The Algerine Captive; Or, the Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike

H/K^vl s ^ /,,/ i THE ALGERINE CAPTIVE; OR, THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OP DOCTOR UPDIKE UNDERBILL. , V > i SIX YEARS A PRISONER AMONG THE ALGERINES* ...By your patience, I will a ;oucd uryp.iwshed tale delicti Of my whole course . SHAKSFEA.RE. TWO VOLUMES IN ONE. HARTFORD : PRINTED BY PETER B. GLEASON AND CO, 1816, t TO HIS EXCELLENCY DAVID HUMPHREYS, ESQ. MINISTER OF THE UNITED STATES AT THE COURT OF LISBON, &C. their and IN Europe, dedications have price ; the author oftener looks to the plenitude of the pockets, than the brains of his patron. The American author can hope but little pecuniary emolument from even the sale, and not any from the dedication of his work. To adorn his book with the name of some gentle man of acknowledged merit involves his whole Interest in a public address. 07402% IV DfipICATION. With this view, will you, Sir, permit a lover of the Muses, and a biographer of private life, {o address to you (a poet and the biographer of of a hero) a detail of those miseries slavery, from which your public energies have princi of our fel pal \y conduced to liberate hundreds low citizens, UPDIKE UNDERBILL. JijneSO, 1797. PREFACE. ONE of the first observations the author of the following sheets made upon his return to his na tive country, after an absence of seven years, was the extreme avidity with which books of mere amusement were purchased and perused by all ranks g& his countrymen. When he left New Eng land, books of biography, travels, novels, and mod ern confined to our romances, were seaports ; or, if known in the country, were read only in the families of clergymen, physicians, and lawyers : while certain funeral discourses, the last words and dying speeches of Bryan Shaheen, and Levi Ames, and some dreary somebody s Day of Doom, formed the most diverting part of the farmer s library. On his return from captivity, he found a surprising alteration in the public taste. In our inland towns of consequence, social libraries had been instituted, composed of books designed to amuse rather than to instruct; and country booksellers, fostering the new born taste of the people, had filled the whole land with modern travels, and novels almost as incredi ble. The diffusion of a taste for any species of writing through all ranks, in so short a time, would appear impracticable to an European. The pea sant of Europe must first be taught to read, before he can acquire a taste in letters. In New England, the work is half completed. In no other country VI PREFACE. are there so many people, who, in proportion to its can read and write numbers, ; and, therefore, no sooner was a taste for amusing literature diffused, than all orders of country life, with one accord, the forsook sober sermons and practical pieties of their fathers, for the gay stories and splendid im pieties of the traveller and the novelist. The wor thy farmer no longer fatigued himself with Bun- s yan Pilgrim up the hill of difficulty, or through the < of but slough despond ; quaffed wine with Brydone in the hermitage of Vesuvius, or sported with Bruce on the fairy- land of Abyssinia : while Dolly the dairy maid, and Jonathan the hi**d man, threw aside the ballad of the cruel step-mother, over which they had so often wept in cencert, and now amused themselves into so agreeable a terror with the haunted houses and hobgoblins of Mrs. Ratcliffe, that they were both afraid to sleep alone. Although a lover of literature, however frivolous, may be pleasing to the man of letters, yet there are two things to be deplored in it. The first is, that, while so many books are vended, they are not of our own manufacture. If our wives and daughters will wear gauze and ribbands, it is a pity they are not wrought in our own looms. The second misfortune is, that novels, being the picture of the times, the New England reader is insensibly taught to admire the levity, and often the vices, of the parent country. While the fancy is enchant ed, the heart is corrupted. The farmer s daughter, while she pities the misfortune of some modern heroine, is exposed to the attacks of vice, from which her ignorance would have formed her surest shield. If the English novel does not inculcate ?REPACK. VU vice, it at least impresses on the young female mind an erroneous idea of the world in which she is to and live. It paints the manners, customs, habits, excites a fondness for false of a strange country ; and renders the habits of her splendor ; home-spun own country disgusting. There are two things wanted, said