Three Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More: Utopia / Francis Bacon: New Atlantis / Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines

by Thomas More

  in whose . . . only blessed: our own births, blessed only in the birth of Christ.

  days of thy pilgrimage: see Genesis 47: 9.

  every of them: every one of them.

  so they be not above two: as long as there are not more than two of them.

  Joabin: Weinberger suggests that Joabin is named after the biblical Joab, a nephew of David. Joab was a talented military commander and a ruthless murderer: ignoring David’s instruction to spare his rebellious son Absalom, Joab stabbed him through the heart when he was entangled in an oak tree. After David’s death Joab supported Adonijah, who plotted against Solomon; Solomon ordered him killed in retaliation for this, and also for two of his earlier murders. See 2 Samuel 11 and 18; 1 Kings 2. Another Joab is mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4: 14. This Joab is a craftsman.

  the Milken Way: the Milky Way, believed by the Jews to flow from the throne of God.

  the Eliah of the Messiah: Elijah (or Elias) the Prophet. See Malachi 4: 5; Matthew 17: 10.

  the people thereof . . . at Hierusalem: ‘Nachoran’ is possibly suggestive of Abraham’s brother Nahor, who had many sons. See Genesis 11; 22: 20–4.

  A cabbala is the Hebrew name for the tradition of mystical interpretation of the Old Testament, said to derive from Moses. For the second coming see Mark 13: 26–37; Matthew 14: 41–3; Mark 8: 38–9: 1.

  I have read . . . ugly Ethiop: the book referred to is unknown. A similar (but later), story appears in La Motte Fouqué’s Sintram (1820). ‘Ethiop’ was a racist byword for ugliness, as in Romeo’s ‘like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear’, Romeo and Juliet, i. v. 50; racist anxieties about rapacious black sexuality were already in circulation. For a more extended performance of such anxieties see The Isle of Pines.

  But when men have at hand . . . instituted: most aristocratic marriages in the early modern period were arranged, in order to promote the wealth or the power of the families involved. Although working partnerships often developed out of such marriages, the development of emotional ties between couples happened, if they did happen, after marriage, not before; such ties were therefore especially vulnerable to threat from adulterous liaisons.

  being of the same matter: being of the same corrupt flesh.

  Lot’s offer: in the Bible Lot’s action is virtuous, and rewarded by God: Lot offers his daughters to the Sodomites who are besieging his house in an attempt to rape his male guests, two of God’s angels. See Genesis 19.

  masculine love: homosexuality.

  widow of Sarepta . . . Elias: Sarepta (New Testament name), or Zarephath (Old Testament name) is a Phoenician port; Elijah was given food and lodging there by a poor widow. See 1 Kings 17: 8–24.

  intermarry or contract: marry each other or become engaged.

  I have read in a book . . . one another naked: More’s Utopia. See p. 90 and accompanying note.

  a rich . . . litter-wise: in something akin to a sedan-chair, apparently carried by horses.

  emeralds of the Peru colour: very green emeralds.

  tissued upon blue: woven upon a blue background.

  the Companies of the City: probably Merchants’ guilds.

  as if they had been placed: as if they had been put there, or instructed to stand there.

  any degrees to the state: any steps up to the low throne.

  warned the pages forth: asked the pages to leave.

  the imitation of natural mines: the artificial production of natural mineral veins.

  We have burials . . . porcelain: Chinese porcelain was thought to be obtained by a process which involved burying it underground.

  engines for multiplying . . . divers motions: machines for increasing the intensity of winds, to bring about different movements.

  as tincted upon vitriol: vitriol is the hydrous sulphate of a metal. ‘Tincting upon vitriol’ is the adding of vitriol to water to make mineral water.

  take the virtue: absorb the property.

  made very sovereign: rendered the very best, the most efficacious.

  some artificial rains of bodies . . . and divers others: beliefs about various kinds of spontaneous generation were, in the absence of the microscope (see below), common in the early modern period. Below, Bacon refers to the generation of animals from decaying matter (putrefaction): it was thought that maggots, for instance, bred spontaneously in dung or dead animals. Here, Bacon rehearses the belief that swarms of insects are spontaneously generated in hot weather.

