give me what name they please. After all, that most prudent king David was
first a shepherd, and was afterwards chosen king of Jerusalem; and I am a
servant to the same Lord who raised him to so great dignity."

In his person the admiral was above the middle stature and well shaped,
having rather a long visage, with somewhat full cheeks, yet neither fat
nor lean. His complexion was very fair with delicately red cheeks, having
fair hair in his youth, which became entirely grey at thirty years of age.
He had a hawk nose, with fair eyes. In his eating and drinking, and in his
dress, he was always temperate and modest. In his demeanour he was affable
to strangers and kind and condescending to his domestics and dependents,
yet with a becoming modesty and dignified gravity of manner, tempered with
easy politeness. His regard for religion was so strict and sincere, even
in keeping the prescribed fasts and reciting all the offices of the church,
that he might have been supposed professed in one of the religious orders;
and so great was his abhorrence to profane swearing that I never heard him
use any other oath than by St Ferdinand; and even in the greatest passion,
his only imprecation was "God take you." When about to write, his usual
way of trying his pen was in these words, _Jesu cum Maria sit nobis in
via_; and in so fair a character as might have sufficed to gain his bread
by writing.

Passing over many particulars of his character, manners, and disposition,
which will appear in the course of this history, I shall now only mention
that, in his tender years he applied himself to such studies at Pavia as
fitted him to understand cosmography, his favourite science; for which
purpose he chiefly devoted himself to the study of geometry and astronomy,
without which, it is impossible to make any proficiency in cosmography.
And, because Ptolemy, in the preface to his cosmography, asserts that no
person can be a good cosmographer without a thorough knowledge of drawing;