She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe,
To shrink mine arm up like a wither’d shrub;
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an unequal size;
To disproportion me in every part.
Like to a chaos, or an unlick’d bear-whelp
That carries no impression like the dam.”
Curious it is to note how slowly the continent which Columbus discovered became fully recognised as an integral portion of what had been denominated, ἡ οἰκουμένη,—“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),—