tience, and should have none at all
if the account were not edited by Smith himself. His revenge was in his
good fortune in setting his own story afloat in the current of history.
The first narrative of these events, published by Smith in his Oxford
tract of 1612, was considerably remodeled and changed in his "General
Historie" of 1624. As we have said before, he had a progressive memory,
and his opponents ought to be thankful that the pungent Captain did not
live to work the story over a third time.

It is no doubt true, however, that but for the accident to our hero, he
would have continued to rule till the arrival of Gates and Somers with
the new commissions; as he himself says, "but had that unhappy blast not
happened, he would quickly have qualified the heat of those humors and
factions, had the ships but once left them and us to our fortunes; and
have made that provision from among the salvages, as we neither feared
Spaniard, Salvage, nor famine: nor would have left Virginia nor our
lawful authority, but at as dear a price as we had bought it, and paid
for it."

He doubtless would have fought it out against all comers; and who
shall say that he does not merit the glowing eulogy on himself which he
inserts in his General History? "What shall I say but this, we left him,
that in all his proceedings made justice his first guide, and experience
his second, ever hating baseness, sloth, pride, and indignity, more than
any dangers; that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead
them himself; that would never see us want what he either had or could
by any means get us; that would rather want than borrow; or starve than
not pay; that loved action more than words, and hated falsehood and
covetousness worse than death; whose adventures were our lives, and
whose loss our deaths."

A handsomer thing never was said of another man than Smith could say of
himself, but he believed it, as also did many of his comrades, we must
suppose. He suffered detraction enough, but he suffered also abundant
eulogy both in verse and prose. Among his eulogists, of course, is not
the factious Captain Ratcliffe. In the English Colonial State papers,
edited by Mr. Noel Sainsbury, is a note, dated Jamestown, October 4,
1609, from Captain "John Radclyffe comenly called," to the Earl of
Salisbury, which contains this remark upon Smith's departure after the
arrival of the last supply: "They heard that all the Council were dead
but Capt.