praying Indians’ would be few in number, and be quite cynically neglected as the colony developed.

[lviii] ‘too late come to be wise’

[lix] Morrell will use his proscript to pass on what he observes colonies use, so that each colonist may be a ‘Prometheus’, a benign giver of fire to the benefit of mankind, rather than an ‘Epimetheus’, an opener of a Pandora’s box of evils.

[lx] ‘to profit and please the readers’

[lxi] exigencies, hardships, bad circumstances.

[lxii] ‘patience conquers adversities’

[lxiii] As ever with the English colonies, the need is for people accustomed to hard work, with useful skills, not people accustomed to leisure. Morrell specifies.

[lxiv] Morrell, so interested and indeed sympathetic to the native people in his poem suggests the utility of mastiffs to let loose upon them.

[lxv] Counter to ever suggestion made in his poem of what a Paradise New England (almost) is, Morrell here observes the utility to colonists of wagons and small boats for mobility, for shifting to better sites.

[lxvi] No such further work by Morrell has survived (if it was ever carried out).