84. Amplified by Whitney, p. 108, Respice, et prospice, “Look back, and look forward.”
85. We subjoin the old French,—
86. The illustration we immediately choose is from Sym. cxxxvii. p. cccxiiii. of Achilles Bocchius, edition Bologna, 1555, with the motto—
87. See Les Emblemes de Maistre Andre Alciat, mis en rime françoyse, Paris, 1540.
88. The device, however, of this Emblem is copied from Symeoni’s Vita et Metamorfoseo d’Ovidio, Lyons, 1559, p. 72; as also are some others used by Reusner.
89. In Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 3, l. 39, vol. vi. p. 142, we read,—
90. The description and quotations are almost identical with the Whitney Dissertations, pp. 294–6.
91. See Whitney’s Fac-simile Reprint, plate 32.
92. In the work of Joachim Camerarius, just quoted, at p. 152, to the motto, “Violentior exit,”—The more violent escapes, p. 99,—there is the device of Gnats and Wasps in a cobweb, with the stanza,—
93. Thus to be rendered into symmetrical lines of English,—
94. Of cognate meaning is Messin’s motto in Boissard’s Emblems, 1588, pp. 82–3, “Plvs par vertv qve par armes,”—Plus virtute quàm armis,—the device being a tyrant, with spearmen to guard him, but singeing his beard because he was afraid of his barber,—
95. See Penny Cyclopædia, vol. xxi. p. 343, where the Pericles and eight other plays are assigned “to the period from Shakspere’s early manhood to 1591. Some of those dramas may possibly then have been created in an imperfect state, very different from that in which we have received them. If the Titus Andronicus and Pericles are Shakspere’s, they belong to this epoch in their first state, whatever it might have been.” See also Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere, supplemental volume, p. 119, where, as before mentioned, the opinion is laid down,—“We think that the Pericles of the beginning of the seventeenth century was the revival of a play written by Shakspere some twenty years earlier.”
96. It may be mentioned that Paradin describes five other Roman wreaths of honour.
97. Symeoni, in 1559, dedicated “All’ Illustrissima Signora Duchessa di Valentinois,” his “Vita et Metamorfoseo d’Ovidio,” 8vo, containing 187 pages of devices, with beautiful borders.
98. “Nella giornata de Suizzeri, rotti presso à Milano dal Rè Francesco, Monsignor di San Valiere il Vecchio, padre di Madama la Duchessa di Valentinoys, e Capitano di cento Gentil’huomini della Casa del Rè, portò vno Stendardo, nel quale era dipinto vn torchio acceso con la testa in giù, sulla quale colaua tanta cera, che quasi li spegneua, con queste parole, Qvi me alit, me extingvit, imitando l’impresa del Rè suo Padrone: cio è, Nvtrisco et extingvo. È la natura della cera, la quale è cagione che ’l torchio abbrucia stando ritto, che col capo in giù si spegne: volendo per ciò significare, che come la bellezza d’vna Donna, che egli amaua, nutriua tutti i suoi pensieri, così lo metteua in pericolo della vita. Vedesi anchora questo stendardo nella Chiesa de Celestini in Lyone.”
99. See Essays Literary and Bibliographical, pp. 301–2, and 311, in the Fac-simile Reprint of Whitney’s Emblemes, 1866.
100. “Si pour esprouuer la fin Or, ou autre metaus, lon les raporte sus la Touche, sans qu’on se confie de leurs tintemens, ou de leurs sons, aussi pour connoitre les gens de bien, & vertueus personnages, se faut prendre garde à la splendeur de leurs œuures, sans s’arrester au babil.”
101. See Symbola Diuina & Humana Pontificvm, Imperatorvm, Regvm, 3 vols. folio in one, Franckfort, 1652.
102. This original drawing, with thirty-four others by the same artist, first appeared in Emblemata Selectiora, 4to, Amsterdam, 1704; also in Acht-en-Dertig Konstige Zinnebeelden,—“Eight-and-thirty Artistic Emblems,”—4to, Amsterdam, 1737.
103. Or it may be a few years later. The drawings, however, are undoubted from which the above woodcut has been executed.
104. This Emblem is dedicated to “George Manwaringe Esquier,” son of “Sir Arthvre Menwerynge,” “of Ichtfeild,” in Shropshire, from whom are directly descended the Mainwarings of Oteley Park, Ellesmere, and indirectly the Mainwarings of Over-Peover, Cheshire.
105. The phrase is matched by another in Much Ado about Nothing (act ii. sc. 1, l. 214, vol. ii. p. 22), when Benedict said of the Lady Beatrice, “O, she misused me past endurance of a block! an oak but with one green leaf on it would have answered her.”
