Dyalogus Creat., ed. 1480.
There were various editions and modifications of the work,[40] but perhaps the contrast between them cannot be better pointed out than by selecting the Fable of the Wolf and the Ass from the Gouda edition of 1480, and also from the Antwerp edition of 1584. The original edition, with the woodcut on the next page in mere outline, tells in simple Latin prose how a wolf and an ass were sawing a log of wood together. From good nature the ass worked up above, the wolf through maliciousness down below, desiring to find an opportunity for devouring the ass; therefore he complained that the ass was sending the sawdust into his eyes. The ass replied, “It is not I who am doing this,—I only guide the saw. If you wish to saw up above I am content,—I will work faithfully down below.” And so they talked on, until the wolf threatening revenge drew back, and the fissure in the beam being suddenly widened, the wedge fell upon the wolf’s head, and the wolf himself was killed.
The Antwerp edition of 1584[41] changes the simple Latin prose into the elegant Latin elegiacs of John Moerman, and the outline woodcuts of an unknown artist into the copperplate engravings of Gerard de Jode, the eldest of four generations of engravers. The Wolf and the Ass are made to emblematize, “scelesti hominis imago et exitus,”—the image and end of a wicked man. Moerman’s Latin may thus be rendered, from leaf 54, ed. 1584:—
Apologi Creaturarum, 1584.
As in the Blandford Catalogue, it has been usual to count among Emblem-books the “Ecatonphyla,” printed at Venice in 1491. The French translation of 1536 describes the title as, “signifiãt centiesme amour, sciemment appropriees a la dame ayãt en elle autant damour que cent aultres dames en pouroient comprendre,” signifying a hundredth love, knowingly appropriated to the lady having in her as much love as a hundred other ladies could possibly comprehend. (Brunet’s Manuel, i. c. 131, 132.) The author of this work, of which there are several editions, was the celebrated Italian architect, Leoni-Baptista Alberti, born of a noble family of Florence in 1398, and living as some suppose up to 1480. He was a universal scholar, a doctor of laws, a priest, a painter, and a good mechanic.
We are inclined to ask whether Gli Trionfi del Petrarcha, printed at Bologna in 1475,—especially, when as in the Venice editions of 1500 and 1523 they were adorned by the vignettes and wood engravings of Zoan Andrea Veneziano,—whether these “Triumphs of Love, Chastity, and Death” may not, from their highly allegorical character, be included among the Emblem-books of this age?[42] The same question we might ask respecting “Das Heldenbuch,”—The Book of Heroes,—printed at Augsburg, in 1477, by Gunther Zainer, who had first been a printer at Cracow about 1465; and also concerning the “Libri Cronicarum cũ figuris et imaginibus ab inicio mũdi,” a large folio known as the Chronicles of Nuremberg, which with its 2000 fine wood engravings, attributed to Michael Wohlgemuth, was published in that city in 1493.[43]
The original “Todtentanz,” or Dance of Death, painted as a memorial of the plague which raged during the Council of Bâle, held between 1431 and 1446 (Bryan, p. 335), certainly was not the work of either of the Holbeins. There are several representations of a Death-dance in the fifteenth century, between 1485 and 1496 (Brunet, v. 873, 874); and there can be little doubt of their emblematical character. The renowned Dance of Death by Hans Holbein the younger we will reserve for its proper place in the next section.
We must not however leave unmentioned The Dance of Macaber, especially as it is presented to us in an English form by John Lydgate, a monk of the Benedictine abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, who was born about 1375, and attained his greatest eminence about 1430. His own power for supplying the materials for an Emblem-device we observe in the lines on “God’s Providence.”
For an account of Lydgate’s Dance of Macaber, and indeed for his version in English, we should do well to consult the remarks by Francis Douce, in Wenceslaus Hollar’s Dance of Death, published about the year 1790, and more particularly the remarks in Douce’s Dissertation, edition 1833.
The earliest known edition of La Danse Macabre, originally composed in German, is dated at Paris, 1484, but before the completion of the century there were seven or eight other reprints, some with alterations and others with additions. It was a most popular work, issued at least eight or ten times during the sixteenth century, and still exciting interest.[44] At p. 39 may be seen copies of some of the devices as used by Verard.
