to the young Dumain by Katharine, in Love's Labour's Lost (act ii. sc. 1, 1. 56, vol. ii. p. 114),— "A well accomplish'd youth, Of all that virtue love for virtue loved : Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill; And shape to win grace, though he had no wit." To the denial of natural affection towards himself Gloucester (3 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2, 1. 153, vol. v. p. 284) deemed it almost a thing impossible for him to "make his heaven in a lady's lap,”"— Curious it is to note how slowly the continent which Columbus discovered became fully recognised as an integral portion of what had been denominated, olkovμévη, "the inhabited world." The rotundity of the earth and of the water was acknowledged, but Brucioli's "TRATTATO DELLA SPHERA," published at Venice, D.M.XLIII., maintains that the earth is immovable and the centre of the universe; and in dividing the globe into climates, it does not take a single instance except from what is named the old world; in fact, the new world of America is never mentioned. Somewhat later, in 1564, when Sambucus published his Emblems, and presented Symbols of the parts of the Inhabited Earth, he gave only three; thus (p. 113), The Bull is thus set forth as the alumnus, or nursling of Europe; of Africa the Chimæra is the ensign; and to Asia belong the untamed Bear and Boar; America and the broad Pacific, from Peru to China, have neither token nor locality assigned. Shakespeare's geography, however, though at times very defective, extended further than its "symbols" by Sambucus. In the humorous mapping out, by Dromio of Syracuse, of the features of the kitchen-wench, who was determined to be his wife (Comedy of Errors, act iii. sc. 2, l. 131, vol. i. p. 429), the question is asked,— “Ant. S. Where America, the Indies? Dro. S. Oh, sir, upon her nose, all o'er embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain." In Twelfth Night (act iii. sc. 2, l. 73, vol. iii. p. 271) Maria thus describes the love-demented steward, "He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies; you have not seen such a thing as 'tis." And in the Merry Wives of Windsor (act i. sc. 3, l. 64, vol. i. p. 177), Sir John Falstaff avers respecting Mistress Page and Mistress Ford,— "I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me; they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both." Yet in agreement with the map of Sambucus, with the three capes prominent upon it, of Gibraltar Rock, the Cape of Good Hope, and that of Malacca, Shakespeare on other occasions ignores America and all its western neighbours. At the consultation by Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, about the division of the Roman Empire (Julius Cæsar, act iv. sc. 1, l. 12, vol. vii. p. 384), Antony, on the exit of Lepidus, remarks, "This is a slight unmeritable man, Meet to be sent on errands: is it fit, The three-fold world divided, he should stand |