,—that at the beginning of the Dedication,—is retained in volumes one and two. These pictorial initials belong to an alphabet illustrating stories from Greek mythology. Mr. Pollard, in a chapter on Pictorial and Heraldic Initials, states that the first appearance of any of the set known to him occurs in a proclamation printed by Berthelet, and dated 1546. He finds that a similar monogram was used by Anton Sylvius, who worked for Plantin from 1550 to 1573, but he is doubtful about ascribing these initials to that artist.
The first and third volumes have the "The" of the title in a long panel (made of type-metal ornament in the first case, and a woodcut cartouche in the last one); the printer's ornaments on the title-pages of the second and third volumes are alike, and are the same as that in the first edition. "A Table Alphabetical," printed at the end of the first edition, was not undertaken for the second; but a new, engraved map of the world, unsigned and without a title, is found in some copies of the third volume. It was used also in two states.
This map is exceedingly rare, and interest attaches to it for two reasons. It is the first map of the world engraved in England, on Wright's (Mercator) projection, having been published the year after Wright had explained the principles of the projection in his Certain Errors in Navigation. A legend in a cartouche on the engraving says: "Thou hast here gentle reader a true hydrographical description of ſo much of the world as hath beene hetherto diſcouered, and is comme to our knowledge: which we have in ſuch ſort performed, yt all places herein ſet downe, haue the ſame poſitions and diſtances that they haue in the globe...." The second source of interest is this: the map is, without much doubt, the one Shakespeare referred to in Twelfth Night when he made Maria say of Malvolio, "he does ſmile his face into more lynes then is in the new Mappe, with the augmentation of the Indies."
A curious error has existed with regard to the map. The reference in the 1589 volume, already quoted, has been taken to mean that Hakluyt intended to issue a map by Molineux with that work, but, that map not being ready in time, he used the one from Ortelius. What more natural than that the new map in the 1598 edition should be supposed to be Molineux's, now at length finished? This was the conclusion jumped at, and the plate is usually called "Molineux's map." As a matter of fact, Hakluyt did not refer to Molineux as a map-maker, but as a globe-maker. He was a friend of that rare gentleman, and he knew that the mathematician was at work on a large terrestrial globe embodying all the very latest geographical information in the most exact way, according to Mercator's projection. He used the Ortelius map in his book only until the globe should be ready, when it could be easily adapted to the plane surface of a map by the engraver.
The globe, measuring two and a half feet in diameter, was issued in 1592, and is now preserved in the Library of the Middle Temple.
Folio. Black letter.
Collation: Volume I, *, six leaves; **, six leaves; A-Fff4, in sixes.
Volume II, *, eight leaves; A-Ccb, in sixes; Aaa-Rrrb, in sixes.
Volume III, (A), eight leaves; A-I, in sixes; K, eight leaves; L-Cccc, in sixes.