  We make a number . . . putrefaction: see previous note.

  drinks of extreme thin parts . . . fretting: drinks made up out of elements so tiny that they can be absorbed painlessly through the skin.

  meats . . . otherwise it would be: native Peruvians chewed coca leaves to produce effects similar to those described here.

  exact forms of composition . . . natural simples: exact methods of combining these substances, so that they fuse together almost entirely, as if they were originally and naturally one ingredient alone.

  as well for such as are . . . those that are: for those things that are not commonly used, as well as for those that are.

  but yet . . . patterns and principals: but in any case, of all those things that we invented ourselves, we keep examples to serve as blueprints or models (for future reference).

  that pass divers . . . progresses, and returns: of diverse intensities, undergoing cyclical variations, increasing and diminishing.

  lime unquenched: ‘unquenched’: unslaked, not hydrated. Lime generates heat only when it is slaked.

  producing of light . . . divers bodies: making light originate from various substances.

  means of seeing objects . . . distinctly: some lenses, such as the magnifying glass, had been in use since ancient times. Eyeglasses had been in use since the fourteenth century. The telescope was in use in some parts of Europe; it had been invented around 1600, perhaps by Hans Lippershey. Microscopes were a very recent, and still largely unknown invention (possibly invented by Zacharias Jansen, they were named by the naturalist John Faber in 1625). It was not until the publication of Robert Hooke’s Micrographia in 1665 that the potential of the microscope was really recognized.

  observations in urine: urine was analysed in order to diagnose disease: it was its colour which was thought to be the most significant indicator.

  fossils: objects hidden in the earth, inorganic as well as organic.

  lodestones: magnets had been known for centuries; the compass was a more recent invention. The Chinese had used magnetized needles as early compasses in shipping since about AD 1000, the Europeans since around the fifteenth century.

  wildfires burning in water: naptha (liquid petroleum) had been used since ancient times for setting fire to enemy ships.

  ships and boats for going under water: a submarine had been demonstrated in the Thames by the Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel in 1620.

  brooking of seas: sailing over high waves.

  clocks . . . perpetual motions: clocks telling the hour had been in use for centuries. The principle of isochronism (equal time of the pendulum’s swing) was discovered by Galileo at the end of the sixteenth century, ushering in a period of rapid advance in the art of time-keeping, although the pendulum clock was not invented until the middle of the seventeenth century. Perpetual motion is an impossibility.

  images of men . . . serpents: mechanical models of animals, automata.

  could in a world . . . the senses: could trick the senses in lots of different ways.

  they do not show . . . affectation of strangeness: they never exhibit any natural product or object in an exaggerated manner, but only exactly as it is in nature, without any attempt to make it more unusual than it really is.

  mechanical arts . . . brought into arts: mechanical arts are those cultivated for profit, liberal sciences (or liberal arts) those pursued for the sake of knowledge. The third category comprises those skills and endeavours not comprehended by the first two.

  knowledge as well for works . . . parts of bodies: for pr
actical knowledge as well as theoretical, and also for knowledge of how to predict changes in nature, and understanding of the qualities of various parts of bodies and other objects.

  of a higher light: of a more profound nature.

  your monk . . . gunpowder: perhaps Roger Bacon (1210–92), a scholastic philosopher and Franciscan friar, traditionally thought to have invented gunpowder.

  the inventor of music . . . of sugars: most of these things were discovered by cultures, not by individuals. In Old Testament mythology Jubal is said to be the father of music (see Genesis 4: 21); in Greek mythology Dionysus is the god of wine, and Triptolemus of agriculture.

  declare natural divinations: draw attention to nature’s warning signs.

  temperature of the year: unusual changes to the weather normally expected at a given time of year.

  The rest was not perfected: Rawley’s note to the text.

  Magnalia Naturae . . . humanos: ‘The wonderful works of Nature, chiefly such as benefit mankind’ (Vickers’s translation). The list followed the New Atlantis in its first edition.

  THE ISLE OF PINES

  Pines: an anagram of ‘penis’. But the word ‘pine’ also meant ‘punishment’, ‘suffering’ (especially the suffering of hell), and (as a verb) ‘to lose one’s vitality or vigour’, as well as ‘to languish with desire’.

  Rochelle: the French port La Rochelle, an important commercial centre for overseas trade and also the site of Huguenot revolts in 1621–8.

  Cape Finis Terre: the location of this Cape Finis Terre is uncertain. There are several places with this name in various countries of the world, but none seems to fit the location suggested in the text. This, however, may be Neville’s ‘deliberate’ error, as Keek says below that ‘there may be some mistake in the number of the leagues, as also of the exact point of the compass, from Cape Finis Terre’.

  the Island of Brasile: not Brazil, which had been known since it was sighted by Cabral in 1500 and since settled, mostly by the Portuguese. ‘Brasile’ was the name given to a mythical island, supposedly situated in the Atlantic somewhere south-west of Ireland, and the subject of a pamphlet entitled O Brasile, which described an imaginary civilization there.

  Zealand: Zeeland, a region in the Low Countries which had been one of the main locations for the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

  Terra Australis Incognita: Australia was unknown at the end of the seventeenth century. ‘Terra Incognita Australis’ (unknown southern land) was a term periodically used to designate unknown lands; it later became the title of a French utopia written by Gabriel de Foigny in 1692 and translated into English the following year.

