The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes

Chapter 6: In laudem Authoris.

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About This Book

A first-person colonial narrative combines satirical social criticism with detailed observation of the region’s environment and inhabitants. The author alternates between polemic aimed at prevailing religious and civic authorities and attentive descriptions of landscape, plants, animals, fish, birds, and Indigenous customs, using anecdote, classical and scriptural allusion, and legal complaint. The work shifts tone from humor to invective to empirical reporting, creating a hybrid of natural history, social commentary, and personal defense; many later editions append extensive notes to clarify archaic terms, names, and scientific references.

In laudem Authoris.

T’ Excuse the Author ere the worke be shewne

Is accusation in it selfe alone;

And to commend him might seeme oversight;

So divers are th’ opinions of this age,

So quick and apt, to taxe the moderne stage,

That hard his taske is that must please in all:

Example have wee from great Cæsars fall.

But is the sonne to be dislik’d and blam’d,

Because the mole is of his face asham’d?

The fault is in the beast, not in the sonne;

Give sicke mouthes sweete meates, fy! they relish none.

But to the sound in censure, he commends

His love unto his Country; his true ends,

To modell out a Land of so much worth

As untill now noe traveller setteth [197] forth;

Faire Canaans second selfe, second to none,

Natures rich Magazine till now unknowne.

Then here survay what nature hath in store,

And graunt him love for this. He craves no more.

R. O. Gen.