WHAT Emblems are, in the general acceptation of the word in modern times, is well set forth in Cotgrave’s Dictionary, Art. Emblema, where he defines an emblem to be, “a picture and short posie, expressing some particular conceit;” and very pithily by Francis Quarles, when he says,—“an Emblem is but a silent Parable.” Though less terse and clear than either of these, we may also take Bacon’s description, in his Advancement of Learning, bk. v. chap. 5;—“Embleme deduceth conceptions intellectuall to images sensible, and that which is sensible more forcibly strikes the memory, and is more easily imprinted than that which is intellectual.”

By many writers of Emblem books, perhaps by the majority in their practice if not in their theories, there is very little difference of meaning observed between Symbols and Emblems. We find, however, in other Authors a more exact usage of the word Symbol. The Greek poet Pindar^[1] speaks of “a trustworthy symbol, or sign, concerning a future action,” or from which the future can be conjectured; Iago, recounting the power of Desdemona over Othello, act ii. scene 3, l. 326, declares it were easy

and Cudworth, in his True Intellectual System of the Universe, ed. 1678, p. 388, after giving Aristotle’s assertion “that Numbers were the Causes of the Essence of other things,” adds, “though we are not ignorant, how the Pythagoreans made also the Numbers within the Decad, to be Symbols of things.”

Claude Marginality, or Minōs, the famous commentator on the Emblems of Andreas Alciatus, in his Tract, Concerning Symbols, Coats of Arms, and Emblems,—eds. 1581, or 1608, or 1614,—maintains there is a clear distinction between emblems and symbols, which, as he affirms, “many persons rashly and ignorantly confound together.”^[2] “We confess,” he adds, “that the force of the Emblem depends upon the Symbol: but they differ, I say, as Man and Animal; for people who have any judgment at all know, that here of a certainty the latter is taken more generally, the former more specially.” Mignault’s meaning may be carried out by saying, that all men are animals,—but all animals are not men; so all emblems are symbols, tokens, or signs, but all symbols are not emblems;—the two possess affinity but not identity,—they have no absolute convertibility of the one for the other.

An example of Emblem and Symbol united occurs in Symeoni’s Dedication^[3] “To Madame Diana of Poitiers, Dutchess of Valentinois;” for Emblem, there are “picture and short posie” expressing the particular conceit, “Quodcunque petit, consequitur,”—She attains whatever she seeks; and for Symbols, or signs, the sun, the temple, the dogs, the arrow, and the stag; and for exposition, the stanza;

Thus metrically rendered,

The word emblem, ἐμβλημα, is one that has strayed very widely from its first meaning, and yet by a sort of natural process, as the apple grows out of the crab, its signification now is akin to what it was in distant ages. It then denoted the thing, whether implement or ornament, placed in, or thrown on, and so joined to, some other thing. Thus a word of cognate origin, Epiblēs, in the Iliad, bk. xxiv. l. 453,^[4] denoted the bolt of fir that held fast the door;—it was something put against the door,—the peg or bar that kept it from opening. So in the Odyssey, bk. ii. l. 37,^[5] the sceptre, the emblem of command, was the baton which the herald Peisēnor placed in the hand of the son of Ulysses; and again in the Iliad, bk. xiii. l. 319, 20,^[6] the flaming torch was the implement which the son of Kronos might throw on the swift ships.

