260 ^osm: s. 



poraries of Columbus. The most talented a r^oiig them fore« 

 saw the mfluence whicli the events of the latter years of the 

 fifteenth century would exercise on humanity. " Every day," 

 writes Peter Martyr de Anghiera,* in his letters written in 

 the years 1493 and 1494, " brings us new wonders from a new 

 world — from those antipodes of the West — which a certain 

 Genoese {Chn?,toi')lioru$> qiiidam, vir Ligitr) has discovered. 

 Although sent forth by our monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, 

 lie could with difficulty obtain three ships, since what he said 

 was regarded as fabulous. Our friend Pomponius Lsetus (one 

 of the most distinguished promoters of classical learning, and 

 persecuted at Pwome for his religious opinions) could scarcely 

 refrain from tears of joy when I communicated to him the first 

 tidings of so unhoped-for an event." Anghiera, from whom 

 we take these words, was an intelligent statesman at the 

 court of Ferdinand the Catholic and of Charles V., once em- 

 bassador at Egypt, and the personal friend of Columbus, Amer- 

 igo Vespucci, Sebastian Cabot, and Cortez. His long life 

 embraced the discovery of Corvo, the westernmost island of 

 the Azores, the expeditions of Diaz, Columbus, Gama, and 

 Magellan. Pope Leo X. read to his sister and to the car- 

 dinals, "until late in the night," Anghiera's Oceanica. "I 

 would wish never more to quit Spain," writes Anghiera, 

 " since I am here at the fountain head of tidings of the new- 

 ly-discovered lands, and where I may hope, as the historian of 

 such great events, to acquire for my name some renown with 

 posterity."! Thus clearly did cotemporaries appreciate the 



* Compare Opus Epistolarum Petri Martyris Anglerii Mediolanensis 

 1G70, ep. cxxx. and ciii. " Pra; laetitia prosiliisse te vixque a lacliiy 

 mis prye gaudio temperassa quando literas adspexisti meas, quibus de 

 Auti[)odium Orbe, lateiiti hactenus, te certiorem feci, mi suavissime 

 Pcmpoui, insiimasti. Ex luis ipse literis colligo, quid sensaris. Sen- 

 sisli autem, tautique rem fecisti, qaauti virum summa doctriiia insigui- 

 tam decuit. Quis namque cibus sublimibus praestari potest iageiiiis isto 

 suavior? quod coudimeutum gratius? a me facie conjecturam. Beari 

 sentio spiritus meos, quando accitos alloquor prudentes aliquos ex his 

 qai ab ea redeunt proviucia (Hispauiola insula)." Tlie expression, 

 " Christophorus quidam Colouus," reminds us, I will not say of the too 

 often and unjustly cited " nescio quis Plutarchus" of Aulus Gellius 

 {Noct. Atticce, xi., IG), but certainly of the " quodam Cornelio scri 

 beute," in the answer written by the King Theodoric to the Prince of 

 the iEstyaus, who was to be informed of the true origin of amber, as 

 recorded in Tacitus, Germ., cap. 45. 



t Opvs EpistoL, No. ccccxxxvii. and dlxii. The remarkable and in 

 telli^ent Hieronymus Cardaniis, a magician, a fantastic enthusiast, and,, 

 at the same lime, an acute malheinatitian, also draws attention, in hia 

 " physical jiiobl'Mn-*," to how mut-h of our knowledge of the earth was 



