INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 9 
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 constitute 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 ? 
Yet all these were, when no man did them know, 
Yet have from wisest ages hidden been ; 
And later times things more unknow shall show. 
Why then should witless man so much misween 
That nothing is but that which he hath seen ? 
What if within the moon’s fair shining sphere; 
What if in every other star unseen, 
Of other worlds he happily should hear? 
He wonder would much more; yet such to some appear.” 
Raleigh, the discoverer of Virginia, was Spenser’s special friend, his “ Shepherd of the 
Ocean,” the patron under whose advice the poet visited England with the first instalment 
of the Epic, which he dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, “to live with the eternity of her 
Fame.” Yet it is obvious that to Spenser’s fancy this western continent was then scarcely 
more substantial than his own Faerie land; in truth still almost as much.a world apart as 
if Raleigh and his adventurous crew had sailed up the blue vault of heaven, and brought 
back the story of another planet on which it had been their fortune to alight. 
Nor had such fancies wholly vanished long after the voyage across the Atlantic had 
become a familiar thing. It was in 1723 that the philosophical idealist, Berkeley,—after- 
wards Bishop of Cloyne,—formulated a more definite and yet not less visionary Utopia 
than that of Sir Thomas More. He was about to organize “among the English in our 
Western plantations ” a seminary which was designed to train the young American savages, 
make them Masters of Arts, and fit instruments for the regeneration of their own people ; 
while the new Academe was to accomplish no less for the reformation of manners and morals 
among his own race. In his fancy’s choice he gave a preference, at first for Bermuda, or thé 
Somer’s Islands, as the site of his college ; and “presents the bright vision of an academic 
Sec, IL, 1882. 2 