The chief Emblem deviser and writer towards the end of the century was Sebastian Brandt, born at Strasburg in 1458, and after a life of great usefulness and honour dying at Bâle in 1520. The publication in German Iambic verse of his “Narren Schyff,” Bâle, Nuremberg, Rüttlingen, and Augsburg, A.D. 1494, forms quite an epoch in Emblem-book literature. Previous to A.D. 1500, Locher, crowned poet laureate by the Emperor Maximilian I., translated the German into Latin verse, with the title “Stultifera Nauis” (see Plate IX.); Riviere of Poitiers, the Latin into French verse, “La Nef des Folz du Monde;” and Droyn of Amiens, into French prose, “La grãt Nef des Folz du Monde.” Early in the next century, 1504, or even in 1500, there was a Flemish version; and in 1509 two English versions,—one translated out of French, “The Shyppe of Fooles,” by Henry Watson, and printed by “Wynkyn de Worde, MCCCCCIX.” (see Dibdin’s Tour, ii. p. 103); the other,—“Stultifera Nauis,” or “The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde;” “Inprentyd in the Cyte of London, by Richard Pynson, M.D.IX.” (Dibdin’s Typ. Ant. ii. p. 431.) This latter was “translated out of Latin, French, and Duch into Englishe, by Alexander Barclay, Priest;” and reprinted in 1570, during Shakespeare’s childhood by the “Printer to the Queenes Maiestie.” At the same time, 1570, another work by Barclay was published, which, although without devices, partakes of an allegorical or even of an emblematical character; it is The Mirrour of good Maners; “conteining the foure Cardinal Vertues.”
Dibdin, in his Bibliographical Antiquarian, iii. p. 101, mentions “a pretty little volume—‘as fresh as a daisy,’ the Hortulus Rosarum de Valle Lachrymarum, ‘A little Garden of Roses from the Valley of Tears’ (to which a Latin ode by S. Brandt is prefixed), printed by J. de Olpe in 1499,”—but he gives no intimation of its character; conjecturing from its title and from the woodcuts with which it is adorned, it will probably on further inquiry be found to bear an emblematical meaning.
Dibdin also, in the same work, iii. p. 294, names “a German version of the ‘Hortulus Animæ’ of S. Brant,” in manuscript; “undoubtedly,” he says, “among the loveliest books in the Imperial Library.” The Latin edition was printed at Strasburg in 1498, and is ornamented with figures on wood; many of these are mere pictures, without any symbolical meaning,—but it often is the case that the illuminated manuscripts, especially if devotional, and the early printed books of every kind that have pictorial illustrations in them, present various examples of symbolical and emblematical devices.
The last works we shall name of the period antecedent to A.D. 1501, are due to the industry and skill of John Sicile, herald at arms to Alphonso King of Aragon, who died in 1458. Sicile, it seems, prepared two manuscripts, one the Blazonry of Arms,—the other, the Blazonry of Colours. Of the former there was an edition printed at Paris in 1495, Le Blason de toutes Armes et Ecutz, &c.—and of the latter at Lyons early in the sixteenth century, Le Blason des Couleurs en Armes, Liurees et deuises. Within an hundred years, ending with 1595, above sixteen editions of the two works were issued.
Several other authors there are belonging to the period of which we treat,—but enough have been named to show to what an extent Emblem devices and Emblem-books had been adopted, and with what an impetus the invention of moveable types and greater skill in engraving had acted to multiply the departments of the Emblem Literature. It was an impetus which gathered new strength in its course, and which, previous to Shakespeare’s youth and maturity, had made an entrance into almost every European nation. Already in 1500, from Sweden to Italy and from Poland to Spain, the touch was felt which was to awaken nearly every city to the west of Constantinople, to share in the supposed honours of adding to the number of Emblem volumes.
Picta Poesis, 1552.
LABORIOUS in some degree is the enterprise which the title of this Section will indicate before it shall be ended. Perchance we shall have no myths to perplex us, but the demands of sober history are often more inexorable than those flexible boundaries within which the imagination may disport amid facts and fictions.
Better, as I trust, to set this period of sixty-three years before the mind, it may be well to take it in three divisions: 1st, the twenty-one years before Alciatus appeared, to conquer for himself a kingdom, and to reign king of Emblematists for about a century and a half; 2nd, the twenty-one years from the appearance of the first edition of Alciat’s Emblems in 1522 at Milan, until Hans Holbein the younger had introduced the Images and Epigrams of Death, and La Perriere and Corrozet, the one his Theatre of good Contrivances in one hundred Emblems, and the other his Hecatomgraphie, or descriptions of one hundred figures; 3rd, the twenty-one years up to Shakespeare’s birth, distinguished towards its close chiefly by the Italian writers on Imprese, Paolo Giovio, Vincenzo Cartari, Girolamo Ruscelli, and Gabriel Symeoni.
