uments, and
tri-syllable echoes again, again, and again repeated, with myriads of such.
What vast tomes are extant in law, physic, and divinity, for profit,
pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or prose, &c.! their names alone
are the subject of whole volumes, we have thousands of authors of all
sorts, many great libraries full well furnished, like so many dishes of
meat, served out for several palates; and he is a very block that is
affected with none of them. Some take an infinite delight to study the very
languages wherein these books are written, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Chaldee,
Arabic, &c. Methinks it would please any man to look upon a geographical
map, [3324]_sauvi animum delectatione allicere, ob incredibilem rerum
varietatem et jucunditatem, et ad pleniorem sui cognitionem excitare_,
chorographical, topographical delineations, to behold, as it were, all the
remote provinces, towns, cities of the world, and never to go forth of the
limits of his study, to measure by the seale and compass their extent,
distance, examine their site. Charles the Great, as Platina writes, had
three fair silver tables, in one of which superficies was a large map of
Constantinople, in the second Rome neatly engraved, in the third an
exquisite description of the whole world, and much delight he took in them.
What greater pleasure can there now be, than to view those elaborate maps
of Ortelius, [3325]Mercator, Hondius, &c.? To peruse those books of cities,
put out by Braunus and Hogenbergius? To read those exquisite descriptions
of Maginus, Munster, Herrera, Laet, Merula, Boterus, Leander, Albertus,
Camden, Leo Afer, Adricomius, Nic. Gerbelius, &c.? Those famous expeditions
of Christoph. Columbus, Americus Vespucius, Marcus Polus the Venetian, Lod.
Vertomannus, Aloysius Cadamustus, &c.? Those accurate diaries of
Portuguese, Hollanders, of Bartison, Oliver a Nort, &c. Hakluyt's voyages,
Pet. Martyr's Decades, Benzo, Lerius, Linschoten's relations, those
Hodoeporicons of Jod. a Meggen, Brocard the monk, Bredenbachius, Jo.
Dublinius, Sands, &c., to Jerusalem, Egypt, and other remote places of the
world? those pleasant itineraries of Paulus Hentzerus, Jodocus Sincerus,
Dux Polonus, &c., to read Bellonius' observations, P. Gillius his surveys;
those parts of America, set out, and curiously cut in pictures, by Fratres
a Bry. To see a well-cut herbal, herbs, trees, flowers, plants, all
vegetables expressed in their proper colours to the life,