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 and said to have been unpublished before:-- Thy glory, Drake, extensive as thy mind, No time shall tarnish, and no limits bind: What greater praise!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° 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.