PDF format (1.55 Mb) - The Ex-Classics Web Site
PDF format (1.55 Mb) - The Ex-Classics Web Site
PDF format (1.55 Mb) - The Ex-Classics Web Site
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY<br />
MEMB. III. Air rectified. With a digression of the Air.<br />
As a long-winged hawk, when he is first whistled off the fist, mounts aloft, and for his<br />
pleasure fetcheth many a circuit in the air, still soaring higher and higher, till he be come to his<br />
full pitch, and in the end when the game is sprung, comes down amain, and stoops upon a<br />
sudden: so will I, having now come at last into these ample fields of air, wherein I may freely<br />
expatiate and exercise myself for my recreation, awhile rove, wander round about the world,<br />
mount aloft to those ethereal orbs and celestial spheres, and so descend to my former elements<br />
again. In which progress I will first see whether that relation of the friar of Oxford be true,<br />
concerning those northern parts under the pole (if I meet obiter with the wandering Jew, Elias<br />
Artifex, or Lucian's Icaromenippus, they shall be my guides) whether there be such 4. Euripes,<br />
and a great rock of loadstones, which may cause the needle in the compass still to bend that way,<br />
and what should be the true cause of the variation of the compass, is it a magnetical rock, or the<br />
pole-star, as Cardan will; or some other star in the bear, as Marsilius Ficinus; or a magnetical<br />
meridian, as Maurolieus; Vel situs in vena terræ, as Agricola; or the nearness of the next<br />
continent, as Cabeus will; or some other cause, as Scaliger, Cortesius, Conimbricenses,<br />
Peregrinus contend; why at the Azores it looks directly north, otherwise not? In the<br />
Mediterranean or Levant (as some observe) it varies 7. grad. by and by 12. and then 22. In the<br />
Baltic Seas, near Rasceburg in Finland, the needle runs round, if any ships come that way,<br />
though Martin Ridley write otherwise, that the needle near the Pole will hardly be forced from<br />
his direction. 'Tis fit to be inquired whether certain rules may be made of it, as 11. grad. Lond.<br />
variat. alibi 36. &c. and that which is more prodigious, the variation varies in the same place,<br />
now taken accurately, 'tis so much after a few years quite altered from that it was: till we have<br />
better intelligence, let our Dr. Gilbert, and Nicholas Cabeus the Jesuit, that have both written<br />
great volumes of this subject, satisfy these inquisitors. Whether the sea be open and navigable by<br />
the Pole arctic, and which is the likeliest way, that of Bartison the Hollander, under the Pole<br />
itself, which for some reasons I hold best: or by Fretum Davis, or Nova Zembla. Whether<br />
Hudson's discovery be true of a new found ocean, any likelihood of Button's Bay in 50. degrees,<br />
Hubberd's Hope in 60. that of ut ultra near Sir Thomas Roe's welcome in Northwest Fox, being<br />
that the sea ebbs and flows constantly there 15. foot in 12. hours, as our new cards inform us that<br />
California is not a cape, but an island, and the west winds make the neap tides equal to the<br />
spring, or that there be any probability to pass by the straits of Anian to China, by the<br />
promontory of Tabin. If there be, I shall soon perceive whether Marcus Polus the Venetian's<br />
narration be true or false, of that great city of Quinsay and Cambalu; whether there be any such<br />
places, or that as Matth. Riccius the Jesuit hath written, China and Cataia be all one, the great<br />
Cham of Tartary and the king of China be the same; Xuntain and Quinsay, and the city of<br />
Cambalu be that new Peking, or such a wall 400 leagues long to part China from Tartary:<br />
whether Presbyter John be in Asia or Africa; M. Polus Venetus puts him in Asia, the most<br />
received opinion is, that he is emperor of the Abyssines, which of old was Ethiopia, now Nubia,<br />
under the equator in Africa. Whether Guinea be an island or part of the continent, or that hungry<br />
Spaniard's discovery of Terra Australis Incognita, or Magellanica, be as true as that of Mercurius<br />
-38-