106. “The sixth device,” say the Illustrations of Shakespeare, by Francis Douce, vol. ii. p. 127, “from its peculiar reference to the situation of Pericles, may, perhaps, have been altered from one in the same collection (Paradin’s), used by Diana of Poitiers. It is a green branch springing from a tomb, with the motto, ‘Sola vivit in illo,’”—Alone on that she lives.
107. “Frvmentorvm ac leguminum semina ac grana in terram projecta, ac illi quasi concredita, certo tempore renascuntur, atque multiplices fructus producunt. Sic nostra etiam corpora, quamvis: jam mortua, ac terrestri sepulturæ destinata, in die tamen ultima resurgent, & piorum quidem ad vitam, impiorum vero ad judicium.”... “Alibi legitur, Spes vna svperstes, nimirum post funus.”
108.
109.
110. The text of Sambucus is dedicated to his father, Peter Sambukius.
111.
112. Schiller’s Werke, band 8, pp. 426–7. “Die Regierung dieser Stadt war in allzu viele Hände vortheilt, und der stürmischen Menge ein viel zu grossen Antheil daran gegeben, als dasz man mit Ruhe hätte überlegen mit Einsieht wählen und mit Festigkeit ausführenkönnen.”
113. As Whitney describes him (p. 110, l. 27),—
114.
1 Henry VI., act. i. sc. 1, l. 127.
115. See Gentleman’s Magazine, 1778, p. 470; 1821, pt. 1, p. 531; and Archæologia, vol. xix. pt. 1, art. x. Also, Blomfield’s Norfolk, vol. v. p. 1600.
116.
117.
118.
119. See also Ecl. ix. 29, 36.
120. See also Carm. iv. 3. 20.
121. The same author speaks also of the soft Zephyr moderating the sweet sounding song of the swan, and of sweet honour exciting the breasts of poets; and presents the swan as saying, “I fear not lightnings, for the branches of the laurel ward them off; so integrity despises the insults of fortune.”—Emb. 24 and 25.
122. Paradin’s words and his meaning differ; the Civic crown was bestowed, not on the citizen saved, but on the citizen who delivered him from danger.
123. Consequently there is an anachronism by Shakespeare in assigning the order of St. Michael to “valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury,” who was slain in 1453.
124. The name of Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, does not occur in the list which Paradin gives of the twenty-four Knights Companions of the Golden Fleece.
125. Paradin’s text:—“Ma Dame Bone de Sauoye mere de Ian Galeaz, Duc de Milan, se trouuant veufe feit faire vne Deuise en ses Testons d’vne Fenix au milieu d’vn feu auec ces paroles: Sola facta, solum Deum sequor. Voulant signifier que comme il n’y a au monde qu’vne Fenix, tout ainsi estant demeuree seulette, ne vouloit aymer selon le seul Dieu, pour viure eternellement.”
126. See Penny Cyclopædia, vol. xxi. p. 343: “We have no doubt that the three plays in their original form, which we now call the three Parts of Henry VI., were his,” i. e. Shakespeare's, “and they also belong to this epoch,” i. e. previous to 1591.
127. Or Parvus Mundus, ed. 1579, where the figure of Bacchus by Gerard de Jode has wings on the head, and a swift Pegasus by its side, just striking the earth for flight.
128. It is curious to observe how in the margin Whitney supports his theme by a reference to Ovid, and by quotations from Anacreon, John Chrysostom, Sambucus, and Propertius.
129. To the device of the Sirens, Camerarius, Ex Aquatilibus (ed. 1604, leaf 64), affixes the motto, “Mortem dabit ipsa volvptas,”—Pleasure itself will give death,—and with several references to ancient authors adds the couplet,—
130. Shakespeare’s “goddess blind” and his representation of blind Love have their exact correspondence in the motto of Otho Vænius, “Blynd fortune blyndeth loue;” which is preceded by Cicero’s declaration, “Non solùm ipsa fortuna cæca est: sed etiam plerumque cæcos efficit quos complexa est: adeò vt spernant amores veteres, ac indulgeant nouis,”—
131. Well shown in Whitney’s device to the motto, Veritas inuicta,—“Unconquered truth” (p. 166),—where the Spirits of Evil are sitting in “shady cell” to catch the souls of men, while the Great Enemy is striving—
132.
133.
134. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses, bk. x. fab. 1, 2.
135. For pictorial representations of the wonders which Orpheus wrought, see the Plantinian edition of “P. Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoses,” Antwerp, 1591, pp. 238–243.
136. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses, bk. iii. fab. 2; or the Plantinian Devices to Ovid, edition 1591, pp. 85, 87.
137. In the beautiful Silverdale, on Morecambe Bay, at Lindow Tower, there is the same hospitable assurance over the doorway, “Homo homini lupus.”