Badius, 1502.
I.—A Fool-freighted Ship was the title of almost the last book of the fifteenth century,—by a similar title is the Emblem-book called which was launched at the beginning of the sixteenth century; it is, “Jodoci Badii ascēsii Stultifere̦ nauicule̦ seu scaphe̦ Fatuarum mulierum: circa sensus quinq̃ exteriores fraude nauigantium,”—The Fool-freighted little ships of Josse Badius ascensius, or the skiffs of Silly women in delusion sailing about the five outward senses,—“printed by honest John Prusz, a citizen of Strasburg, in the year of Salvation M.CCCCC.II.” There was an earlier edition in 1500,—but almost exactly the same. From that before us we give a specimen of the work, The Skiff of Foolish Tasting. A discourse follows, with quotations from Aulus Gellius, Saint Jerome, Virgil, Ezekiel, Epicurus, Seneca, Horace, and Juvenal; and the discourse is crowned by twenty-four lines of Latin elegiacs, entitled “Celeusma Gustationis fatue̦,”—The Oarsman’s cry for silly Tasting,—thus exhorting—
And so on, until in the concluding stanza Badius declares—
The same work was published in another form, “La nef des folles, selon les cinq sens de nature, composé selon levangile de monseigneur saint Mathieu, des cinq vierges qui ne prindrent point duylle avec eulx pour mectre en leurs lampes:” Paris 4to, about 1501.
Of Badius himself, born in 1462 and dying in 1535, it is to be said that he was a man of very considerable learning, professor of “belles lettres” at Lyons from 1491 to 1511, when he was tempted to settle in Paris. There he established the famous Ascensian Printing Press,—and like Plantin of Antwerp, gave his three daughters in marriage to three very celebrated printers: Michel Vascosan, Robert Etienne, and Jean de Poigny. He was the author of several works besides those that have been mentioned. (Biog. Univ. vol. iii. p. 201.)
Symphorien Champier, Doctor in Theology and Medicine, a native of Lyons, who was physician to Anthony Duke of Lorraine when he accompanied Louis XII. to the Italian war, graduated at Pavia in 1515, and, after laying the foundations of the Lyons College of Physicians, and enjoying the highest honours of his native city, died about 1540. (Aikin’s Biog. ii. 579.) His medical and other works are of little repute, but among them are two or three which may be regarded as imitations of Emblem-books. We will just name,—Balsat’s work with Champier’s additions, La Nef des Princes et des Batailles de Noblesse, &c. (Lyons, 4to goth. with woodcuts, A.D. 1502.); also, La Nef des Dames vertueuses cōposee par Maistre Simphoriē Champier, &c. (Lyons, 4to goth. with woodcuts, A.D. 1503.)
“Bible figures,” too, again have a claim to notice. A very fine copy of “Les figures du vieil Testament, & du nouuel,” which belonged to the Rev. T. Corser, Rector of Stand, near Manchester, supplies the opportunity of noticing that it is decidedly an Emblem work. It is a folio, of 100 leaves, containing forty-one plates, of which one is introductory, and forty are on Scriptural subjects, unarranged in order either of time or place. The work was published in Paris in 1503 by Anthoine Verard, and is certainly, as Brunet declares, ii. c. 1254, “une imitation de l’ouvrage connu sous le nom de Biblia Pauperum.” There are forty sets of figures in triptychs, the wood engravings being very bold and good. Each is preceded or followed by a French stanza of eight lines, declaring the subject; and has appended two or three pages of Exposition, also in French. The Device pages, each in three compartments, are in Latin, and may thus be described. At the top to the left hand, a quotation from the Vulgate appropriate to the pictorial representation beneath it; in the centre two niches, of which David always occupies one, and some writer of the Old Testament the other, a scroll issuing from each niche. The middle compartment is filled by a triptych, the centre subject from the New Testament, the right and left from the Old. At the bottom are Latin verses to the right and left, with two niches in the centre occupied by biblical writers. The Latin verses are rhyming couplets, as on fol. a. iiij, beneath Moses at the burning bush, “Lucet et ignescit, sed non rubus igne calescit,”—It shines and flames, but the bush is not heated by the fire. In triptych, on p. i. rev. are, Enoch’s Translation, Christ’s Ascension, and the Translation of Elijah.
