Note 6 — Chapter I

When Mr. Biddle was issuing the second London edition of his Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, in 1832, he cancelled one leaf in the book, at pages 77, 78, that he might insert a notice of an early dramatic poem cited by J. Payne Collier in his then recently published History of English Dramatic Poetry ... and Annals of the Stage, London, 1831, ii. 319. The play was entitled, A new interlude and a mery of the nature of the iiij elements declaryinge many proper poynts of phylosophy naturall and of dyvers straunge landys and of dyvers straunge effects and causis, etc. Dr. Dibdin, in his Typogr. Ant., iii. 105, inserts it among the works from Rastell’s press, and in a manuscript note at the beginning of the copy in the British Museum, it is said to have been printed by him in 1519. This copy, the only one known, formerly belonged to Garrick. I saw it in London in 1866, and collated it with the brief extracts in Collier. It is imperfect; and, as the colophon is wanting, the imprint, including date, is gone. Different years have been assigned to the book according as the reader has interpreted the historical references in it. The citations from the “Interlude” which follow are taken from the publications of the Percy Society, vol. xxii. issued in 1848. Among the characters is one Experyens (Experience), who represents a practical navigator who had been a great traveller:—