Iii, p. 217: -
Sir Drake, whom well the world's end knew,
Which thou didst compasse round,
And whom both poles of heaven once saw
Which north and south do bound:
The stars above would make thee known,
If men were silent here;
The Sun himselfe cannot forget
His fellow-traveller.
This is evidently a quaint version of the quaint lines said, by
Camden, to have been made by the scholars of Winchester College: -
Drace, pererrati quem novit terminus orbis,
Quemque simul mundi vidit uterque Polus;
Si taceant homines, facient te sidera notum.
Sol nescit comitis non memor esse sui.
Abraham Cowley seems to have availed himself of the chief thought here
embodied, in his pointed epigram on the chair formed from the planks
of Drake's vessel, and presented to the university of Oxford. His
metaphysical genius, however, has refined the point with no
small dexterity - the four last lines, more especially, displaying no
small elegance. The reader will not despise them: -
To this great ship, which round the world has run,
And matcht in race the chariot of the sun;
This Pythagorean ship (for it may claim
Without presumption, so deserved a name),
By knowledge once, and transformation now,
In her new shape, this sacred port allow.
Drake and his ship could not have wish'd from fate
An happier station, or more blest estate;
For lo! a seat of endless rest is given
To her in Oxford, and to him in Heaven.
It would be unpardonable to omit, now we are on the subject of Drake's
praises, the verses given in the Biog. Brit. and said to have been
unpublished before: -
Thy glory, Drake, extensive as thy mind,
No time shall tarnish, and no limits bind:
What greater praise! than thus to match the Sun,
Running that race which cannot be outrun.
Wide as the world then compass'd spreads thy fame,
And, with that world, an equal date shall claim.
The reader, it may be presumed, has enough of this subject. - E.
[2] "At noon, on the 10th December, we had reached the latitude of 59 deg.
S., without having met with any ice, though we fell in with it the
preceding year on the 10th December, between the 50th and 51st degree
of south latitude. It is difficult to account for this difference;
perhaps a severe winter preceding our first course from the Cape of
Good Hope, might accumulate more ice that year than the next, which is
the more probable, as we learnt at the Cape that the winter had been
sharper there than usual; perhaps a violent storm might break the
polar ice, and drive it so far to the northward as we found it; and,
perhaps, both these causes might concur with others, to produce this
effect." - G.F.
"It is remarkable, that in different years, seasons, and places of the
sea, we found the ice differently situated. In the year 1772, December
10th, we saw the ice between 50 deg.