The Aldine press at Venice, A.D. 1505, gave the world the first printed edition of the “Hieroglyphica” of Horapollo. It was in folio, having in the same volume the Fables of Æsop, of Gabrias, &c. See Leemans’ Horapollo, pp. xxix-xxxv. A Latin version by Bernard Trebatius was published at Augsburg in 1515, at Bale in 1518, and at Paris in 1521; and another Latin version by Phil. Phasianinus, at Bologna in 1517. Previous to Shakespeare’s birth there were translations into French in 1543, into Italian in 1548, and into German in 1554,—and down to 1616 sixteen other editions may readily be counted up.
John Haller, who had introduced printing into Cracow in 1500, published in 1507 the first attempt to teach logic by means of a game of cards; it was in Murner’s quarto entitled, “Chartiludium logice̦ seu Logica poetica vel memorativa cum jocundo Pictasmatis Exercimento,”—A Card-game of Logic, or Logic poetical or memorial, with the pleasant Exercise of pictured Representation. It is a curious and ingenious work, and reprints of it appeared at Strasburg in 1509 and 1518; at Paris, by Balesdens, in 1629; and again in 1650, 4to, by Peter Guischet. As an imitation of Brandt’s Ship of Fools, so far as it relates to the follies and caprices of mankind, mention should also be made of Murner’s “Narren Beschwoerung,”—Exorcism of Fools,—Strasburg, 4to, 1512 and 1518; which certainly at Francfort, in 1620, gave origin to Flitner’s “Nebvlo nebvlonvm,”—or, Rascal of Rascals.
“Speculū Paciētierum theologycis Consolationibus Fratris Ioannis de Tambaco,”—The Mirror of Patience with the theological Consolations of Brother John Tambaco,—Nuremberg, MCCCCCIX., 4to, is a work of much curiousness. On the reverse of the title is an Emblematical device of Job, Job’s wife, and the Devil, followed by exhortations to patience; and on the reverse of the introduction to the second part, also an Emblematical device,—the Queen of Consolation, with her four maidens by her side, and two men kneeling before her. The chapters on consolation are generally in the form of sermonettes, in which the maidens, three or four, or even a dozen, expatiate on different subjects proper for reproof, exhortation, and comfort. The devices in this volume are understood to be from the pencil of Albert Durer.
This same year, 1509, witnessed two English translations, or paraphrases, of Brandt’s “Narren Schif,”—the one The Shyppe of Fooles, taken from the French by Henry Watson, and printed by De Worde;—the other rendered out of Latin, German, and French, The Ship of Fooles, by Alexander Barclay, and printed by Pinson. Of Watson little, if anything, is known, but Barclay is regarded as one of the improvers of the English tongue, and to him it is chiefly owing that a true Emblem-book was made popular in England.
Of the “Dyalogus Creaturarum,” written in the fourteenth century by Nicolas Pergaminus, and printed by Gerard Leeu, at Gouda, in 1480, an English version appeared about 1520,—“The dialogue of Creatures moralyzed, of late translated out of Latyn in to our English tonge.”
The famous preacher and the founder of the first public school in Strasburg was John Geyler, born in 1445. He was highly esteemed by the Emperor Maximilian, and after a ministry of about thirty years, died in 1510. Two Emblem-books were left by him, both published in 1511 by James Other;—the one “Navicula sive Speculũ Fatuorum,”—The little Ship or Mirror of Fools; the other, “Navicula Penitentie,”—The little Ship of Penitence. To the first there are 110 emblems and 112 devices, each having a discourse delivered on one of the Sabbaths or festivals of the Catholic Church—the text always being, Stultorum infinitus est,—“Infinite is the number of fools.” The second, not strictly an Emblem-book, is devoted “to the praise of God and the salvation of souls in Strasburg,” and consists really of a series of sermons for Lent and other seasons of the year, but all having the same text, Ecce ascendimus Hierosolimam,—“Behold we go up to Jerusalem.” There were several reprints of both the works, and two German translations; and the edition of 1520, folio, with wood engravings, is remarkable for being the first book to which was granted the “Imperial privilege.” It is said that the rhymes of Brandt’s Ship of Fools which Geyler had translated into Latin in 1498, not unfrequently served him for texts and quotations for his sermons. Alas! we have no such lively preachers in these sleepy days of perfect propriety of phrase and person. Our prophets, in putting away “locusts and wild honey,” too often forget to cry, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Next, however, to the famous preacher, we name a notorious prophet, the Abbot Joachim, who died between the years 1201 and 1202, but whose works, if they really were his, did not appear in print, until the folio edition was issued about 1475,—Revelations concerning the State of the chief Pontiffs. An Italian version, “Prophetia dello Abbate Joachimo circa li Pontefici & Re,” appeared in 1515; and another Latin edition, with wood engravings, by Marc-Antoine Raimondi, in 1516.[46] Many tales are related of the Abbot and of his followers; suffice it to say, that they maintained the Gospel of Christ would be abolished A.D. 1260; and thenceforward Joachim’s “true and everlasting Gospel” was to be prevalent in the world.
