THE ROSE OF THE WINDS.

189

ornaments, and bearing a resemblance to the Rose of the Winds, which, as I have already pointed out, seems too close in detail to make denial of some relationship between the two designs altogether reasonable. The invention of the needle turning on a fixed pivot seems to follow that of the card as a matter of course; for, by that means, the needle could be brought much nearer to the surface of the card below it than if it were on the long pivot shaft which Peregrinus employed to bring it near to the graduated edge of the bowl which was above it.

I have already stated that the first authentic description of the Chinese marine compass is of later date than the appearance of the instrument in Northern Europe. It is found in a work' known to have been written in 1297 under the reign of the Mongol Emperor Timour Khan, and is therefore after the letter of Peregrinus. In this the sailing directions for ships are indicated by the rhumbs or diagonal lines of the compass card.

It is undoubtedly true that, at this time, the Chinese were making voyages of great extent and duration. That famous traveler, Marco Polo, (whom Gilbert,' and other writers on the magnet in the 17th and 18th centuries, erroneously insist first brought the knowledge of the compass from China to Europe) describes a great expedition from the Pei-ho river, which occupied three months in making the journey to Java, and afterwards wandered for eighteen months in Indian seas before reaching "the place of their destination in the territory of King Arghun." Polo also records the enterprises of Kubla Khan against Madagascar.

1 Chrestomathie Chinoise. Paris, 1833, p. 21.

2 De Magnete, 1600, p. 4. There is not a word in Polo's narrative which describes the compass, and no evidence that he imparted otherwise any information on the subject. Furthermore his travels occurred between 1271 and 1295, and hence had not begun in 1260, the date when Gilbert says he learned of the compass from the Chinese. Gilbert also speaks of Polo as Paulus Venetus, which is an error, the latter being the name commonly given, not to Polo (Messer Million), but to Fra Paolo

But just what sort of compass the Chinese then had, even so strong an advocate in their behalf as Klaproth fails to discover. He quotes from a work of the 16th century a description of the floating compass in common use before the time of Peregrinus, and goes to Dr. Barrow for the details of their pivoted needle compass; so that, while we may infer that, with characteristic conservatism, they may have passed down these instruments unaltered from some far distant period, there is still that fatal absence of direct proof which renders all early Chinese invention open to more or less suspicion. That the deviation of the needle from the astronomical meridian-or, in other words, its variation—was well known to the Chinese long before that phenomenon had been remarked in Europe is sufficiently well established; and therefore I shall not devote space to the long discussions based on the assumption of its European invention which fill the treatises. A spurious addition to a Leyden codex of Peregrinus' letter, in which the variation is mentioned, has led many writers to credit Peregrinus with its discovery. But he knew nothing of it, and if, as Bertelli concludes, the variation in Europe. was in fact zero at his time, there was nothing to direct his attention to it. The first practical knowledge among European people of the fact that the needle is not strictly true to the earth's geographic pole belongs to a later period than that now under review.

During the following century little was added to the magnetic discoveries of Peregrinus, nor was the compass as he and Gioja left it materially improved. The mention of the magnet and of the needle became more frequent, philosophers, poets, and theologians dealing with the subject with the same catholicity as in the past, and finding in it an unfailing source of supply for simile and metaphor.

Raymond Lully,' metaphysician and monk, entangles 1De Contemplatione. Capmany: Memorias Historias Sobre la Marina. Madrid, 1792, 1, 73.

THE COMPASS CARD.

191

the purely physical facts of magnetic attraction with his occult teachings, and does this at so early a date (1297) that books have been written to advocate his right to the credit for Peregrinus' achievements. Dante in the Para

diso1 speaks of

"a voice

That made me seem like needle to the star
In turning to its whereabouts,"

which, if recording no discovery, at least led to the first mention of the pivoted compass card itself carrying the needle; which is the form now used, wherever recourse is not had to the still older notion of the floating magnet. Da Buti,' the commentator on the great Florentine, writing in 1380, tells us that "the navigators have a compass in the middle of which is pivoted a wheel of light paper which turns on its pivot, and that on this wheel the needle is fixed and the star (Rose of the Winds) painted."

In the north, Barbour, writing in 1375, says that in 1306, King Robert, of Scotland, in crossing from Arran to Carrick, steered by a fire on the shore; for he "na nedill had na stone;" and the adoption of the Mediterranean compass seems to have been long delayed, for not until 1391 does Chaucer mention the substitution of the horizon circle divided into thirty-two points in place of twenty-four.