Of the changes through which a word may pass, “the word Emblem presents one of the most remarkable instances.” They cannot be better given than in the “Sketch of that branch of Literature called Books of Emblems,” read in 1848 before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, by the late Joseph Brooks Yates, Esq. He says of the word Emblem, pp. 8, 9,—“its present signification, ‘Type or allusive representation,’ is of comparatively modern use, while its original meaning is become obsolete. Among the Greeks an Emblem (εμβλημα), derived from ενβαλλειν, meant something thrown in or inserted after the fashion of what we now call Marquetry and Mosaic work, or in the form of a detached ornament to be affixed to a pillar, a tablet, or a vase, and put off or on, as there might be occasion. Pliny, in his Natural History,” bk. xxxiii. c. 12, “mentions an artist called Pytheus, who executed works of this last description in silver, one of which, intended to be attached to a jar (in phialæ emblemate), represented Ulysses and Diomed carrying off the Palladium.^[7] It weighed two ounces, and sold for 10,000 sesterces = 80l. 14s. 7d. of our money. According to one ancient manuscript of Pliny, it sold for double that amount. Marcus Curtius leaping into the gulph forms the subject of a beautiful silver Emblem, in the possession of the writer.^[8] When the arts of Greece were transplanted into Italy and Sicily, the word Emblema became naturalised in the Latin tongue, though not without some resistance on the part of the reigning prince Tiberius. That emperor is reported by Suetonius,” Tiber. Cæsar Vita, c. 71, “to have found fault with the introduction of the word into a Decree of the Senate, as being of foreign growth. Cicero, however, had used it in his orations against Verres, where he accuses that rapacious governor (amongst other crimes) of having compelled the people of Haluntium to bring to him their vases, from which he carefully abstracted the valuable Emblems and inserted them upon his own golden vessels. Quintilian,” lib. 2, cap. 4, “soon after this period, in enumerating the arts of oratory used by the pleaders of his day, describes some of them as in the habit of preparing and committing to memory certain highly finished clauses, to be inserted (as occasion might arise) like Emblems in the body of their orations.”^[9]

“Such was the meaning of the term in the classical ages of Greece and Rome; nor was its signification altered until some time after the revival of literature in the fifteenth century.”

Our own Geoffrey Whitney, deriving, as he does the other parts of his Choice of Emblemes from the writers on the subject that preceded him, gives very exactly the same explanation as Mr. Yates. In his address “To the Reader” (p. 2) he says;—“It resteth now to shewe breeflie what this worde Embleme signifieth, and whereof it commeth, which thoughe it be borrowed of others, & not proper in the Englishe tonge, yet that which it signifieth: Is, and hathe bin alwaies in vse amongst vs, which worde being in Greek ἐμβάλλεσθαι, vel ἐπεμβλῆσθαι is as muche to saye in Englishe as To set in, or to put in: properlie ment by suche figures, or workes; as are wroughte in plate, or in stones in the pauementes, or on the waules, or suche like, for the adorning of the place: hauinge some wittie deuise expressed with cunning woorkemanship, somethinge obscure to be perceiued at the first, whereby, when with further consideration it is vnderstood, it maie the greater delighte the behoulder. And althoughe the worde dothe comprehende manie thinges, and diuers matters maie be therein contained; yet all Emblemes for the most parte, maie be reduced into these three kindes, which is Historicall, Naturall, & Morall. Historicall, as representing the actes of some noble persons, being matter of historie. Naturall, as in expressing the natures of creatures, for example, the loue of the yonge Storkes, to the oulde, or of suche like. Morall, pertaining to vertue and instruction of life, which is the chiefe of the three, and the other two maye bee in some sorte drawen into this head. For, all doe tende vnto discipline, and morall preceptes of liuing. I mighte write more at large hereof, and of the difference of Emblema, Symbolum, & Ænigma, hauinge all (as it weare) some affinitie one with the other. But bicause my meaning is to write as briefely as I maie, for the auoiding of tediousnes, I referre them that would further inquire therof, to And. Alciatus, Guiliel. Perrerius, Achilles Bocchius & to diuers others that haue written thereof, wel knowne to the learned. For I purpose at this present, to write onelie of this worde Embleme: Bicause it chieflie doth pertaine vnto the matter I haue in hande, whereof I hope this muche, shall giue them some taste that weare ignoraunt of the same.”

Whitney’s namesake, to whom flattering friendship compared him, Geoffrey Chaucer, gives us more than the touch of an Emblem, when he describes, in the Canterbury Tales, l. 159–63, the dress of “a Nonne, a Prioresse,”—

So the “Cristofre,” which the Yeoman wore, l. 115,

was doubtless a true Emblem, to be put on, and taken off, as occasion served,—and was probably a cross with the image of Christ upon it: and if pictured forth according to the description in The Legend of Good Women, l. 1196–8, an emblematical device was exhibited, where

This form, the natural form of the Emblem, we may illustrate from a Greek coin, figured in Eschenburg’s Manual of Classical Literature, by Fisk, ed. 1844, pl. xl. p. 351.

