But it is not less curious to note the tardiness with which, after the discovery of the New World had been placed beyond question, its true significance was comprehended even by men of culture, and abreast of the general knowledge of their time. Peter Giles, indeed, citizen of Antwerp, and assumed confidant of “Master More,” writes with well-simulated grief to the Right Hon. Counsellor Hierome Buslyde, “as touching the situation of the island, that is to say, in what part of the world Utopia standeth, the ignorance and lack whereof not a little troubleth and grieveth Master More”; but as he had allowed the opportunity of ascertaining this important fact to slip by, so the like uncertainty long after mystified current ideas regarding the new-found world. Ere the “Flowers of the Forest” had been weeded away on Flodden Hill, the philosophers and poets of the liberal court of James IV. of Scotland had learned in some vague way of the recent discovery; and so the Scottish poet, Dunbar, reflecting on the King’s promise of a benefice still unfulfilled, hints in his poem “Of the world’s instabilitie,” that even had it come “fra Calicut and the new-found Isle” that lies beyond “the great sea-ocean, it might have comen in shorter while.” Upwards of twenty years had passed since the return of the great discoverer from his adventurous voyage; but the _Novus Orbis_ was then, and long afterwards continued to be, an insubstantial fancy; for after nearly another twenty years had elapsed, Sir David Lindsay, in his _Dreme_, represents Dame Remembrance as his guide and instructor in all heavenly and earthly knowledge; and among the rest, he says:— She gart me clearly understand How that the Earth tripartite was in three; In Afric, Europe, and Asie; the latter being in the Orient, while Africa and Europe still constituted the Occident, or western world. Many famous isles situated in “the ocean-sea” also attract his notice; but “the new-found isle” of the elder poet had obviously faded from the memory of that younger generation. Another century had nearly run its course since the eye of Columbus beheld the long-expected land, when, in 1590, Edmund Spenser crossed the Irish Channel, bringing with him the first three books of his _Faerie Queen_; in the introduction to the second of which he thus defends the verisimilitude of that land of fancy in which the scenes of his “famous antique history” are laid:— Who ever heard of th’ Indian Peru? Or who in venturous vessel measured The Amazon, huge river, now found true? Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view?