ABSTRACT
The mantle o f Hakluyt fell upon-or perhaps we should say was assumed by-a younger member o f the same profession, the Rev. Samuel Purchas. But to wear a giant’s robe in seemly fashion one needs a giant’s stature, and in this respect the new comer was sadly deficient. The two men were entirely different. Hakluyt was o f the age o f Elizabeth, o f Drake and Raleigh; Purchas o f that ofjames I and Tom Coryat. The one was grave, sensible, restrained, and his labours were animated by a desire to benefit his fellow-countrymen by the promotion o f com merce and manufactures and the spread o f colonization. The other was fussy and egotistic, with a craving for notoriety that showed itself by the weaving o f his name into the titles o f his various books and the display o f his portrait in a prominent position on the title page o f the largest. As regards his literary work Sir John Laughton, in the Dictionary o f National Biography, w rote: ‘ a comparison o f what he has printed with such originals as remain shows that he was very far indeed from a faithful editor or a judicious compiler, and that he took little pains to arrive at an accurate knowledge o f facts.’ However, credit is certainly due to him for the devotion with which he laboured at his gigantic task, in spite o f ill-health and narrow means, and, when all is said, we owe him a heavy debt o f gratitude for having preserved for us a mass o f precious material that other wise would probably have been lost.