According to the Blandford Catalogue, p. 6, we should here insert P. Dupont’s Satyriques Grotesques (Desseins Orig.), 8vo, Paris, 1513; but it may be passed over with the simplest notice.
If we judge from the wonderfully beautiful copy on finest vellum in the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow, the next Emblem-book surpasses all others we have named; it is the “Tewrdannckh”—or, Dear-thought,—usually attributed to Melchior Pfintzing, a German poet, born at Nuremberg in 1481, and who at one time was secretary to the Emperor Maximilian. The poem is allegorical and chivalric, and adorned with 118 plates, some of which are considered the workmanship of Albert Durer.[47]
The Tewrdanck was intended to set forth the dangers and love adventures of the emperor himself on occasion of his marriage to the great heiress of that day, Mary of Burgundy. There are some who believe that Maximilian was the author, or at least that he sketched out the plan which Pfintzing executed. As, however, the espousals took place in 1479, before the poet was born, and Mary had early lost her life from a fall,—the probability is that the emperor supplied some of the incidents and suggestions, and that his secretary completed the work. The splendid volume was dedicated to Charles V. in 1517, and published the same year, a noble monument of typographic art.
Of a later work known under the name of “Turnierbuch,”—The Tournament-book,—by George Rüxner, namely, Beginning, Source, and Progress of Tournaments in the German nation (Siemern, S. Rodler, 1530, folio, pp. 402), Brunet informs us (Manuel, vol. iv. c. 1471), “There are found for the most part in this edition printed at the castle of Simmern” (about twenty-five miles south of Coblentz) “in 1530, the characters already employed in the two editions of the Tewrdannckh of 1517 and 1519; there may also be remarked numerous engravings on wood of the same kind as those of the romance in verse we have just cited.” The edition of 1532 “printed at the same castle,” is not in the same characters as that of 1530.
Cebes, the Theban, the disciple of Socrates, though mentioned at pp. 12, 13, must again be introduced, for an edition of his little work in Latin had appeared at Boulogne in 1497, and at Venice in 1500; also at Francfort, “by the honest men Lamperter and Murrer,” in 1507, with the letter of John Æsticampianus; the Greek was printed by Aldus in 1503, and several other editions followed up to the end of the century;—indeed there were translations into Arabic, French, Italian, German, and English.[48]
II.—Andrew Alciat, the celebrated jurisconsult, remarkable, as some testify, for serious defects, as for his surpassing knowledge and power of mind, is characterized by Erasmus as “the orator best skilled in law,” and “the lawyer most eloquent of speech;”—of his composition there was published in 1522, at Milan, an Emblematum Libellus, or “Little Book of Emblems.”[49] It established, if it did not introduce, a new style for Emblem Literature, the classical in the place of the simply grotesque and humorous, or of the heraldic and mythic. It is by no means certain that the change should be named an unmixed gain. Stately and artificial, the school of Alciat and his followers indicates at every stanza its full acquaintance with mythologies Greek and Roman, but it is deficient in the easy expression which distinguishes the poet of nature above him whom learning chiefly guides: it seldom betrays either enthusiasm of genius or depth of imaginative power.