a friend to the author : that we write our own books of amuse ment, and that they exhibit our own manners. Why then do you not write the history of your inter own life ? The first part of it, if not highly esting, would at least display a portrait of New England manners, hitherto unattempted. Your captivity among the Algerines, with some notices of the manners of that ferocious race, so dreaded by commercial powers, and so little known in our would at least be and I see country, interesting ; no advantage which the novel writer can have over you, unless your readers should be of the senti ment of the young lady mentioned by Addison in his Spectator, who, as he informs us, borrowed Plutarch s Lives, and, after reading the first volume with infinite it to a novel delight, supposing be y threw aside the others with disgust, because a man of letters had inadvertently told her the work wa? founded on FACT. THE ALGERINE CAPTIVE. CHAP. I. Think ox thi:s, good sirs, - But as a thing of cu3toyn~ Us, no otbe., time. Only it spoils the pleasure of the - - .-. SEAtLCPEA ARGUMENT, Tlie Author gives an Account ofhi$ gallant Jl?ices.- tor, Captain John Underhill,~his arrival in Mas Settlers. sachusetts) and Persecution by the first I DERIVE my birth from one of the first emigrants to New England, being lineally descended from captain John Underbill, who came into the Massa chusetts in the year 1630; of ivhom honourable mention is made by that elegant, accurate, and in teresting historian, the Rev. Jeremy Belknap, in his History of New Hampshire. My honoured ancestor had early imbibed an ar his ser dent love of liberty, civil and religious, by vice as a soldier among the Dutch, in their glorious and successful struggle for freedom, with Philip 11. of in a he held Spain ; which, though quite youth, a commission in the earl of Leicester s own troop of guards, who was then sent to the assistance of that brave people, by the renowned queen Eliza beth of England. 10 ALGERINE CAPTIVE. The extravagant passion which that princess was supposed to entertain for various male favourites, which occasioned the disgrace of one and the pre mature death of another, while it has furnished a darling theme to the novelist, and has been wept over in the tragic scene, has never yet received the sober sanction of the historian. A traditional family anecdote, while it places the aiietion of the queen for Leicester beyond 1 doubt, may not be unpleasing to the learned rea der, and may .benefit the English historiographer. it is. well known that this crafty queen, though repeatedly solicited, never efficaciously assisted the Netherlander, until their affairs were appa rently at the lowest ebb, and they in such despe rate circumstances as to offer the sovereignty of their country to her general, the earl of Leicester. Captain Underbill carried the dispatches to Eng land, and delivered them at the office of lord Bur- leigh. The same evening the queen sent for the captain, and, with apparent perturbation, inquired of him, if he was the messenger from Leicester, and whether he had any private dispatches for her. He replied, that he had delivered all his letters to the secretary of state. She appeared much dis appointed, and, after musing some time, said " to be a So, Leicester wants king." Underbill, who was in the general s confidence, replied, that the Dutch had indeed made the offer of the sove reignty of their country to her general esteeming it a great honour, as they said, to have a subject " of her grace for their sovereign. No." replied the " it is not the Dutch hate queen, ; they kings and their divine it is the Leicester, right ; proud ALGERINE CAPTIVE , who longs to be independent of his own sovereign, who moves this insolent proposal. Tell him, from me, that he must learn to obey before he is fit to added the govern. Tell him," queen, softening " her voice, that obedience may make him a king indeed." Immediately after captain Underbill had taken the public dispatches, the queen sent for him to her privy closet, recalled her verbal message, delivered him a letter for Leicester directed with her own hand, and a purse of one hundred crowns for himself him to inclose the letter in ; charging lead, sink it in case of danger in his passage by sea, and to deliver it privately. On the receipt of this letter, Leicester was violently agitated, and walked his chamber the whole of the ensuing night. Soon after, he resigned his command, and returned to England, animated by the brightest hopes of realizing the lofty suggestions of his am bition.

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