and
True as earth to its centre.—iii. 2.
Three centuries before Shakspeare, Dante said in the Inferno:—
Thou dost imagine we are still
On the other side the central point, where I
Clasped the earth-piercing worm, fell cause of ill.
So far as I continued to descend,
That side we kept; but when I turned, then we
Had passed the point to which all bodies tend.
Canto xxxiv. 106–111.