These dogs were mastiffs, and their banning was barking or braying; but the dogs entitled bandogs in Whitney, though also mastiffs, were fastened by a band to a small cart, and trained to draw it. A large species of dog may be seen at this day in the towns of Belgium performing the very same service to which their ancestors had been accustomed above three centuries ago. Sambucus heads his description of the bandog’s strength and labours with the sentence,—“ The dog complains that he is greatly wronged.”

“Were I a little whelp, to my lady how dear I should be; Of board and of bed I never the want should see.”^[183]

Whitney, using the woodcut which adorns the editions of Sambucus both in 1564 and 1599, prefixes a loftier motto (p. 140),—Feriunt summos fulmina montes,—“Thunderbolts strike highest mountains;” and thus expatiates he,—

The mastiff is almost the only dog to which Shakespeare assigns any epithet of praise. In Henry V. (act iii. sc. 7, l. 130, vol. iv. p. 552), one of the French lords, Rambures, acknowleges “that island of England breeds very valiant creatures; their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.” It is the same quality in Achilles and Ajax on which Ulysses and Nestor count when “the old man eloquent,” in Troilus and Cressida (act i. sc. 3, l. 391, vol. vi. p. 155), says of the two warriors,—

It is, however, only in a passing allusion that Shakespeare introduces any mention of the bandog. He is describing the night “when Troy was set on fire” (2 Henry VI., act i. sc. 4, l. 16, vol. v. p. 129), and thus speaks of it,—

We are all familiar with the expression “motley’s the only wear,” and probably we are disposed simply to refer it to the way in which that important personage was arrayed who exercised his fun and nonsense and shrewd wit in the courts of the kings and in the mansions of the nobles of the middle ages. The pictorial type exists in the Emblems both of Sambucus and of his copyist Whitney (p. 81), by whom the sage advice is imparted,—“Give trifles in charge to fools.”

Drant’s translations^[185] from Horace, published in 1567, convey to us a pretty accurate idea of the fool’s attire,—

Perchance we know the lines in the “Faerie Queene” (vi. c. 7, 49, 1. 6),—

But probably we are not prepared to trace some of the expressions in these lines to an Emblem-book origin. The graphic “mockes and mowes,” indeed, no Latin nor French can express; but our old friend Paradin, in the “Devises Heroiqves” (leaf 174), names an occasion on which very amusing “mockes and mowes” were exhibited; it was, moreover, an example that,—

“Things badly obtained are badly scattered.” As he narrates the tale,— “One day it happened that a huge ape, nourished in the house of a miser who found pleasure only in his crowns, after seeing through a hole his master playing with his crowns upon a table, obtained means of entering within by an open window, while the miser was at dinner. The ape took a stool, as his master did, but soon began to throw the silver out of the window into the street. How much the passers by kept laughing and the miser was vexed, I shall not attempt to say. I will not mock him among his neighbours who were picking up his bright crowns either for a nestegg, or for a son or a brother,—for a gamester, a driveller or a drunkard,—for I cannot but remember that fine and true saying which affirms, ‘Things badly gained are badly scattered.’”

This tale, derived by Paradin from Gabriel Symeoni’s Imprese Heroiche et Morali, is assumed by Whitney as the groundwork of his very lively narrative (p. 169), Against Userers, of which we venture to give the whole.

There is not, indeed, any imitation of the jocose tale about the ape^[186] and the miser’s gold, and it is simply in “the mockes and apishe mowes” that any similarity exists. These, however, enter into the dialogue between Imogen and Iachimo (Cymbeline, act i. sc. 6, l. 30, vol. ix. p. 184); she bids him welcome, and he replies,—

There is a fine thought in Furmer’s Use and Abuse of Wealth, first published in Latin in 1575, and afterwards, in 1585, translated into Dutch by Coornhert; it is respecting the distribution of poverty and riches by the Supreme wisdom. The subject (at p. 6) is Undeserved Poverty,—“The Lord maketh poor, and enriches.” (See Plate XVI.)

Youthful Time (see Plate XVII.) is leading on the seasons,—a childlike spring, a matured summer wreathed with corn, an autumn crowned with vines, and a decrepid winter,—and yet the emblem of immortality lies at their feet; and the lesson is taught, as our Dramatist expresses it (Hamlet, act i. sc. 2, l. 71, vol. viii. p. 14),—

The irrevocable time flies on, and surely it has its comment in Macbeth (act v. sc. 5, l. 19, vol. vii. p. 512),—

Or, in Hotspur’s words (1 Henry IV., act v. sc. 2, l. 82, vol. iv. p. 337),—

And for eternity’s Emblem,^[187] the Egyptians, we are told (Horapollo, i. 1), made golden figures of the Basilisk, with its tail covered by the rest of its body; so Otho Vænius presents the device to us. But Shakespeare, without symbol, names the desire, the feeling, the fact itself; he makes Cleopatra exclaim (Antony and Cleopatra, act v. sc. 2, l. 277, vol. ix. p. 150), “I have immortal longings in me,” “I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life.”

When Romeo asks (Romeo and Juliet, act v. sc. 1, l. 15, vol. vii. p. 117),—

with the force of entire faith the answer is conceived which Balthasar returns,—

We thus know in what sense to understand the words from Macbeth (act iii. sc. 2, l. 22, vol. vii. p. 467),—

Therefore, in spite of quickly fading years, in spite of age irrevocable, and (Love’s Labours Lost, act i. sc. 1, l. 4, vol. ii. p. 97),—

A brief resumé, or recapitulation, will now place the nature of our argument more clearly in review.

When writing and its kindred arts of designing and colouring were the only means in use for the making and illustrating of books, drawings of an emblematical character were frequently executed both for the ornamenting and for the fuller explanation of various works.

