To the vanity of Englishmen, not always accompanied, it is to be feared, by political honesty, the expedition of Drake afforded the highest gratification.  Swarms of wits, accordingly, who are never wanting in any reign, either to eulogize what the government has sanctioned, or to infuse something of literary immortality into popular enthusiasm, were in requisition on this extraordinary occasion, and, as usual, vied with each other in bombast and the fervour of exaggeration.  If one might credit the legends, Sir Francis accomplished much more than a visit to the antipodes, much more indeed, than ever man did before or since.  Witness an epigram on him preserved in the Censura Literaria. vol. iii, p. 217:—­

      Sir Drake, whom well the world’s end knew,
        Which thou didst compasse round,
      And whom both poles of heaven once saw
        Which north and south do bound: 
      The stars above would make thee known,
        If men were silent here;
      The Sun himselfe cannot forget
        His fellow-traveller.

    This is evidently a quaint version of the quaint lines said, by
    Camden, to have been made by the scholars of Winchester College:—­

      Drace, pererrati quem novit terminus orbis,
        Quemque simul mundi vidit uterque Polus;
      Si taceant homines, facient te sidera notum. 
        Sol nescit comitis non memor esse sui.

Abraham Cowley seems to have availed himself of the chief thought here embodied, in his pointed epigram on the chair formed from the planks of Drake’s vessel, and presented to the university of Oxford.  His metaphysical genius, however, has refined the point with no small dexterity—­the four last lines, more especially, displaying no small elegance.  The reader will not despise them:—­

      To this great ship, which round the world has run,
      And matcht in race the chariot of the sun;
      This Pythagorean ship (for it may claim
      Without presumption, so deserved a name),
      By knowledge once, and transformation now,
      In her new shape, this sacred port allow. 
      Drake and his ship could not have wish’d from fate
      An happier station, or more blest estate;
      For lo! a seat of endless rest is given
      To her in Oxford, and to him in Heaven.

    It would be unpardonable to omit, now we are on the subject of Drake’s
    praises, the verses given in the Biog.  Brit. and said to have been
    unpublished before:—­

      Thy glory, Drake, extensive as thy mind,
      No time shall tarnish, and no limits bind: 
      What greater praise! than thus to match the Sun,
      Running that race which cannot be outrun. 
      Wide as the world then compass’d spreads thy fame,
      And, with that world, an equal date shall claim.