The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1879-12-09
A LITERARY RELIC.


/ A LITERARY RELIC. s
The First Copy of Shakespeare Ever
brought West Of the Alleghanies.
4 Madison Letter TO Chicago fimes.1
i The first American edition of fShak.
speare was in 1895. It was published in
Philadelphia. There was probably nc
COPY in the library of Harvard College,
which was burnt January Path, a764. but
in the course of that year copy was pre-
sented by an English benefactor, Thomas
Hollis. Before his present arrived, how
ever, q Shakespeare turnsd up in the far
West-much nearer to Chicago, if not to
Omaha, than to iCanhidge.
Its discovery l find related in a book
so rare that the copy in the library of
the State Historical Society of Wiscon-
sin is doubtless the only specimen now
extant in America. This work, "Miscel-
lanies in Prose and Verse;" by Captain
Thomas Morris, London, 1871, relates the
authors adventures when he had vol
unteered to risk himself among the saw
age tribes who had long been French al
lies, for persuading them to transfer their
allegiance to the British, to whom France
had yielded the country. He set out
August 26, 1764 from Cedar Point, near
the southwest Corner of Lake Erie, pur-
posing to traverse the region that is now
Indiana and Illinois.
Five days after starting he relates that
at an Indian Council OF Pontiac's tribes
near the Swifts, as he calls the Maumee
rapids, "an Indian styled the Little
Chief presented me with a volume of
Shakspeare-a singular gift from a saw
age. He, however, beggeda little gum
powder in return, a commodity to him
much more precious than diamonds" A
week afterward chat book saved Morris
life. His escort of French and Indians,
having landed, were assailed by whole
tribe, who were lying in wait to kill the
Englishman, and would have been over
powered had he been among them; but
he says: II had the good fortune to
have stayed in the canoe reading the
tragedy Of Antony and Cleopatra in the
volume which Little Chief had given
me, and had pushed the canoe over to
the other side of the river. .s5..-
The mission Of Morris proveda failure.
After penetrating the country somewhat
further he was 30 maltreated and threat
'ened that he fled for his life to Detroit,
which he reached twenty-three days after
he began his expedition. Butbefore tax
ing to fight, he tells us, 'Ileftmy money
and baggage with one Capucion, a French
man" This leaving was in the camp of
a tribe who soon made their submission
to the British, and restored, as there is
evidence, whatever Morris had left in
their charge. So, while he lost his politi-
cal end, he probably saved his Shakespeare.
That volume had perhaps come into
the Indian hands at Braddock's defeat,
nine years before; for Morris obtained it
near the same place and from the Same
tribe where he saw Braddock's white
horse, which had been the spoil of one
of them.
He viewed the book as God-send, for
he was q dramatic enthusiast, and
twenty-seven years after he wrote that "no
pleasure the world had ever afforded him
unless perhaps one---was equal to that |
Of reading Shakespeare at the foot of a
waterfall in the American desert"
1t is hard to believe that he did not
carry this finding over the Atlantic when
he returned home with his regiment in |
1768, or that he did not treasure it care
fully and bequeath it as a rich legacy to |
his children.
He published six works between the
years 1876 and 1902, in some of which
there may be further account of his |
Shakespearean treasure-trove. Unfor-
tunately TREY are not to be consulted |
this side the British Museum. The |
original of his journal is deposited in the |
London Record Office. / was once in the
very room where it is preserved, but
knew not then what "a curiosity I stood |
by unawares. His printed copy was
made to be presented to George III, |
whose sole recorded saying about Shak-
speare is, "Was there ever such stuff"
However much exultation over the |
Shakspearean find there may have been
in the original manuscript, it would all /
have been struck out from a petition to
Georgian majesty on the same principle |
that Shakespeare never mentioned tobacco
in dramas intended to please the mon
arch who had written q counterblast
against it. ..........
Captain Morris left children. Hisl
father, grandfather and uncle were all 4
officers in the same regiment with him.
1t must be easy to discover his family. 1
Let, then, the first admirer of Shakespeare
among readers of the Times who visits
England hunt up the Shakspearean Nor
rises, ascertain the whereabouts of the
first Shakespeare that was ever seen west
of the Alleghanies and beg, borrow. buy
or steal it, that it may once more behold
the Mississippi Valley. 1t will rejoice
like old Enoch in being thus translated. 4
even set 1t in shower Of gold
And rain rich pearls upon It,"
JAMES d. BUTLER.
A florid Letter With Explanatiens.