The Flying Horse and other ornaments of this coin on the helmet of Minerva are Emblems,—and so are the owl, the olive wreath, and the amphora, or two-handled vase. Were these independent castings or mouldings, to be put on or taken off, they would be veritable emblems in the strict literal sense of the word.

Spenser’s ideas of devices and ornaments correspond to this meaning. Mercilla, the allegorical representation of the sovereign Elizabeth, is described as

In Cymbeline, Shakespeare represents Iachimo, act i. sc. 6, l. 188, 9, describing “a present for the emperor;”

So Spenser, Faerie Queene, iv. 4. 15, sets forth, “a precious rebeke in an arke of gold,” as

In the literal use of the word emblem Shakespeare is very exact. Parolles, All’s Well, act ii. sc. 1, l. 40, charges the young lords of the French court, as

“Noble heroes, my sword and yours are kin;” and adds, “Good sparks and lustrous, a word, good metals: you shall find in the regiment of the Spinii one Captain Spurio, with his cicatrice, an emblem of war, here on his sinister cheek; it was this very sword entrenched it.”

The Coronation Scene in Henry VIII., act iv. sc. 1. l. 81–92, describes the solemnities, when Anne Bullen, “the goodliest woman that ever lay by man,

Each sacred rite is then observed towards her;—

And down to Milton’s time the original meaning of the word Emblem was still retained, though widely departed from as used by some of the Emblem writers. Thus he pictures the “blissful bower” of Eden, bk. iv. l. 697–703, Paradise Lost,

Thus, in their origin, Emblems were the figures or ornaments fashioned by the tools of the artists, in metal or wood, independent of the vase, or the column, or the furniture, they were intended to adorn; they might be affixed or detached at the promptings of the owner’s fancy. Then they were formed, as in mosaic, by placing side by side little blocks of coloured stone, or tiles, or small sections of variegated wood. Raised or carved figures, however produced, came next to be considered as Emblems; and afterwards any kind of figured ornament, or device, whether carved or engraved, or simply traced, on the walls and floors of houses or on vessels of wood, clay, stone, or metal. These ornaments were sometimes like the raised work on the Warwick and other vases, and formed a crust which made a part of the vessel which they embellished; but at other times they were devices, drawings and carvings on a framework which might be detached from the cup or goblet on which the owner had placed them, and be applied to other uses.^[11]

We may here remark, since embossed ornaments and sculptured figures on any plain surface are essentially Emblems, the sculptor, the engraver, the statuary and the architect, indeed all workers in wood, metal, or stone, who embellish with device or symbol the simplicity of nature’s materials, are especially entitled to take rank in the fraternity of the Emblematists. They and their patrons, the whole world of the civilized and the intellectual, are not content with the beam out of the forest, or with the marble from the quarry, or with even the gold from the mine. In themselves cedar, marble and gold are only forms of brute and unintelligent nature,—and therefore we impose upon them signs of deep-seated thoughts of the heart and devices of wondrous meaning, and out of the rocks call forth sermons, and lessons and parables, and highly spiritual suggestions. On the very shrines of God we place our images of corruptible things,—but then the soul that rightly reads the images lifts them out of their corruptibility and makes them the teachers of eternal truths.

The domains of the statuary and of the architect are however too vast to be entered upon by us, except with a passing glance; they are like Philosophy; it is all Natural,—and yet wisely men map it out into kingdoms and divisions, and pursue each his selected work.

So we remember it is not the Universe of Emblematism we must attempt, even though Shakespeare should lend us

should add the gift of “the poet’s pen,” so that we might

Our business is only with that comparatively small section of the Emblem-World, which, “like mummies in their cerements,” is wrapped up within the covers of the so called Emblem-books. Whether, when they are unrolled, they are worth the search and the labour, some may doubt;—but perchance a scarabæus, or an emerald, with an ancient harp upon it, may reward our patience.

