But yet you draw not iron; for my heart
Is true as steel."
Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Scene 1.
[57] Page 11, line 21. Page 11,
line 33. Germanis magness, & siegelstein. The Stettin edition of 1628 reads Germanis Magnetstein, Belgis Seylsteen; while that of 1633 reads Germanis Magnetstein, Belgis Sylsteen.
[58] Page 11, line 26. Page 11, line 39. In this line the Greek sentence is, in every known copy of the folio of 1600, corrected in ink upon the text, θαλῆς being thus altered into Θαλῆς, and απομνεμονύουσι into απομνεμονεύουσι. Four lines lower, brackets have been inserted around the words (lapidum specularium modo). These ink corrections must have been made at the printers', possibly by Gilbert's own hand. They have been carried out as errata in the editions of 1628 and 1633. The "facsimile" Berlin reprint of 1892 has deleted them, however. Other ink corrections on pp. 14, 22, 38, 39, 47, 130, and 200 of the folio edition of 1600 are noted in due course.
[59] Page 11, line 29. Page 11, line 45. lapis specularis. This is the mediæval name for mica, but in Elizabethan times known as talc or muscovy stone. Cardan, De Rerum Varietate (Basil., 1557, p. 418), lib. xiiii., cap. lxxii., mentions the use of lapis specularis for windows.
[60] Page 11, line 31. Page 11, line 46.: Germanis Katzensilbar & Talke.—In the editions of 1628 and 1633 this is corrected to Germanis Katzensilber & Talcke. Goethe, in Wilhelm Meister's Travels, calls mica "cat-gold."
[61] Page 12, line 30. Page 12, line 35. integtum appears to be a misprint for integrum, which is the reading of editions 1628 and 1633.
[62] Page 13, line 4. Page 13, line 3. μικρόγη seu Terrella. Although rounded loadstones had been used before Gilbert's time (see Peregrinus, p. 3 of Augsburg edition of 1558, or Baptista Porta, p. 194, of English edition of 1658), Gilbert's use of the spherical loadstone as a model of the globe of the earth is distinctive. The name Terrella remained in the language. In Pepys's Diary we read how on October 2, 1663, he "received a letter from Mr. Barlow with a terella." John Evelyn, in his Diary, July, 1655, mentions a "pretty terella with the circles and showing the magnetic deviations."