Thomas Hariot | Page 3

whole of the editing also devolved upon Mr. Henry Stevens.
He first took up No. 10 on the above list, Hariot's Virginia. His long and diligent study for the introduction thereto, resulted in the discovery of so much new and important matter relative to Hariot and Raleigh, that it became necessary to embody it in the present separate volume, as the maximum dimensions contemplated for the introduction to each work had been exceeded tenfold or more.
Owing to Mr. Stevens's failing health, the cares of his business, and the continual discovery of fresh material, it was not till 1885 that his investigations were completed, although many sheets of the book had been printed off from time to time as he progressed. The whole of the text was actually printed off during his lifetime, but unfortunately he did not live to witness the publication of his work, perhaps the most historically important of any of his writings. Publication has since been delayed for reasons explained hereinafter.
On the death of my father, on February 28, 1886, I found myself appointed his literary executor, and I have since devoted much time to the arrangement, completion, and publication of his various unfinished works, seeking the help of competent editors where necessary.
Immediately after his decease I published his
_Recollections of Mr. James Lenox of New York, and the formation of his Library,_ a little volume which was most favourably received and ran through several impressions.
In the same year I published _The Dawn of British Trade to the East Indies as recorded in the Court Minutes of the East India Company._ This volume contained an account of the formation of the Company and of Captain Waymouth's voyage to America in search of the North-west passage to the East Indies. The work was printed for the first time from the original manuscript preserved in the India Office, and the introduction was written by Sir George Birdwood.
In 1888 I issued _Johann Sch?ner, Professor of Mathematics at Nuremberg. A reproduction of his Globe of 1523 long lost, his dedicatory letter to Reymer von Streytperck, and the `De Moluccis' of Maximilianus Transylvanus, with new translations and notes on the Globe by Henry Stevens of Vermont, edited, with an introduction and bibliography, by C. H. Coote, of the British Museum._ This Globe of 1523_,_ now generally known as Sch?ner's Third Globe, is marked by a line representing the route of Magellan's expedition in the first circumnavigation of the earth; and the facsimile of Maximilianus's interesting account of that voyage, with an English translation, was consequently added to the volume. Mr. Coote, in his introduction, gives a graphic account of many other early globes, several of which are also reproduced in facsimile. The whole volume was most carefully prepared, and exhibits considerable originality both in the printing and binding, Mr. Henry Stevens's own ideas having been faithfully carried out.
In 1893 I issued to the subscribers that elegant folio volume which my father always considered as his _magnum opus._ It was entitled _The New Laws of the Indies for the good treatment and preservation of the Indians, promulgated by the Emperor Charles the Fifth, 1542-1543. A facsimile reprint of the original Spanish edition, together with a literal translation into the English language, to which is prefixed an historical introduction._ Of the long introduction of ninety-four pages, the first thirty-eight are from the pen of Mr. Henry Stevens, the remainder from that of Mr. Fred. W. Lucas, whose diligent researches into American history are amply exemplified in his former work, _Appendiculae Historicae, or shreds of history hung on a horn,_ and in his recent work, _The Annals of the Voyages of the Brothers Zeno._
Ever since 1886 I have from time to time unsuccessfully endeavoured to enlist the services of various editors competent to complete the projected eleven volumes of the Hercules Club publications, but after a lapse of nearly fourteen years I have awakened to the fact that no actual progress has been made, and that I have secured nothing beyond the vague promise of future assistance. The field of editors capable of this class of work being necessarily very limited, and death having recently robbed me in the most promising case of even the slender hope of future help, I determined to ascertain for myself the exact position of the work already done, with the hope of bringing at least some of the volumes to a completion separately, instead of waiting longer in the hope of finishing and issuing them all en bloc as originally proposed and intended. On collating the printed stock I found that the two volumes, _Hariot's Virginia_ and the _Life of Hariot,_ were practically complete, the text of both all printed off, and the titles and preliminary leaves and the Index to _Hariot's Virginia_ actually standing in type at the Chiswick Press