By a very easy and natural step, figures and ornaments of many kinds, when placed on smooth surfaces, were named emblems; and as these figures and ornaments were very often symbolical, i. e., signs, or tokens of a thought, a sentiment, a saying, or an event, the term emblem was applied to any painting, drawing, or print that was representative of an action, of a quality of the mind, or of any peculiarity or attribute of character.^[12] “Emblems in fact were, and are, a species of hieroglyphics, in which the figures or pictures, besides denoting the natural objects to which they bear resemblances, were employed to express properties of the mind, virtues and abstract ideas, and all the operations of the soul.”

As the book has come down to modern times it is, generally, what has sometimes been named, nudum Emblema, a naked Emblem, because it has neither device nor artistic drawing, but, like Shakespeare’s comparison of all the world to a stage in which man plays many parts, the course of Life, with its discipline, false hopes and false pleasures, is in the Tablet so described,—in fact so delineated,^[13] as to have enabled the Dutch designer and engraver, Romyn de Hooghe, in 1670, to have pictured “the whole story of Human Life as narrated to the Grecian sage.”

The Moral of the Allegory may not be set forth with entire clearness in the picture, but it can be given in the words of one of the Golden Sentences of Democritus,—see Gale’s Opus. Mythol.:—

“That human happiness does not result from bodily excellencies nor from riches, but is founded on uprightness of mind and on righteousness of conduct.”

Coins and medals furnish most valuable examples of emblematical figures; indeed some of the Emblem writers, as Sambucus in 1564, were among the earliest to publish impressions or engravings of ancient Roman money, on which are frequently given very interesting representations of customs and symbolical acts. On Grecian coins, which Priestley, in his Lectures on History, vol. i. p. 126,—highly praises for “a design, an attitude, a force, and a delicacy, in the expression even of the muscles and veins of human figures,”—we find, to use heraldic language, that the owl is the crest of Athens,—a wolf’s head, that of Argos,—and a tortoise the badge of the Peloponnesus. The whole history of Louis XIV. and that of his great adversary, William III., are represented in volumes containing the medals that were struck to commemorate the leading events of their reigns, and though outrageously untrue to nature and reality by the adoption of Roman costumes and classic symbols, they serve as records of remarkable occurrences.

Heraldry throughout employs the language of Emblems;—it is the picture-history of families, of tribes and of nations, of princes and emperors. Many a legend and many a strange fancy may be mixed up with it and demand almost the credulity of simplest childhood in order to obtain our credence; yet in the literature of Chivalry and Honours there are enshrined abundant records of the glory that belonged to mighty names. I recall now but one instance. In the fine folio lately emblazoned with the well-known motto “GANG FORWARD,” “I AM READY,” what volumes, to those who can interpret each mark and sign and tutored symbol, are wrapped up in the Examples of the ornamental Heraldry of the sixteenth Century: London, 1867, 1868.

The custom of taking a device or badge, if not a motto, is traced by Paolo Giovio, in his Dialogo dell’ Imprese militari et amorose, ed. 1574, p. 9,^[14] to the earliest times of history. He writes,

“To bear these emblems was an ancient usage.” Gio. “It is a point not to be doubted, that the ancients used to bear crests and ornaments on the helmets and on the shields: for we see this clearly in Virgil, when he made the catalogue of the nations which came in favour of Turnus against the Trojans, in the eighth book of the Æneid; Amphiaraus then (as Pindar says) at the war of Thebes bore a dragon on his shield. Similarly Statius writes of Capaneus and of Polinices, that the one bore the Hydra, and the other the Sphynx,” &c.

But these were simple emblems, without motto inscribed. The same Paolo Giovio, and other writers after him,^[15] assign both “picture and short posie,” to two of the early Emperors of Rome.

“Augustus, wishing to show how self-governed and moderate he was in all his affairs, never rash and hasty to believe the first reports and informations of his servants, caused to be struck, among several others, on a gold medal of his own, a Butterfly and a Crab, signifying quickness by the Butterfly, and by the Crab slowness, the two things which constitute a temperament necessary for a Prince.”

