Fabulous Seas and Fairy Lands
" WHAT greater pleasure," says Burton . in his Anatomy of Melancholy, " can there be than to view these elaborate maps of Ortelius and Mercator, and to peruse those books of cities put out by Braunua and Ilogenberius ? " What greater pleasure indeed ! and now we have an opportunity of sharing with Burton these sure charms against Melancholy, and of making imaginary voyages through seas teeming with perpetually spouting whales, sirens and dolphins, Neptunes and galleons, to the shores of strange lands, fantastic as a fairy tale, where beasts, larger than the pictured mountains, wander together by the sides of twisting rivers ; or to Tartary, where the great Cham sits in the doorway of a canopied tent..
Mr. Humphreys has prepared an entrancing book, which should be of great value to collectors and students, and a joy to all who love maps. The beautiful coloured plates and mono. chromes are reproduced from engravings in the Macpherson Collection, and Mr. Henry Stevens has compiled a list of other atlases and maps from the same source.
Mr. Humphreys has made space in his comprehensive introduction, not only to trace a history of map-making from the-days 'of Herodotus to the end of the eighteenth century (When the decoration of maps went out of fashion), but also to give brief biographies of the principal map-making families.
He quotes extensively from a little book by one John Smith, clock maker, on The Art of Painting in Oyl to which is added the whole art and mystery of colouring maps (1700). This book could be, obtained, we are told, from " Mary Smith at the Fan and 'Flower de' Luce over against Somerset House." . " As for the compartment or title," says John Smith, ".which consists generally of some neat device to. set the map off and make it more beautiful, it may be coloured according to the nature of it. As, for instance . . . the hair of men or women with tincture of myrrh, or if black, with half water, half com- mon ink or with burnt umber ; the flesh of women or boys, with very little of tincture of cochineal in a large quantity of water, and shaded with the same quality thickened. . . . Castles may be done with tincture of myrrh in some parts, others with thin red lead and the spires and pinnacles with blue."
There is no space here to describe the wonderful maps, reproduced from Ttolosny's Geographia, Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, or from the atlases of Saxtein, Mercator, Schenck, Janson, De Lisle and Blaeu, who named his printing presses after the Nine Muses. One quotation from the Map of the Sea Coast of Portugal (Wagener's Mariner's Mirror) is irresistible. There are two galleons in the sea, and beside them a couple of very much larger whales. Above a small green mountain these words are exquisitely printed : " When this little black hill lieth east by south from you then is the river of Aueiro open before you." Surely the mariners' hearts must have leaped when they neared that little black hill, for on either side of the river are forests of bright blue Noah's Ark trees, with here and there a red-turreted castle.
Another treasure is a circular star chart for the southern hemisphere for the year 1700, where the signs of the zodiac riot in a merry-go-round of colour. Van Keultin's Aar* ehart for the northern hemisOhere is even gayer. One-feels that its composer must have looked with very childlike eyes at the heavenly bodies, for his Pegasus is a red-winged rocking-horse, and his Twins stretch chubby hands towards-a teddy bear- like Ursa Major.
Just now the 'craze for map collecting is spreading, and the value of old charts is rising. There are signs, too, that there may be a revival of the old art of map decorating. Certain firms are using pictorial maps as advertisements, decorated maps of London are being sold in the streets and a new edition of Bernard Sleigh's Map of Fairyland was issued recently.
Meanwhile, both students and would-be adventurers should be grateful to the author of this fascinating book, for hc haa added to the resources of the one, and 'has given to the other the freedom of fabulously peopled' seas and lands. • .13AROORA E. TODD.
Previous page