138. The device by Gerard de Jode, in the edition of 1579, is a very fine representation of the scene here described.
139. May we not in one instance illustrate the thought from a poet of the last century?—
140. For other pictorial illustrations of Phaëton’s charioteership and fall, see Plantin’s Ovid (pp. 46–49), and De Passe (16 and 17); also Symeoni’s Vita, &c., d’Ovidio (edition 1559, pp. 32–34).
141. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, by Crispin de Passe (editions 1602 and 1607, p. 10), presents the fable well by a very good device.
142. See the reprint of The Dialoges of Creatures Moralysed, by Joseph Haslewood, 4to, London, 1816 (Introd., pp. viij and ix).
143. With the addition of two friends in conversation seated beneath the elm and vine, Boissard and Messin (1588, pp. 64, 65) give the same device, to the mottoes, “Amicitiæ Immortali,”—To immortal friendship: “Parfaite est l’Amitié qui vit après la mort.”
144. “Centvm Fabvlæ ex Antiqvis delectæ, et a Gabriele Faerno Cremonense carminibus explicatæ. Antuerpiæ ex officina Christoph. Plantini, M.D.LXXXIII.” 16mo. pp. 1–171.
145. See the French version of Æsop, with 150 beautiful vignettes, “Les Fables et la Vie d’Esope:” “A Anvers En l’imprimerie Plantiniēne Chez la Vefue, & Jean Mourentorf, M.D.XCIII.” Here the bird is a jay (see p. 117, Du Gay, xxxi); and the peacocks are the avengers upon the base pretender to glories not his own.
146. Cervantes and Shakespeare died about the same time,—it may be, on the same day; for the former received the sacrament of extreme unction at Madrid 18th of April, 1616, and died soon after; and the latter died the 23rd of April, 1616.
147. Paralleled in Æsop’s Fables, Antwerp, 1593; by Fab. xxxviii., De l Espriuier & du Rossignol; lii., De l Oyseleur & du Merle; and lxxvii., Du Laboureur & de la Cigoigne.
148. Identical almost with “La fin covronne l’oevvre” in Messin’s version of Boissard’s Emblematum Liber (4to, 1588), where (p. 20) we have the device of the letter Y as emblematical of human life; and at the end of the stanzas the lines,—
149. In the Emblems of Lebens-Batillius (4to, Francfort, 1596), human life is compared to a game with dice. The engraving by which it is illustrated represents three men at play with a backgammon-board before them.
150. The skeleton head on the shield in Death’s escutcheon by Holbein, may supply another pictorial illustration, but it is not sufficiently distinctive to be dwelt on at any length. The fac-simile reprints by Pickering, Bohn, Quaritch, or Brothers, render direct reference to the plate very easy.
151. A note of inquiry, from Mr. W. Aldis Wright, of Trinity College, Cambridge, asking me if Shakespeare’s thought may not have been derived from an emblematical picture, informs me that he has an impression of having “somewhere seen an allegorical picture of a child looking through the eyeholes of a skull.”
152. In Johnson’s and Steeven’s Shakespeare (edition 1785, vol. x. p. 434) the passage is thus explained, “Sir John Suckling, in one of his letters, may possibly allude to this same story. ‘It is the story of the jackanapes and the partridges; thou starest after a beauty till it is lost to thee, and then let’st out another, and starest after that till it is gone too.’”
153. See a most touching account of a she-hear and her whelps in the Voyage of Discovery to the North Seas in 1772, under Captain C. J. Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave.
154. “Zodiacvs Christianvs, seu signa 12, diuinæ Prædestinationis, &c., à Raphaele Sadelero, 12mo, p. 126, Monaci CD. DCXVIII.”
155. See also the Emblems of Camerarius (pt. iii. edition 1596, Emb. 47), where the turkey is figured to illustrate “Rabie svccensa tvmescit,”—Being angered it swells with rage.
156. See also other passages from the Georgics,—
Description of the kings (iv. 87–99),—
And,—
157. At a time even later than Shakespeare’s the idea of a king-bee prevailed; Waller, the poet of the Commonwealth, adopted it, as in the lines to Zelinda,—
In Le Moine’s Devises Heroiqves et Morales (4to, Paris, 1649, p. 8) we read, “Du courage & du conseil au Roy des abeilles,”—and the creature is spoken of as a male.
158. To mention only Joachim Camerarius, edition 1596, Ex Volatilibus (Emb. 29–34); here are no less than five separate devices connected with Hawking or Falconry.
159. Take an example from the Paraphrase in an old Psalter: “The arne,” i.e. the eagle, “when he is greved with grete elde, his neb waxis so gretely, that he may nogt open his mouth and take mete: hot then he smytes his neb to the stane, and has away the slogh, and then he gaes til mete, and he commes yong a gayne. Swa Crist duse a way fra us oure elde of syn and mortalite, that settes us to ete oure brede in hevene, and newes us in hym.”