The motto, as figured below,—“Make haste leisurely.”

The other is the device which the Aldi, celebrated printers of Venice, from A.D. 1490 to 1563, assumed, of the dolphin and anchor, but which Titus, son of Vespasian, had long before adopted, with the motto “Propera tarde,”^[16] Hasten slowly: “facendo,” says Symeoni, “vna figura moderata della velocità di questo, e della grauezza di quell’ altra, nel modo che noi veggiamo dinanzi à i libri d’ Aldo.”

But the heraldry of mankind is a boundless theme, and we might by simple beat of drum heraldic collect almost a countless host of crests, badges, and quarterings truly emblematical, and adopted and intended to point out peculiarities or remarkable events and fancies in the histories of the coat-armour families of the world.

The emblematism of bodily sign or action constitutes the language of the dumb. An amusing instance occurs in the Abbé Blanchet’s “Apologues Orientaux,” in his description of “The Silent Academy, or the Emblems:”—

“There was at Hamadan, a city of Persia, a celebrated academy, of which the first statute was conceived in these terms; The academicians shall think much, write little, and speak the very least that is possible. It was named the silent Academy; and there was not in Persia any truly learned man who had not the ambition of being admitted to it. Dr. Zeb, an imaginary person, author of an excellent little work, The Gag, learned, in the retirement of the province where he was born, there was one place vacant in the silent Academy. He sets out immediately; he arrives at Hamadan, and presenting himself at the door of the hall where the academicians are assembled, he prays the servant to give this billet to the president: Dr. Zeb asks humbly the vacant place. The servant immediately executed the commission, but the Doctor and his billet arrived too late,—the place was already filled.

“The Academy was deeply grieved at this disappointment; it had admitted, a little against its wish, a wit from the court, whose lively light eloquence formed the admiration of all ruelles.^[17] The Academy saw itself reduced to refuse Doctor Zeb, the scourge of praters, with a head so well formed and so well furnished! The president, charged to announce to the Doctor the disagreeable news, could scarcely bring himself to it, and knew not how to do it. After having thought a little, he filled a large cup with water, but so well filled it, that one drop more would have made the liquid overflow; then he made sign that the candidate should be introduced. He appeared with that simple and modest air which almost always announces true merit. The president arose and, without offering a single word, showed, with an appearance of deep sorrow, the emblematic cup, this cup so exactly filled. The Doctor understood that there was no more room in the Academy; but without losing courage, he thought how to make it understood that one supernumerary academician would disarrange nothing. He sees at his feet a roseleaf, he picks it up, he places it gently on the surface of the water, and did it so well that not a single drop escaped.

“At this ingenious answer everybody clapped hands; the rules were allowed to sleep for this day, and Doctor Zeb was received by acclamation. The register of the Academy was immediately presented to him, where the new members must inscribe themselves. He then inscribed himself in it; and there remained for him no more than to pronounce, according to custom, a phrase of thanks. But as a truly silent academician, Doctor Zeb returned thanks without saying a word. He wrote in the margin the number 100,—it was that of his new brethren; then, by putting a 0 before the figures, 0100, he wrote below, they are worth neither less nor more. The president answered the modest Doctor with as much politeness as presence of mind. He placed the figure 1 before the number 100, i.e. 1100; and he wrote, they will be worth eleven times more.”

The varieties in the Emblems which exist might be pursued from “the bird, the mouse, the frog, and the four arrows,” which, the Father of history tells us,^[18] the Scythians sent to Darius, the invader of their country,—through all the ingenious devices by which the initiated in secret societies, whether political, social, or religious, seek to guard their mysteries from general knowledge and observation,—until we come to the flower-language of the affections, and learn to read, as Hindoo and Persian maidens can, the telegrams of buds and blossoms,^[19] and to interpret the flashing of colours, either simple or combined. We should have to name the Picture writing of the Mexicans, and to declare what meanings lie concealed in the signs and imagery which adorn tomb and monument,—or peradventure to set forth the art by which, on so simple a material as the bark of a birch-tree, some Indians, on their journey, emblematized a troop with attendants that had lost their way. “In the party there was a military officer, a person whom the Indians understood to be an attorney, and a mineralogist; eight were armed: when they halted they made three encampments.” With their knives the Indians traced these particulars on the bark by means of certain signs, or, rather, hieroglyphical marks;—“a man with a sword,” they fashioned “for the officer; another with a book for the lawyer, and a third with a hammer for the mineralogist; three ascending columns of smoke denoted the three encampments, and eight muskets the number of armed men.” So, without paper or print, a not unintelligible memorial was left of the company that were travelling together.

