is romances about his career into their
narratives, imparting to their paraphrases of his story such
an elevation as his own opinion of himself seemed to demand. Of
contemporary estimate of him there is little to quote except the
panegyrics in verse he has preserved for us, and the inference from his
own writings that he was the object of calumny and detraction. Enemies
he had in plenty, but there are no records left of their opinion of his
character. The nearest biographical notice of him in point of time is
found in the "History of the Worthies of England," by Thomas Fuller,
D.D., London, 1662.

Old Fuller's schoolmaster was Master Arthur Smith, a kinsman of John,
who told him that John was born in Lincolnshire, and it is probable that
Fuller received from his teacher some impression about the adventurer.

Of his "strange performances" in Hungary, Fuller says: "The scene
whereof is laid at such a distance that they are cheaper credited than
confuted."

"From the Turks in Europe he passed to the pagans in America, where
towards the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth [it was in the
reign of James] such his perils, 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 herald to publish and proclaim them."

"Surely such reports from strangers carry the greater reputation.
However, moderate men must allow Captain Smith to have been very
instrumental in settling the plantation in Virginia, whereof he was
governor, 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
as were not ingenuous. Yet he efforted his spirits with the remembrance
and relation of what formerly he had been, and what he had done."

Of the "ranting epitaph," quoted above, Fuller says: "The orthography,
poetry, history and divinity in this epitaph are much alike."

Without taking Captain John Smith at his own estimate of himself, he
was a peculiar character even for the times in which he lived. He shared
with his contemporaries the restless spirit of roving and adventure
which resulted from the invention of the mariner's compass and the
discovery of the New World; but he was neither so sordid nor so
rapacious as many of th