Nevertheless the style chimed in with the taste of the age, and the little book,—at least that edition of it which is the earliest we have seen, Augsburg, A.D. 1531,[50] contained in eighty-eight pages, small 8vo, with ninety-seven Emblems and as many woodcuts,—won its way from being a tiny volume of 11.5 square inches of letterpress on each of eighty-eight pages, until with notes and comments it was comprised only in a large 4to of 1004 pages with thirty-seven square inches of letter-press on each page. Thus the little one that had in it only 1012 square inches of text and picture became a mountain, a monument in Alciat’s honour, numbering up 37,128 square inches of text, picture, and comment. The little book of Augsburg, 1531, may be read and digested, but only an immortal patience could labour through the entire of the great book of Padua, 1621. In that interval of ninety years, however, edition after edition of the favourite emblematist appeared; with translations into French 1536, into German 1542, into Spanish and Italian in 1549, and, if we may credit Ames’ Antiquities of Printing, Herbert’s edition, p. 1570, into English in 1551. The total number of the editions during that period was certainly not less than 130, of seventy of which a pretty close examination has been made by the writer of this sketch. The list of editions, as far as completed, numbers up about 150, and manifests a persistence in popularity that has seldom been attained.
The earliest French translator was John Lefevre, an ecclesiastic, born at Dijon in 1493,—Les Emblemes de Maistre Andre Alciat: Paris, 1536. He was secretary to Cardinal Givry, whose protection he enjoyed, and died in 1565. Bartholomew Aneau, himself an emblematist, was the next translator into French, 1549; and a third, Claude Mignault, appeared in 1583. Wolfgang Hunger, a Bavarian, in 1542,[51] and Jeremiah Held of Nördlingen, were the German translators; Bernardino Daza Pinciano, in 1549, Los Emblemas de Alciato, was the Spanish; and Giovanni Marquale, in 1547, the Italian,—Diverse Imprese.
The notes and comments upon Alciat’s Emblems manifest great research and very extensive learning. Sebastian Stockhamer supplied commentariola, short comments, to the Lyons edition of 1556. Francis Sanctius, or Sanchez, one of the restorers of literature in Spain, born in 1523, also added commentaria to the Lyons edition of 1573. Above all we must name Claude Mignault, whose praise is that “to a varied learning he joined a rare integrity.” He was born near Dijon about 1536, and died in 1606. His comments in full appeared in Plantin’s[52] Antwerp edition, 8vo, of 1573, and may be appealed to in proof of much patient research and extensive erudition. Lorenzo Pignoria, born at Padua in 1571, and celebrated for his study of Egyptian antiquities, also compiled notes on Alciat’s Emblems in MDCXIIX.[53] The results of the labours of the three, Sanchez, Mignault, and Pignorius, were collected in the Padua editions of 1621 and 1661. It is scarcely possible that so many editions should have issued from the press, and so much learning have been bestowed, without the knowledge of Alciat’s Emblems having penetrated every nook and corner of the literary world.
With a glance only at the “Prognosticatio,” of Theophrastus Paracelsus, the alchemist and enthusiast, written in 1536, and expressed in thirty-two copperplates, we pass at once to the Dance of Death, by Hans Holbein, which Bewick, 1789, and Douce, 1833, in London, and Schlotthauer and Fortoul, 1832, in Munich and Paris, have made familiar to English, German, and French readers. Of Holbein himself, it is sufficient here to say that he was born at Bâle in 1495, and died in London in 1543.
Mr. Corser’s copy of the first edition of the Dance of Death, and which was the gift of Francis Douce, Esq., to Edward Vernon Utterson, supplies the following title, “Les simulachres & Historiees faces de la Mort, avtant elegammēt pourtraictes, que artificiellement imaginées: A Lyon, soubz l’escu de Coloigne, M.D.XXXVIII.” The volume is a small quarto of 104 pages, unnumbered, dedicated to Madame Johanna de Touszele, the Reverend Abbess of the convent of Saint Peter at Lyons. There are forty-one emblems, each headed by a text of scripture from the Latin version; the devices follow, with a French stanza of four lines to each; and there are sundry Dissertations by Jean de Vauzelles, an eminent divine and scholar of the same city. But who can speak of the beauty of the work? The designs by Holbein are many of them wonderfully conceived,—the engravings by Hans Lützenberge, or Leutzelburger, as admirably executed.[54]
Rapidly was the work transferred into Latin and Italian, and before the end of the century at least fifteen editions had issued from the presses of Lyons, Bâle, and Cologne.
Scarcely less celebrated are Holbein’s Historical Figures of the Old Testament, which Sibald Beham’s had preceded in Francfort by only two years. Beham’s whole series of Bible Figures are contained in 348 prints, and were published between 1536 and 1540. Dibdin’s Decameron, vol. i. pp. 176, 177, will supply a full account of Holbein’s “Historiarum Veteris Instrumenti icones ad vivum expressæ una cum brevi, sed quoad fieri potuit, dilucida earundem expositione:” Lyons, small 4to, 1538. The edition of Frellonius, Lyons, 1547, is a very close reprint of the second edition, and from this it appears that the work is contained in fifty-two leaves, unnumbered, and that there are ninety-four devices, which are admirable specimens of wood-engraving. The first four are from the Dance of Death, but the others appropriate to the subjects, each being accompanied by a French stanza of four lines.
