Whales, Elephants, and the ‘Southern Continent Not Yet Discovered’

BREREWOOD, Edward.

Enquiries touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the cheife Parts of the World … London, [Eliot’s Court Press] for John Bill, 1614.

[bound with:]

—. De ponderibus, et pretiis veterum nummorum … London, John Bill, 1614.

Two works in one vol., small 4to, Enquiries: pp. [24], 198, [2], with the final blank, De ponderibus: pp. [8], 56; slight foxing to the extremities, but a very good copy in straight-grained dark blue morocco, gilt, c. 1830 by J. Faulkner, 8 Queen St, with his ticket, orange glazed endpapers; bookplate (upside-down to rear pastedown) of the bibliophile and author Henry B. Wheatley (1838–1917).

£2,750

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US $3,638 €3,207

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First edition. Brerewood, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, was a scholar in many fields who published nothing in his own lifetime (he died in 1613). Enquiries, seen through the press by a nephew, explores the spread of ancient, eastern, and modern languages, discusses the tongues in which the liturgy is celebrated, and reviews the parts of the world where Christians live and where ‘idolaters’. Along the way there are digressions on the height of mountains, the depth of the sea, and the dimensions of whales and elephants.

There are a number of references to America, including reports on the religious practices encountered by Spanish and Portuguese explorers, a report of converts ‘above the Bay of California, of whom as yet, histories make so little report, that of their number I can make no estimate’, and an attempt to prove that the indigenous Americans were descended from Tartar stock.

There is also a reference to Beach, the supposed Australia of Marco Polo, the ‘southern continent not yet discovered’ which Bishop Hall found so illogical as a place name on maps. ‘Beach’ is an old corruption, perpetuated by Mercator, stemming from a misprint of ‘Locach’ in the 1532 edition of Grynaeus.

‘For that the Inhabitants of that South continent, are Idolaters, there is no question at all (as I take it) to bee made, both because in the parts hitherto known, as namely in the region of Beach, over against Java, they were found to be so: And also, because they are knowne to be no other then Idolaters, that inhabite all those parts of the other continents, that neighbour most towards them …’.

The second work, De ponderibus, is a treatise on the weights and values of Greek, Roman, and other ancient coins. It seems to have been often bound with the Enquiries, and we have had it thus before.

Sabin 7732; European Americana 614 and 617; STC 3618 and 3612.

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Whales, Elephants, and the ‘Southern Continent Not Yet Discovered’

BREREWOOD, Edward.

Enquiries touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the cheife Parts of the World … London, [Eliot’s Court Press] for John Bill, 1614.