Born at Willoughby, Lincolnshire, in Jan., 1579: died at London, June 21, 1631. An English adventurer, president of the colony of Virginia 1608–09. He was the eldest son of George Smith, a tenant farmer. Little is known of his life, except through his own writings, which are largely eulogistic of himself and of questionable authority…. He wrote “A True Relation” (1608), “A Map of Virginia” (1612), “A Description of New England (1616), “New England’s Trials” (1620), “The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles” (1624), “An Accidence for Young Seamen” (1626), “The True Travels” (1630), and “Advertisements for the Inexperienced Planters of New England” (1631).

Personal

  He spent the most of his life in Forraign parts. First in Hungary, under the Emperour, fighting against the Turks; three of which he himself killed in single duells; and therefore was authorized by Sigismund King of Hungary to bear three Turks-heads, as an augmentation to his Armes. Here he gave intelligence to a besieged City in the night, by significant Fire-works formed in the aire, in legible characters, with many strange performances, the scene whereof is laid at such a distance, they are cheaper credited then confuted. From the Turks in Europe he passed to the Pagans in America, where, towards the latter end of the Raign of Queen Elizabeth, such his perills, preservations, dangers, deliverances, they seem to most men above belief, to some beyond truth. Yet have we two witnesses to attest them, the Prose and the Pictures, both in his own Book; and it soundeth much to the diminution of his deeds, that he alone is the Herauld to publish and proclaim them…. Moderate men must allow Captain Smith to have been very instrumentall in settling the Plantation in Virginia, whereof he was Governour, as also Admiral of New-England. He led his old age in London, where his having a Prince’s mind imprisoned in a poor man’s purse rendered him to the contempt of such who were not ingenuous. Yet he efforted his spirits with the remembrance and relation of what formerly he had been, and what he had done. He was buried in Sepulchre’s-Church Quire, on the South-side thereof, having a ranting Epitaph inscribed in a table over him, too long to transcribe.

  Wherever upon this continent the English language is spoken, his deeds should be recounted and his memory hallowed. His services should not only be not forgotten, but should be “freshly remembered.” His name should not only be honored by the silent canvas and the cold marble, but his praises should dwell living upon the lips of men, and should be handed down by fathers to their children. Poetry has imagined nothing more stirring and romantic than his life and adventures, and History, upon her ample page, has recorded few more honorable and spotless names.

  Captain John Smith united the strongest spirit of adventure with eminent powers of action. Full of courage and self-possession, he was fertile in expedients, and prompt in execution. He had a just idea of the public good, and clearly discerned that it was not the true interest of England to seek in Virginia for gold and sudden wealth. “Nothing,” said he, “is to be expected thence but by labor;” and as a public officer he excelled in its direction. The historians of Virginia have with common consent looked to him as the preserver of their commonwealth in its infancy; and there is hardly room to doubt that, but for his vigor, industry, and resolution, it would have been deserted like the Virginia of the north, and with better excuse.

  “His body was deposited in Sepulchre’s Church choir, on the south side thereof,” with a rather florid epitaph, of which the following are the first and last lines:

	“Here lies one conquer’d that hath conquer’d kings!
	Oh, may his soul in sweet Elysium sleep!”

The verses, some by men of mark, which accompany his “Generall Historie” and others of his works, are highly eulogistic of his private character and public deeds. Edward Robinson addresses him as

	“Thou that to passe the world’s four parts dost deeme
	No more than ’twere to go to bed or drinke;”

and Thomas Carlton relieves us of the fear that he was wont, soldier and sailor like, to “drinke” too easily, by the assertion,

	“I never knew a Warryer yet, but thee,
	From wine, tobacco, debts, dice, oaths, so free.”

  He was perhaps the last professional knight-errant that the world saw; a free lance, who could not hear of a fight going on anywhere in the world without hastening to have a hand in it; a sworn champion of the ladies also, all of whom he loved too ardently to be guilty of the invidious offence of marrying any one of them; a restless, vain, ambitious, overbearing, blustering fellow, who made all men either his hot friends or his hot enemies; a man who down to the present hour has his celebrity in the world chiefly on account of alleged exploits among Turks, Tartars, and Indians, of which exploits he alone has furnished the history—never failing to celebrate himself in them all as the one resplendent and invincible hero.

  The truth of this story [of Smith’s Rescue by Pocahontas], was never doubted till 1866, when the eminent antiquary, Dr. Charles Deane of Cambridge, Mass., in reprinting Smith’s first book, the “True Relation” of 1609, pointed out that it contains no reference to this hairbreadth escape. Since then many American historians and scholars have concluded that it never happened at all; and, in order to be consistent, they have tried to prove that Smith was a blustering braggadocio, which is the very last thing that could in truth be said of him. The rescue of a captive doomed to death by a woman is not such an unheard-of thing in Indian stories. If the truth of this deliverance be denied, how then did Smith come back to James Town loaded with presents, when the other three men were killed, George Cassen in particular, in a most horrible manner? And how is it, supposing Smith’s account to be false, that Pocahontas afterwards frequently came to James Town, and was next to Smith himself, the salvation of the colony? The fact is, nobody doubted the story in Smith’s lifetime, and he had enemies enough.