A Spanish translation was issued in 1543; and in 1549, at Lyons, an English version, “The Images of the Old Testament, lately expressed, set forthe in Ynglishe and Frenche, vuith a playn and brief exposition.” All the editions of the century were about twelve.
Hans Brosamer, of Fulda, laboured in the same mine, and between 1551 and 1553, copying chiefly from Holbein and Albert Durer, produced at Francfort his “Biblische Historien kunstlich fürgemalet,”—Bible Histories artistically pictured (3 vols. in 1).
We will, though somewhat earlier than the exact date, continue the subject of Bible-Figure Emblem-books by alluding to the Quadrins historiques de la Bible,—“Historic Picture-frames of the Bible,”—for the most part engraved by “Le Petit Bernard,” alias Solomon Bernard, who was born at Lyons in 1512. Of these works in French, English, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Flemish, and German, there were twenty-two editions printed between 1553 and 1583. Their general nature may be known from the fact that to each Scripture subject there is a device, in design and execution equally good, and that it is followed or accompanied by a Latin, Italian, &c. stanza, as the case may be. In the Italian version, Lyons, 1554, the Old Testament is illustrated by 222 engravings, and the New by ninety-five.
The first of the series appears to be Quadrins historiques du Genèse, Lyons, 1553; followed in the same year by Quadrins historiques de l’Exode. There is also of the same date (see Brunet, iv. c. 996), “The true and lyuely historyke Pvrtreatures of the woll Bible (with the arguments of eache figure, translated into english metre by Peter Derendel): Lyons; by Jean of Tournes.”
To conclude, there were Figures of the Bible, illustrated by French stanzas, and also by Italian and by German; published at Lyons and at Venice between 1564 and 1582. (See Brunet’s Manuel, ii. c. 1255.) Also Jost Amman, at Francfort, in 1564; and Virgil Solis, from 1560 to 1568, contributed to German works of the same character.
Two names of note among emblematists crown the years 1539 and 1540, both in Paris: they are William de la Perrière, and Giles Corrozet; of the former we know little more than that he was a native of Toulouse, and dedicated his chief work to “Margaret of France, Queen of Navarre, the only sister of the very Christian King of France;” and of the latter, that, born in Paris in 1510, and dying there in 1568, he was a successful printer and bookseller, and distinguished (see Brunet’s Manuel, ii. cc. 299–308) for a large number of works on History, Antiquities, and kindred subjects.
La Perrière’s chief Emblem-work is Le Theatre des bons Engins, auquel sont contenus cent Emblemes: Paris, 8vo, 1539. There are 110 leaves and really 101 emblems, each device having a pretty border. His other Emblem-works are—The Hundred Thoughts of Love, 1543, with woodcuts to each page; Thoughts on the Four Worlds, “namely, the divine, the angelic, the heavenly, and the sensible,” Lyons, 1552; and “La Morosophie,”—The Wisdom of Folly,—containing a hundred moral emblems, illustrated by a hundred stanzas of four lines, both in Latin and in French.
Corrozet’s “Hecatomgraphie,” Paris, 1540, is a description of a hundred figures and histories, and contains Apophthegms, Proverbs, Sentences, and Sayings, as well ancient as modern. Each page of the 100 emblems is surrounded by a beautiful border, the devices are neat woodcuts, having the same borders with La Perrière’s Theatre of good Contrivances. There is also to each a page of explanatory French verses.
It requires a stricter inquiry than I have yet been able to make in order to determine if Corrozet’s Blasons domestiques; Blason du Moys de May; and Tapisserie de l’Eglise chrestienne & catholique, bear a decided emblematical character; the titles have a taste of emblematism, but are by no means decisive of the fact.
III.—Maurice Sceve’s Delie, Object de plus haulte Vertu, Lyons, 1544, with woodcuts, and 458 ten-lined stanzas on love, is included in the Blandford Catalogue; and in the Keir Collection are both The very admirable, very magnificient and triumphant Entry of Prince Philip of Spain into Antwerp in 1549,[55] by Grapheus, alias Scribonius; edition 1550: and Gueroult’s Premier Livre des Emblemes; Lyons, 1550. The same year, 1550, at Augsburg, has marked against it “Geschlechtes Buch,”—Pedigree-book,—which recurs in 1580.
