=A.D. 1391.=--Chaucer (Geoffrey), the father of English poetry, thus expresses himself in “The Conclusions of the Astrolabie” (“English Poets,” London, 1810, Vol. I): “I haue giuen thee a sufficient astrolabye for oure orizont compowned after the latitude of Oxenforde.... Now hast thou here, the fower quarters of thin astrolabie, deuided after the fower principall plages or quarters of the firmament.... Now is thin Orisonte departed in XXIIII partiez by thi azymutz, in significacion of XXIIII partiez of the world; al be it, so that ship men rikne thilke partiez in XXXII.” “Now maugre Juno, Aneas For all her sleight and her compas Atcheiued all his auenture.” “House of Fame,” B. I. “The stone was hard of adamaunt, Whereof they made the foundemaunt, The tour was round made in compas, In all this world no richer was.” “Rom. of the Rose.” “Right as betwene adamants two Of euen weight, a pece of yron set, Ne hath no might to moue to ne fro For what that one may hale, that other let.” “Assem. of Foules.” REFERENCES.--“English Poets,” London, 1810, Vol. I. p. 453; Ch. Wells Moulton, “Library of Literary Criticism,” Vol. I. pp. 77–81. =A.D. 1436.=--Bianco--Biancho--(Andrea), was an Italian cartographer living at Venice early in the fifteenth century, who published, in 1436, an atlas exhibiting charts of the magnetic variation. The knowledge of the latter, which is so indispensable to the correction of a ship’s reckoning, was then ascertained less by the sun’s rising and setting than by the polar star. One of Bianco’s charts, now in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, shows two islands at the West of the Azores, leading many to believe that he possessed some knowledge of the existence of North and South America. In Justin Winsor’s description of Dr. John G. Kohl’s collection of early maps (“Harvard Univ. Bulletin,” Vol. III. pp. 175–176), it is said that the original of Andrea Bianco’s Map of the World A.D. 1436, now at Venice, was reproduced by Joachim Lelewell (“Géographie du Moyen Age,” Pl. XXXII), and also in M. F. de Barros de Santarem’s “Essai sur l’histoire de la cosmographie et de la cartographie” (Pls. XXIII, XLIII).[23] Reference is also made thereto in Winsor’s “Bibliography of Ptolemy’s Geography,” sub anno 1478. Mr. Winsor adds: “Bianco’s views are of interest in early American cartography from the deductions which some have drawn from the configuration of the islands ‘Antillia’ and ‘De la man Satanaxio’--(two islands on its western verge)--that they represent Pre-Columbian discovery of South and North America.” Humboldt (“Crit. Untersuchungen,” I. 413, 416) has discussed the question, and pointed out that one island, “Antillia,” had earlier appeared on a map of 1425, and D’Avezac finds even earlier references to the same island.