NOTE. The text which I have followed in the foregoing epitome of Peregrinus' researches is the one which Bertelli Barnabita has prepared from a careful collation of all of the existing manuscripts of the letter. (Sopra Pietro Peregrino di Maricourt e la sua Epistola de Magnete. P. D. Timoteo Bertelli Barnabita, Mem. Prima. Rome, 1868. Sulla Epistola di Pietro Peregrino de Maricourt e Sopra Alcuni Trovati, etc. Mem. Seconda: Bull. di Bib. e di Storia delle Scienze. Math. e Fisiche. Vol. I., Jan., Mar. and April, 1868.)

The first printed edition edited by Gasser (Petri Peregrini Maricurtensis de Magnete, seu rota perpetui motus libellus. ** Per Achillem P.

1 Canto XII., v. 28.

2 Da Buti, Francesco: Comment. Sopra la Div. Commedia. Pisa, 1862. 3 Treatise on the Astrolabe. Ed. Skeat. Early Eng. Hist. Soc. Lon

don, 1872.

Gasserum, L. nunc primum promulgatus. Augsburgi in Suevis,) appeared in 1558, at which time manuscript copies of the letter were regarded as very rare. At the present time, several codices are known to exist-there being two in the Vatican, and six in the Bodleian Library of different dates, besides others elsewhere. In 1562 the material portion of the work was stolen by John Taisnier (Opusculum Perp. Mem. Digniss De Natura Magnetis et ejus effectibus. **Authore Joanne Taisnierio Hannonio, etc. Coloniae, 1562), and published as his own in a treatise on the Nature of the Magnet and its Effects. The only English version of Peregrinus' letter is a translation of Taisnier's work by one Richard Eden, which seems to have been originally printed without date, and then reprinted in 1579 by Richard Jugge, London.

The perpetual motion of Peregrinus was also copied by a writer of the 16th century-Antonio De Fantis, of Treviso-and to him the invention of the apparatus is most commonly ascribed by authors subsequent to Jerome Cardan. The rotary magnetic sphere of Peregrinus was also plagiarized by Cornelius van Drebbel, who, in his letter to James I., of England, his protector, solemnly avers his ability to construct the apparatus so that it will automatically operate. Cardan: De Varietate Rerum, 1553 lib. 9, c. 48; Vuecher: Les Secrets et Merveilles de Nature. Lyon, 1596, 912. Cornelii Drebbeli Belgae Epistola ad Sapient. Bret. Monarchi. Jacobum, De Perp. Mobiles Inventione. Hamburg, 1628, p. 66. The possibility of Peregrinus' apparatus is doubted by Gilbert (De Magnete, 1600, lib. vi., c. iv.), and denied altogether by Galileo. (Opera, Florence, 1842, 443-9.)

In the beginning of the present century a mythical person was invented, one Peter Adsiger, and to him a few facts, which some one had exhumed from the old manuscripts or the Augsburg edition of the Letter, were duly credited; so that, for a long time, the names of Peter Peregrinus and Peter Adsiger were found in the text-books and histories, and so appear even up to to-day. But the name "Adsiger was simply a translator's blunder, and is a part of the Latin dedication of the letter which Peter writes to Sigerus (Ad Sigerum). On such small errors as this, fame too often depends.

Some question has been raised as to whether certain of Peregrinus' discoveries were not earlier made by Dr. Jean de St. Amand, who was a celebrated physician and a canon of the cathedral church of Tournay. He lived "after the year 1261," but just when is not known. He seems to have been merely a copyist who restates Peregrinus' conclusions in an obscure way.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE revival of literature throughout Europe was everywhere manifest as the 14th century drew to its end. Giotto, Dante, Petrarch, Boccacio, Chaucer, Froissart, Wicliffe -such were the men whose great works both mark this period and serve as indices of the directions which the newly-aroused intellectual forces were taking. Yet the rise of positive science was none the less steadily continuing; before it the dogmas of authority, and especially those of Aristotle, were as steadily weakening. Meanwhile the commercial rivalry between Venice and Genoa, the great centers of Mediterranean trade, had brought the spirit of maritime adventure to the highest pitch. In the war between the republics, Genoa had been worsted; and the Venetians, by advantageous treaties with the oriental rulers, had established trading stations in the East, which gave them advantages unattainable to their competitors. The narrative of Marco Polo of the prodigious wealth of the far distant India, had inflamed the cupidity of his countrymen. However much the fathers of the church might assert the flatness of the earth, the sailors of Genoa and of Amalfi knew to the contrary, for they had learned that the ship which vanished beneath the brink of the horizon was neither sunk nor lost, and that, in all the seas wherein they had adventured, the quivering needle was a safe guide. So began, in Italy, the desire to sail, under the safeguard of the compass to the westward, and thus to reach the golden realm of Cathay.

In 1450, the invention of printing from movable types was made, and with this means of communicating and influencing opinion, the extension of knowledge was vast and sudden. Books fell four-fifths in price. The fruits of