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Thomas Hariot
and his
associates

’ chusing always rather to doe some thinge worth
nothing than nothing att all.’ Sir William Lower
to Hariot July 19 1611 (see p. 99)

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To

FrancisParkman

The

<
i>Historianand TRUSTIE friend

Who Forty Years ago
When we were young Students of History together
Gave me a hand of his over the Sea
now
Give I him this right hand of mine
with
Ever grateful Tribute to
our life-long

Friendship

Morin

Custos juris reimprimendi
Caveat homo trium literarum

[The touching Dedication on the opposite page was penned by my father a few months before his death on February 18, 1886.  I have thought it best to leave it exactly as he had planned it, although now, alas!  Mr. Parkman is no longer with us.  Let us hope the old friends may have again joined hands beyond the unknown sea.-H.  N. S.]

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Explanatory

In the year 1877 the late Mr. Henry Stevens of Vermont, under the pseudonym of ’ Mr. Secretary Outis,’ projected and initiated a literary Association entitled the hercules club.  The following extracts from the original prospectus of that year explain this platform: 

The objects of this Association are literary, social, antiquarian, festive and historical ; and its aims are thoroughly independent research into the materials of early Anglo-American history and literature.  The Association is known as the hercules club, whose Eurystheus is Historic Truth and whose appointed labours are to clear this field for the historian of the future.

" Sinking the individual in the Association the Hercules Club proposes to scour the plain and endeavour to rid it of some of the many literary, historical, chronological, geographical and other monstrous errors, hydras and public nuisances that infest it . . . .  Very many books, maps, manuscripts and other materials relating alike to England and to America are well known to exist in various public and private repositories on both sides of the Atlantic.  Some unique are of the highest rarity, are of great historic value, while others are difficult of access, if not wholly inaccessible, to the general student.  It ís one of the purposes therefore of the Hercules Club to ferret out these materials, collate, edit and reproduce them with extreme accuracy, but not in facsimile.  The printing is to be in the best style of the Chiswick Press.  The paper with the Club’s monogram in each leaf is made expressly for the purpose”.

The following ten works were selected as the first field of the Club’s investigations, and to form the first series of its publications.