d by him "in burlesque verse." Indeed,
"Eben: Cook, Gent." may be a myth--a _nom de plume_. Yet, there is a
certain personal poignancy and earnestness about the whole Story that
almost forbid the idea of a secondhand narrative. Nay, I think it
extremely probable that it was "Eben: Cook, Gent." or, some other
equally afflicted gentleman assuming that name, who--

"_Condemn'd by Fate to wayward Curse,
Of Friends unkind and empty purse_,"--

fled from his native land to become a Sot-Weed factor in America.[1]

The adventures and manners described are ludicrous and certainly very
unpolished. Although Mr. Cook calls his poem "_A Satyr_," there is, in
his account of early habits in Maryland, so much resemblance to what we
observe in the rude society of all new settlements, that it is possible
the story is not so much a Satire as a hightened description of what an
unlucky traveler found in certain quarters of the colony, Anno Domini,
1700. When "Mr. Cook," with an anathema in his mouth, makes a final bow
to his readers, he expressly adds, in a note, on the last page, that
"the Author does not intend by this any of the _English_ Gentlemen
resident there;" still, excepting even all these select personages, he
doubtless found _un_-gentlefolk enough among the rough farmers and
fishermen of obscure "Piscato-way" and the adjacent country, to justify
his discontent. At all events, we may, I imagine, very reasonably
suppose "Eben: Cook" to have been a London "Gent:" rather decayed by
fast living, sent abroad to see the world and be tamed by it, who very
soon discovered that Lord Baltimore's Colony was not the court of her
Majesty Queen Anne, or its taverns frequented by Addison and the wits;
and whose disgust became supreme when he was "finished" on the
"Eastern-Shoar,"[2] by

"A pious, Concientious Rogue"

who, taking advantage of his incapacity for trade, cheated him out of
his cargo and sent him home without a leaf of the coveted "Sot-weed!"
This poem is, very likely, the result of that homeward voyage. With
proper allowance for breadth and burlesque, angry exaggeration and the
discomforts of such a "Gentleman" as we may fancy Master Cook to have
been, it is well worth preservation as hinting, if not photographing,
the manners and customs of the ruder classes in a British Province a
century and a half ago.

The "Sot-Weed Factor" was first printed in London, in 1708, in a folio
of twenty-one pages. It was reprinted, with