  Henry Cornelius Van Sloetten: the name has both English and Dutch resonances and would appear also to have parodic sexual significance. It has been suggested that ‘Sloetten’ may be derived from ‘slut’. ‘Cornelius’ may be suspicious too, since the Latin for ‘horn’ is cornu, and horns were a symbol of cuckoldry.

  the East Indies: the extraordinary wealth to be gained from exploiting the spice trade in the East Indies was one of the principal causes of the Anglo-Dutch War. By the mid-seventeenth century the Dutch had become dominant in the area, capturing Malacca from the Portuguese in 1641, and in 1623 massacring English traders at Amboina in the Moluccas. They had seized Macassar from the English in 1667.

  isles of Cape Verd . . . Veridis: islands off the north-west (Senegambian) coast of Africa, a port for the Portuguese on the way to the East Indies. The Dutch developed a settlement at Goree on the mainland, the English a settlement slightly further south, at Cacheu.

  under the Southern Tropic: Madagascar lies on the Tropic of Capricorn.

  Isle del Principe: an island off the west coast of West Africa, below the Niger delta states, settled by the Portuguese.

  Wat Eylant is dit?’: in Dutch the question would be ‘Welk Eiland is dat?’

  great nut . . . apple: the OED records the first use of the term ‘breadfruit’ in 1697, where the author compares the tree that bears it to a European apple tree.

  hereafter followeth: this point marks the first break between the framing narrative and Pine’s narrative: see the introduction for a brief publishing history of the text.

  A way . . . certain Portugals: the narrator is now George Pine, the time the 1590s, over a century prior to the narrative of Cornelius Van Sloetten. The Portuguese had first reached Malacca in 1509, and the Spice Islands (the Moluccas) in 1512–13.

  the Queen’s Royal Licence: one early edition of the text has a lengthy note at this point concerning Queen Elizabeth’s insistence that the English East India Company (founded in 1600) should trade in English silver (which was not recognized in the East Indies) and not the coin of the Spanish (which was). The note is reprinted in Henderson’s Everyman edition of the text.

  the Island of St Helen: St Helena, in the Atlantic Ocean south-west of Angola, later a British colony.

  St Lawrence: Madagascar.

  a sort of fowl . . . swan: the bird has obvious similarities to the dodo, which lived in Mauritius.

  my stomach would not serve me: I could not stomach it.

  Amen: marks the end of Pine’s narrative, which was inserted in the framing narrative in the third edition of the text (see introduction). From here, the narration returns to Cornelius Van Sloetten.

  these laws to be observed by them: the laws are a condensation of Mosaic law, most saliently in principle (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe). See Exodus 21: 23–5 and, more generally, 19–24.

  blaspheme . . . put to death: see Exodus 20: 2, 7; 22: 20, 28.

  commit adultery: see Exodus 21: 14, 17.

  laming of his limbs: see Exodus 21: 12.

  taking . . . possesseth: see Exodus 21: 15; 22: 4, 7.

  defame . . . the Governor: see Exodus 22: 28.

  the third climate: ‘climate’ in the obsolete sense of a ‘belt of the earth’s surface contained between two given parallels of latitude’ (OED). Initially seven, by the end of the eighteenth century there were reckoned to be thirty lying between the equator and either pole.

  reval: possibly derived from the French rêve (‘dream’).

  marde: an anagram of ‘dream’.

  Cambaia . . . the great Cham of Tartary: European commercial and colonial interests often found themselves in competition not only with each other, but also with the complex network of cultures and empires that existed before the European arrival in South-East Asia. ‘Tartary’ refers to lands north of China; the ‘great Cham’ was the title given to the descendants of Genghis Khan, and more generally to potentates of Mongolia, Tartary, and China. Cambaia may be Cambay, a trading centre on the northernmost coast of India, under the control of the Mughal empire during the seventeenth century.

  Calicut: an important port on the Malabar coast of India.

  Brachmans: Brahmins, i.e. high-caste Hindus.

  King’s sisters’ sons . . . Kingdom: this inheritance system is still practised in some parts of the world, property being passed from a man, not to his own sons (of whose paternity he can never be entirely certain), but to his sister’s sons (with whom, he can be sure, he shares a genetic relation).

  Argiere: Algiers. Pirates from the Corsair cities were greatly feared by European sailors.

  Although perhaps . . . lie by authority: Neville’s syntax is confusing here; the sentence means that intelligent people will believe his report, since they will have the sense to contextualize the tale within the knowledge of the discovery of many such new places in recent years, while stupidly sceptical people will not. A ‘Nullifidian’ is someone who has no faith or belief.