From the origin of printing, books of an emblematical character, as the Bibles of the Poor and other block-books, were generally known in the civilised portions of Europe; they constituted, to a considerable degree, the illustrated literature of their age, and enjoyed wide fame and popularity.

Not many years after printing with moveable types had been invented, Emblem works as a distinct species of literature appeared; and of these some of the earliest were soon translated into English.

It is on undoubted record that the use of Emblems, derived from German, Latin, French, and Italian sources, prevailed in England for purposes of ornamentation of various kinds; that the works of Brandt, Giovio, Symeoni, and Paradin were translated into English; and that there were several English writers or collectors of Emblems within Shakespeare’s lifetime,—as Daniell, Whitney, Willet, Combe, and Peacham.

Shakespeare possessed great artistic powers, so as to appreciate and graphically describe the beauties and qualities of excellence in painting, sculpture, and music. His attainments, too, in the languages enabled him to make use of the Emblem-books that had been published in Latin, Italian, and French, and possibly in Spanish.

In everything, except in the actual pictorial device, Shakespeare exhibited himself as a skilled designer,—indeed, a writer of Emblems; he followed the very methods on which this species of literary composition was conducted, and needed only the engraver’s aid to make perfect designs.

Freest among mortals were the Emblem writers in borrowing one from the other, and from any source which might serve the construction of their ingenious devices; and they generally did this without acknowledgment. An Emblem once launched into the world of letters was treated as a fable or a proverb,—it became for the time and the occasion the property of whoever chose to take it. In using Emblems, therefore, Shakespeare is no more to be regarded as a copyist than his contemporaries are, but simply as one who exercised a recognised right to appropriate what he needed of the general stock of Emblem notions.

There are several direct References in Shakespeare, at least six, in which, by the closest description and by express quotation, he identifies himself with the Emblem writers who preceded him.

But besides these direct References, there are several collateral ones, in which ideas and expressions are employed similar to those of Emblematists, and which indicate a knowledge of Emblem art.

And, finally, the parallelisms and correspondencies are very numerous between devices and turns of thought, and even between the words of the Emblem writers and passages in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Dramas; and these receive their most appropriate rationale on the supposition that they were suggested to his mind through reading the Emblem-books, or through familiarity with the Emblem literature.

Now, such References and Coincidences are not to be regarded as purely accidental, neither can all of them be urged with entire confidence. Some persons even may be disposed to class them among the similarities which of necessity arise when writers of genius and learning take up the same themes, and call to their aid all the resources of their memory and research.

I presume not, however, to say that my arguments and statements are absolute proofs, except in a few instances. What I maintain is this: that the Emblem writers, and our own Whitney especially, do supply many curious and highly interesting illustrations of the Shakespearean dramas, and that several of them, probably, were in the mind of the Dramatist as he wrote.

To show that the theory carried out in these pages is neither singular nor unsupported by high authorities, it should not be forgotten that the very celebrated critic, Francis Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakespeare (pp. 302, 392), maintains that Paradin was the source of the torch-emblem in the Pericles (act ii. sc. 2, l. 32): the “wreath of victory,” and “gold on the touchstone,” have also the same source. To Holbein’s Simulachres Noel Humphreys assigns the origin of the expression in Othello, “Put out the light—and then, put out the light;” and in the same work, Dr. Alfred Woltmann, in Holbein and his Times (vol. ii. p. 121), finds the origin of Death’s fool in Measure for Measure: and Shakespeare’s comparisons of “Death and Sleep” may be traced to Jean de Vauzelle, who wrote the Dissertations for Les Simulachres. Charles Knight, also, in his Pictorial Shakspere (vol. i. p. 154), to illustrate the lines in Hamlet (act iv. sc. 5, l. 142) respecting “the kind life-rendering pelican,” quotes Whitney’s stanza, and copies his woodcut, as stated ante, p. 396, note.

Though not a learned man, as Erasmus or Beza was, Shakespeare, as every page of his wonderful writings shows, must have been a reading man, and well acquainted with the current literature of his age and country. Whitney’s Emblemes were well known in 1612 to the author of “Minerva Britanna,” and boasted of in 1598 by Thomas Meres, in his Wit’s Commonwealth, as fit to be compared with any of the most eminent Latin writers of Emblems, and dedicated to many of the distinguished men of Elizabeth’s reign; and they could scarcely have been unknown to Shakespeare even had there been no similarities of thought and expression established between the two writers.

Nor after the testimonies which have been adduced, and comparing the picture-emblems submitted for consideration with the passages from Shakespeare which are their parallels, as far as words can be to drawings, are we required to treat it as nothing but a conjecture that Shakespeare, like others of his countrymen, possessed at least a general acquaintance with the popular Emblem-books of his own generation and of that which went before.

The study of the old Emblem-books certainly possesses little of the charm which the unsurpassed natural power of Shakespeare has infused into his dramas, and which time does not diminish; yet that study is no barren pursuit for such as will seek for “virtue’s fair form and graces excellent,” or who desire to note how the learning of the age disported itself at its hours of recreation, and how, with few exceptions, it held firm its allegiance to purity of thought, and reverenced the spirit of religion. Should there be any whom these pages incite to gain a fuller knowledge of the Emblem literature, I would say in the words of Arthur Bourchier, Whitney’s steady friend,—

So much for the early cultivators of Emblematical mottoes, devices, and poesies, and for him whom Hugh Holland, and Ben Jonson, and “The friendly Admirer of his Endowments,” salute as “The Famous Scenicke Poet,” “The Sweet Swan of Avon,” “The Starre of Poets,”—

“To the memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare: and what he has left us;”—such the dedication when Jonson declared,—