And so we come to the very Early Examples—if not the earliest—of Emblematical Representation, as exhibited in fictile remains, in the workmanship of the silversmith, and of those by whom the various metals and precious stones have been wrought and moulded; and especially in the numerous specimens of the skill or of the fancy which the glyptic and other artizans of ancient Egypt have left for modern times.

For the nature of Fictile ornamentation it were sufficient to refer to the recently published Life of Josiah Wedgwood;^[20] but in the antefixæ, or terra cotta ornaments, derived from the old Etruscan civilisation, we possess true and literal Emblems. As the name implies, these ornaments “were fixed before the buildings,” often on the friezes “which they adorned,” and were fastened to them by leaden nails. For examples, easy of access, we refer to the sketches supplied by James Yates, Esq., of Highgate; to the Dictionary of Gk. and Rom. Antiquities, p. 51; and especially to that antefixa which represents Minerva superintending the construction of the ship Argo. The man with the hammer and chisel is Argus, who built the vessel under her direction. The pilot Tiphys is assisted by her in attaching the sail to the yard. The borders at the top and bottom are in the Greek style, and are extremely elegant.”

And the pressing of clay into a matrix or mould, from which the form is taken, appears to be of very ancient date. The book of Job xxxviii. 14, alludes to the practice in the words, “it is turned as clay to the seal.” Of similar or of higher antiquity is “the work of an engraver in stone, like the engravings of a signet,” Exodus xxviii. 11. And “the breastplate of judgment, the Urim and the Thummim,” v. 30, worn “upon Aaron’s heart,” was probably a similar emblematical ornament to that which Diodorus Siculus, in his History, bk. i. chap. 75, tells us was put on by the president of the Egyptian courts of justice: “He bore about his neck a golden chain, at which hung an image, set about, or composed of precious stones, which was called Truth.”^[21]

Among instances of emblematical workmanship by the silversmith and his confabricators of similar crafts, we may name that shield of Achilles which Homer so graphically describes,^[22] “solid and large,” “decorated with numerous figures of most skilful art;”—or the shields of Hercules and of Æneas, with which Hesiod, Eoeæ, iv. 141–317, and Virgil, Æneid, viii. 615–73, might make us familiar. Or to come to modern times,—to days our very own,—there is the still more precious, the matchless shield by Vehm, whereon, in most expressive imagery, are hammered out the discoveries of Newton, Milton’s noble epics, and Shakespeare’s dramatic wonders. We may, too, in passing, allude to the richly-embossed and ornamented cups for which our swift racers and grey-hounds, and those “dogs of war,” our volunteers, contend; and the almost imperial pieces of plate, such as the Cæsars never beheld, in which genius and the highest art combine, by their “cunning work,” to carve the deeds and enhance the renown of some of our great Indian administrators and illustrious generals; these all, truly “choice emblemes,” intimate the extent to which our subject might lead. But I forbear to pursue it, though scarcely any path offers greater temptations for wandering abroad amid the marvels of human skill, and for considering reverently and gladly how men have been “filled with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.” Exodus xxxi. 3.

Of glyptic art the most ancient, as well as the most ample, remains are found in the temples and the other monuments of Egypt. Various modern explorers and writers have given very elaborate accounts of those remains, and still are carrying on their researches; but of old writers only Clemens, of Alexandria, who flourished “towards the end of the second century after Christ,” “has left us a full and correct account of the principle of the Egyptian writing,”^[23] and has declared what the subjects were which were included in the word hieroglyphics;^[24] and as far as is known, no other early author, except Horapollo of the Nile, has written expressly on the Hieroglyphics of Egypt, and declared that his work—which was probably translated into Greek in the reign of the emperor Zeno, or even later—was derived from Egyptian sources; indeed, was a book in the language of Egypt.

