with the original of the fourteenth centuryif the latter ever

existed.

On the strength of a mention in Hakluyt and au allusion Fuller, one Nicholas (,f Lwm has hecu credited with a wyage towards the Arctic regions shout 13;0. Nicholas of Lynn is known to have heen g Carmelite and lecturer in theology at Oxford, where iu 1;486 he composed a cMcndar and elahorate astronomical tables. t He is supposed, on not very satist;ctory evidence, to hgvc hecn the uthor of work known as 'Inventio Fortunata,' or ' Inventio Fortume.' 'o copy of the book exists, whether in manuscript or print, nd it is indeed not Mtogether certain that it ever existed. The mention in Hakluyt esolves itself into a quotation from two other authorities, {;erardus Mercator, and John Dee? Mercator refers to description of the North Pole which he had taken out of voyage by Cnoyen of s' Hertogenhosch, a who had met a priest at the King of Norway's court in 13;4, and from him derived much information. The priest, we are told, ws descended from those whom Arthur, the mythical King of Britain, had sent to inhahit "these islands" (probably Icelaud), and he, again, reported that "in 13;0 a certain English friar, a Franciscan and a mathematician of (}xford, came into these islands; who, leaving them, and p;rssing farther hy his magical art, dcscrihed all those places that he saw, and took the height of them with his astrolabe."

This is very fourth or fifth-h;md evidcuce. On what Cnoven said the priest had said that the friar sMd to him, Mercator based the idea that there were "four indraughts into an inward gulf or whirlpool with so great force that the ships which once entered therein could by no means be driven back," round about the North Pole. And John Dee, who is also quod by Hkluyt, tells us that in 13 " friar of Oxford, being good astronomer, went company with others to the most northern islands of the world." There he left his cranpanions and proceeded yet farther to the north himself. He dcscrihed the islands and "the indrawing seas" iu a hook which he called ' lnventio Fortmiata ' or ' Fortunw.' I }ee

I)ict. Nat. Biography,' Nicholas of II:tkluyt, ILL. i. 122. a I'noyen's book is lost, lhoHgh extracts fi-om it, t. by Mercator to Jthll lee, survive in I'otton MSS. Merc:ttor adds that "it contained his voyage all through Asia, Aft'lea, and the N.rth: that it had been lent him by a fi-iend in Antwerp, and rcstov,I by him: /utI lhat wanting it again, it eouhl not be

The mathematician and astrologer, 1527-D.