"It was, says the author, the outcome of a visit to London in 1679, when he enjoyed 'the opportunity of frequent converse with several substantial and judicious gentlemen concerned in the American plantations ...' The most valuable part of the work is a series of letters from the early settlers in New Jersey. 'The Model' was plagiarised by Samuel Smith in his 'History of New Jersey,' 1721, and is quoted by Bancroft; but James Grahame, author of the 'Rise and progress of the United States' (1827) first attached due importance to it ... Copies of original, which are very rare, are in the British Museum, the Edinburgh Advocate's Library, at Göttingen, in Harvard College Library, and in the library of the New Jersey Historical Society, and two other are in private hands in America. In some copies a passage (p. 37) recommending religious freedom as an inducement to emigration is modified"--DNB. |