The Isle of Pines | Page 3

Catalogues, when in
February, 1673, the prints George Buchanan' Psalmorum Davidis
Paraphrasis Poetica, which told for two shillings a copy. Samuel
Gellibrand was not a printer but a bookseller, with a shop "at the Ball in
St. Paul's Churchyard."
[ 6 ]On comparing the first page of the text of his purchase with the
same page of an acknowledged London issue of the "Isle of Pines" in
the John Carter Brown Library,{1} the bookseller concluded that the
two were entirely different publications.
An expert cataloguer connected with one of the large auction firms of
New York then took up the subject. After a study of the tract he became
assured that it could only have been printed by Samuel Green, of
Cambridge, and he brought forward facts and comparisons which
seemed conclusive and for which he deserves much credit. It was a
clever bit of bibliographical work. With such an endorsement as to
rarity and quality the pamphlet was again put to the test of the auction
room. The cataloguer stated his case in sufficient fulness of detail and
the first page of the text was reproduced.{2} Naturally the discovery
sent a little thrill through the mad-house of bibliography. The tract was
knocked down for $400 to a bookseller from Hartford, Connecticut,
presumably for some local collection. The incident would have passed
from memory had it not been for one of those accidents to which even
the amateur bibliographer is liable.
1 No. 5 in the Bibliography, page 93, infra.
2 Nuggets of American History, American Art Association, November
19, 1917. The Isle of Pines was lot 142, and was introduced by the
words, "Cambridge Press in New England." The catalogue was
prepared by Mr. F. W. Coar.
*****
In the bitter days of the winter of 1917-18 the working force of the

Massachusetts Historical Society was contracted into one room--the
Dowse Library--where was at least a semblance of warmth in the open
fireplace.

THE DOWSE COPIES
[ 7 ]One afternoon, when I had finished my work and the others had left,
I picked up the catalogue of the Dowse Library and began idly to turn
over its leaves. Incidentally, that catalogue is characteristic of the older
methods of the Society. As is known to the elect, no book in the Dowse
Library can ever leave the room in which it now rests, and of the
catalogue twenty-five copies were printed and never circulated. If the
library had been left in the Dowse house in Cambridgeport, its
existence and contents could not have been more successfully hidden
from the world. While reading the titles in a very casual way, my eye
was caught by one which gave me a start. It read:
Sloetten (Cornelius van). The Isle of Pines; or a Late Discovery of a
Fourth Island in Terra Australis Incognita. London, printed by G. S. for
Allen Banks, 1668. With a New and Further Discovery of the Isle of
Pines, 1668; and a duplicate of the Isle of Pines. 1 vol. small 4to, calf
supr., gilt leaves. A most interesting, rare, and valuable work.
Even against the Editor of the Society the Dowse books are kept behind
lock and key, though he is not under more than ordinary suspicion. So I
was obliged to wait till the next day before my curiosity could be
satisfied. I then found a thin volume, less than one-third of an inch in
thickness, containing two copies of this very tract which the auction
expert had identified as an issue of the "Isle of Pines" by Green, and a
London issue of a second part of the "Isle of Pines," with the name of
Cornelius Van Sloetten, as author. For more than fifty years this little
volume had reposed in this well-known yet almost forgotten library,
and no one had suspected or questioned the nature of its contents.
[ 8 ]For full fifty years it had been in the care and at the call of Dr.
Samuel A. Green, who claimed to be an expert on New England

imprints of the seventeenth century, and one of the great wishes of
whose life had been to establish his descent from this very printer,
Samuel Green. Two copies within the same covers, of a tract long
sought and of which only a single example had come to light in two
centuries and a half--was not that alone something of a bibliographical
coup?
I read two of the pieces--one of the Green issues and the second part as
printed in England--making a few notes for future use. On returning to
the matter some weeks later I found to my annoyance that every
reference to the Green tract but one was wrong as to the page. Cold,
haste, or weariness will account for a single or possibly two errors