It remains only to speak of the bibliography of the New Canaan, which at one time excited some discussion, and of the present edition. Written before the close of 1635, the New Canaan was printed at Amsterdam in 1637. It has been reprinted but once,—by Force, in the second volume of his American Tracts. The present is, therefore, the second reprint, and the first annotated edition. For a number of years it was supposed that copies of the book were in existence with an alternative titlepage, bearing the imprint of Charles Greene, and the date of 1632.[188] This supposition was, however, very carefully examined into by Mr. Winsor in the Harvard University Literary Bulletins (Nos. 9 and 10, 1878-9, pp. 196, 244), and found to be partially, at least, groundless. It was due to the fact that Force made his reprint from a copy of the book in his collection, now in the Library of Congress. That copy lacked a portion or the whole of the titlepage; and the missing parts seem to have been supplied, without mention of the fact being made, from the entry of the book under 1632 in White Kennet’s Bibliothecæ Americanæ Primordia. Apparently the error originated in the following way. The New Canaan was entered for copyright in the Stationers’ Registers in London, November 18, 1633, in behalf of Charles Greene, the printer. There is no reason to suppose that it was then completed, as it may have been entered by its title alone. If it was, however, completed in part in 1633, the internal evidence is conclusive that it was both revised[189] and added to[190] as late as 1634; and, indeed, the Board of Lords Commissioners for regulating Plantations, to which it is formally dedicated, was not created until April 10th of that year. Greene did not print the book; though, as will presently be seen, a certain number of copies may possibly have been struck off for him with titlepages of their own. The entry in the Stationers’ Registers was, however, afterwards discovered, and seems then to have supplied by inference the date of publication, which could not be learned from certain copies, the titlepages to which were defective or wanting. The dates given in Lowndes’s Manual would seem to be simply incorrect.[191] Meanwhile, for reasons probably of economy, though notice of publication had been given in London, the book was actually printed in Holland, and the regular titlepage reads: “Printed at Amsterdam by Jacob Frederick Stam, in the year 1637.” There are copies, however, the titlepages of which read: “Printed for Charles Greene, and are sold in Pauls Churchyard,” no date being given.[192] It is not known that these copies differ in any other respect from those bearing the usual imprint. The conclusion, therefore, would seem to be that, as already stated, a number of copies may have been struck off for Greene with a distinct titlepage. Properly speaking, however, there seems to have been but one edition of the book. With the exception of the Force titlepage, which has been shown to be erroneous, there is no evidence of any copy being in existence bearing an earlier date than the usual one of Amsterdam, 1637.

Copies of the New Canaan are extremely rare. Savage, in his notes to Winthrop (vol. i. p. *34), said that he had then, before 1825, never heard of but one copy, “which was owned by his Excellency John Q. Adams.” It is from that copy that the present edition is printed. Mr. Adams purchased it while in Europe prior to the year 1801. It was that copy also which was temporarily deposited in the Boston Athenæum in 1810, as mentioned in the Monthly Anthology of that date (vol. viii. p. 420), referred to in the Harvard University Library Bulletin, (No. 9, p. 196). The Rev. George Whitney, in his History of Quincy written in 1826, says (p. 11) that another “copy was lately presented to the Adams Library of the town of Quincy by the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris.”[193] In addition to these, some dozen or twenty other copies in all are known to exist in various public and private collections in America and Europe, several of which are enumerated in the Literary Bulletin just referred to.

Very many of the errors both in typography and punctuation, with which the New Canaan abounds, are obviously due to the fact that it was printed in Amsterdam. The original manuscript it would seem was no more legible than the manuscript of that period, as it has come down to us, is usually found to be. At best it was not easy to decipher. The copy of the New Canaan was then put in the hands of a compositor imperfectly, if at all, acquainted with English; and, if the proof-sheets were ever corrected by any one, they certainly were not corrected by the author or by a proof-reader really familiar with his writing, or even with the tongue in which he wrote. Accordingly pen flourishes were mistaken for punctuation marks, and these were inserted without any regard to the context; familiar words appeared in unintelligible shapes;[194] small letters were mistaken for capitals, and capitals for small letters, and one letter was confounded with another. In addition to these numerous mistakes in deciphering and following the manuscript, ordinary typographical errors are not uncommon; though in this respect the New Canaan is less marked by blemishes than under the circumstances would naturally be supposed.

Neither is this explanation of the curiously bad press-work of the New Canaan a mere conjecture. One other composition of Morton’s has come down to us in the letter to Jeffreys, preserved by Winthrop.[195] Let any one compare this letter with a chapter from the New Canaan, and he will see at once that, while both are manifestly productions from the same pen, they have been preserved under wholly different circumstances. Take, for instance, the following identical passages,—the one from the New Canaan and the other from the letter to Jeffreys, and they will sufficiently illustrate this point.

The letter to Jeffreys is curiously characteristic of Morton. It is written in the same inflated, metaphorical, enigmatic style as the New Canaan. It is, however, perfectly intelligible and even energetic. The reason is obvious. It was correctly copied by a man who understood what the writer was saying. Accordingly it is as clear as Winthrop’s own text. The New Canaan would have been equally clear had it been deciphered at the compositor’s form by a man with Winthrop’s familiarity with English.

There is some reason to think that the fancy for exact reproduction in typography has of late years been carried to an extreme. Not only have peculiarities of spelling, capitalization and type, which were really characteristic of the past, been carefully followed, but abbreviations and figures have been reproduced in type, which formerly were confined to manuscripts, and are certainly never found in the better printed books of the same period. It is certainly desirable in reprinting quaint works, which it is not supposed will ever pass into the hands of general readers, to have them appear in the dress of the time to which they belong. Indeed they cannot be modernized in spelling, the use of capitals, or even, altogether, in punctuation, without losing something of their flavor. Yet, this notwithstanding, there is no good reason why gross and manifest blunders, due to the ignorance of compositors and the carelessness of proof-readers, should be jealously perpetuated as if they were sacred things. This assuredly is carrying the spirit of faithful reproduction to fanaticism. It is Chinese.

The rule followed, therefore, in the present edition has been to reproduce the New Canaan as it appeared in the Amsterdam edition of 1637, correcting only the punctuation, and such errors of the press as are manifest and unmistakable. Very few changes have been made in the use of capitals, and those only where it is obvious that a letter of one kind in the copy was mistaken by the compositor for a letter of another kind. An example of this is found at the top of page *14, where “Captaine Davis’ fate,” in the author’s manuscript, is made to appear as “Captain Davis Fate,” in the original text. The compositor evidently mistook the small f, written with the old-fashioned flourish, for an initial capital. The spelling has in no case been changed except where the error, as in the case already cited of “muit” for “mint,” is manifestly due to printers’ blunders. Mistakes of the press, such as “legg” for “logg” (p. *77) and “vies” for “eies” (p. *152), have been made right wherever they could be certainly detected.

No conjectural readings whatever have been inserted in the text. The few passages, not more than four or five in number, in which, owing probably to the failure of the compositor to decipher manuscript, the meaning of the original is not clear, are reproduced exactly. No liberties whatever have been taken with the original edition in these cases, and all guesses which are indulged in as to the author’s meaning, whether by the editor or others, are confined to the notes. In a few places the text is obviously deficient. Words necessary to the meaning are omitted in printing. Wherever these have been conjecturally inserted, the inserted words are in brackets. In a very few cases, words, which could clearly have found their way into the original only through inadvertence, have been omitted. Attention is called in the notes to every such omission.

The effort in the present edition has, in short, been to make it a reproduction of the New Canaan; but the reproduction was to be an intelligent, and not a servile one.