Probably the best account we have of the author and of the translator, is given by Alexander Turner Cory, in the Preface to his edition of Horapollo. He says, pp. viii. and ix.,—

“At the beginning of the fifth century, Horapollo, a scribe of the Egyptian race, and a native of Phœnebythis, attempted to collect and perpetuate in the volume before us, the then remaining, but fast fading knowledge of the symbols inscribed upon the monuments, which attested the ancient grandeur of his country. This compilation was originally made in the Egyptian language; but a translation of it into Greek by Philip has alone come down to us, and in a condition very far from satisfactory. From the internal evidence of the work, we should judge Philip to have lived a century or two later than Horapollo; and at a time when every remnant of actual knowledge of the subject must have vanished.”

However this may be, it is certainly a book of Emblems, and just previous to Shakespeare’s age, and during its continuance was regarded as a high authority. Within that time there were at least five editions of the work,—and it was certainly the mine in which the writers of Emblem books generally sought for what were to them valuable suggestions. The edition we have used is the small octavo of 1551,^[25] with many woodcuts, imaginative indeed, but designed in accordance with the original text. J. Mercier, a distinguished scholar, who died in 1562, was the editor. In 1547 he was professor of Hebrew at the Royal College of Paris, and in 1548 edited the quarto edition of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphics.

From the edition of 1551, p. 52, we take a very popular illustration; it is the Phœnix, and may serve to show the nature of Horapollo’s work.

“How,” he asks, “do the Egyptians represent a soul passing a long time here?” “They paint a bird—the Phœnix; for of all creatures in the world this bird has by far the longest life.”

Again, bk. i. 37, or p. 53, “How do they denote the man who after long absence will return to his friends from abroad?” By the Phœnix; “for this bird, after five hundred years, when the death hour is about to seize it, returns to Egypt, and in Egypt, paying the debt of nature, is burned with great solemnity. And whatever sacred rites the Egyptians observe towards their other sacred animals, these they observe towards the Phœnix.”

And bk. ii. 57,—“The lasting restoration which shall take place after long ages, when they wish to signify it, they paint the bird Phœnix. For when it is born this bird obtains the restoration of its properties. And its birth is in this manner: the Phœnix being about to die, dashes itself upon the ground, and receiving a wound, ichor flows from it, and through the opening another Phœnix is born. And when its wings are fledged, this other sets out with its father to the city of the Sun in Egypt, and on arriving there, at the rising of the Sun, the parent dies; and after the death of the father, the young one sets out again for its own country. And the dead Phœnix do the priests of Egypt bury.”

But the drawings, which in the old editions of Horapollo were fancy-made, have, through the researches of a succession of Egyptian antiquaries, assumed reality, and may be appealed to for proof that Horapollo described the very things which he had seen, though occasionally he, or his translator Philip, attributes to them an imaginative or highly mythical meaning. The results of those researches we witness in the editions of Horapollo, first by the celebrated Dr. Conrad Leemans, of Leyden, in 1835,^[26] and second, by Alexander Turner Cory, Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1840;^[27] both of which editions, by their illustrative plates, taken from correct drawings of the originals, present Horapollo with an accuracy that could not have been approached in the sixteenth century. We have indeed of that age the great work of Pierius Valerian (ed. folio, Bâle, 1556, leaves 449), the Hieroglyphica, dedicated to Cosmo de’ Medici, with almost innumerable emblems, in fifty-eight books, and with about 365 devices. But it cannot be regarded as an exposition of the Egyptian art, and labours under the same defect as the early editions of Horapollo,—the illustrations are not taken from existing monuments.

An example or two from Leemans and Cory will supply sufficient information to enable the reader to understand something of the nature of Horapollo’s work, and of the actual Hieroglyphics from which that work has in great part been verified.