  The romantic life of Captain John Smith is too well known to need retelling. His character, too, needs no new light shed upon it. We must acknowledge that he was inordinately vain, fond of boasting, impetuous, imperious, restless, yet we know that his shrewdness, his indomitable courage, and his sound judgment more than once saved the Virginia Colony from ruin.

  Much controversy has arisen as to the truth of the stories published by Smith about his own adventures. But the modern historian, while recognising the extravagance of the details of many of the more picturesque of Smith’s self-recorded exploits, is bound to give full weight to his record of his more prosaic achievements—in laying the solid foundations of the prosperity of the new settlement of Virginia.

General

  His style is simple and concise, his narratives bear the stamp of truth, and his descriptions are free from false ornament.

  I made acquaintance with brave Captain Smith, as a boy in my grandfather’s library at home, where I remember how I would sit at the good old man’s knees, with my favourite volume on my own, spelling out the exploits of our Virginian hero. I loved to read of Smith’s travels, sufferings, captivities, escapes, not only in America, but Europe.

  As students of literature we shall be drawn to Captain John Smith as belonging to that noble type of manhood of which the Elizabethan period produced so many examples—the man of action who was also a man of letters, the man of letters who was also a man of action: the wholsomest type of manhood anywhere to be found; body and brain both active, both cultivated; the mind not made fastidious and morbid by too much bookishness, nor coarse and dull by too little; not a doer who is dumb, not a speech-maker who cannot do; the knowledge that comes of books widened and freshened by the knowledge that comes of experience; the literary sense fortified by common sense; the bashfulness and delicacy of the scholar hovering as a finer presence above the forceful audacity of the man of the world; at once bookman, penman, swordsman, diplomat, sailor, courtier, orator…. As a writer his merits are really great—clearness, force, vividness, picturesque and dramatic energy, a diction racy and crisp. He had the faults of an impulsive, irascible, egotistic, and imaginative nature; he sometimes bought human praise at too high a price; but he had great abilities in word and deed; his nature was upon the whole generous and noble; and during the first two decades of the seventeenth century he did more than any other Englishman to make an American nation and an American literature possible.

  For twenty years he was a voluminous writer, working off his superfluous energy in setting forth his adventures in new forms…. He seldom writes a book, or a tract, without beginning it or working into it a resume of his life.

  His zeal was greater than his discretion, and his industry was often fruitless; but as an explorer and describer of American men, soil, and possibilities, his service to the nascent colonies was unquestionable. This bald list of his adventures, discoveries, and doings explains his prominence in the American history of the seventeenth century. His voluminous writings deserve but a humble place in literature. Strictly speaking, they are a part of English, not American literature, for Smith’s continuous residence on American soil was a matter of but two years’ lasting; and, all told, he was in the New World but two years and eight months. It is uncertain what share Smith had in the writing of the works passing under his name; some of his assertions (as the famous legend of the rescue of his life by Pocahontas) are questionable, and others demonstrably false. At their best, his books lack high literary merit, and are material for the historian rather than the critic.

  Captain Smith’s writings have small literary value apart from the interest of the events which they describe and the diverting but forcible personality which they unconsciously display. They are the rough-hewn records of a busy man of action, whose sword was mightier than his pen.

  John Smith was the most picturesque figure in the early history of America; and his writings are like him—bold, free, highly colored.

  Smith’s earliest book, “A True Relation of Virginia,” was printed in London in 1608, the year of Milton’s birth. It is a hurried, semi-official document, giving a sketchy account of the first year of the colony. When we read of the young captain’s own busy doings in those critical months, building forts and palisadoes, planting, exploring, fighting, sojourning among the Indians, now as captive, now as guest, trading blue beads for corn and venison, we wonder that he found the moments in which to jot down his news at all. Yet heedless of art, all rough-and-ready as the headlong narrative is, the vigor of the man, and the reality of the situation make it graphic.

  Smith was a prolific and, no doubt, a rapid writer; but, like Sir Walter Raleigh, he made authorship merely an incident in a life crowded with dangers and brave deeds. As we might expect, he is not a finished writer; but his books are graphic and entertaining, and full of the vigor and power of the man. If his love of “brave adventure” and the spirit of the artist made him occasionally draw upon his imagination to heighten the interest, at least some of his readers will secretly be thankful for the romance, and pardon the trifling lapses from truth.