Claude Paradin, the canon of Beaujeu, a small town on the Ardiere, in the department of the Rhone, published the first edition of his simple but very interesting Devises heroiques, with 180 woodcuts, at Lyons in 1557. It was afterwards enlarged by gatherings from Gabriel Symeoni and other writers; but, either under its own name or that of Symbola heroica (edition 1567) was very popular, and before 1600 was printed at Lyons, Antwerp, Douay, and Leyden, not fewer than twelve times. The English translation, with which it is generally admitted that Shakespeare was acquainted, was printed in London, in 12mo, in 1591, and bears the title, The Heroicall Devises of M. Clavdivs Paradin, Canon of Beauieu, “Whereunto are added the Lord Gabriel Symeons and others. Translated out of Latin into English by P.S.”
To another Paradin are assigned Quadrins historiques de la Bible, published at Lyons by Jean de Tournes, 1555; and of which the same publisher issued Spanish, English, Italian, German, and Flemish versions.
The rich Emblem Collection at Keir furnishes the first edition of each of Doni’s three Emblem-works, in 4to, printed by Antonio Francesco Marcolini at Venice in 1552–53; they are: 1. “I Mondi,”—i.e., The Worlds, celestial, terrestrial, and infernal,—2 parts in 1, with woodcuts. 2. “I Marmi,”—The Marbles,—4 parts in 1, a collection of pleasant little tales and interesting notices, with woodcuts by the printer; who also, according to Bryan, was an engraver of “considerable merit.” 3. “La Moral Filosofia,”—Moral Philosophy drawn from the ancient Writers,—2 parts in 1, with woodcuts. In it are abundant extracts from the ancient fabulists, as Lokman and Bidpai, and a variety of little narrative tales and allegories.
Of an English translation, two editions appeared in London in 1570 and 1601, during Shakespeare’s lifetime; namely, “The Morall Philosophie of Doni, englished out of italien by sir Th. North,”[56] 4to, with engravings on wood.
Under the two titles of “Picta Poesis,” and “Limagination poetique,” Bartholomew Aneau, or Anulus, published his “exquisite little gem,” as Mr. Atkinson, a former owner of the copy which is now before me, describes the work. It appeared at Lyons in 1552, and contains 106 emblems, the stanzas to which, in the Latin edition, are occasionally in Greek, but in the French edition, “vers François des Latins et Grecz, par l’auteur mesme d’iceux.”
Achille Bocchi, a celebrated Italian scholar, the founder, in 1546, of the Academy of Bologna, Virgil Solis, of Nuremberg, an artist of considerable repute, Pierre Cousteau, or Costalius, of Lyons, and Paolo Giovio, an accomplished writer, Bishop of Nocera, give name to four of the Emblem-books which were issued in the year 1555. That of Bocchius is entitled “Symbolicarvm Qvaestionvm, libri qvinqve,” Bononiæ, 1555, 4to; and numbers up 146, or, more correctly, 150 emblems in 340 pages: the devices are the work of Giulio Bonasone, from copper-plates of great excellence. In 1556, Bononiæ Sambigucius put forth In Hermathenam Bocchiam Interpretatio, which is simply a comment on the 102nd emblem of Bocchius. Virgil Solis published in 4to, at Nuremberg, the same year, “Libellus Sartorum, seu Signorum publicorum,”—A little Book of Cobblers, or of public Signs. Cousteau’s “Pegma,”[57] which some say appeared first in 1552, is, as the name denotes, a Structure of emblems, ninety-five in number, with philosophical narratives,—each page being surrounded by a pretty border. And Giovio’s “Dialogo dell’ Imprese Militari et Amore,”—Dialogue of Emblems of War and of Love; or, as it is sometimes named, “Ragionamento, Discourse concerning the words and devices of arms and of love, which are commonly named Emblems,”—is probably the first regular treatise on the subject which had yet appeared, and which attained high popularity.
Its estimation in England is shown by the translation which was issued in London in 1585, entitled, “The Worthy tract of Paulus Iouius, contayning a Discourse of rare inuentions, both Militarie and Amorous, called Imprese. Whereunto is added a Preface contay-ning the Arte of composing them, with many other notable deuises. By Samuell Daniell late Student in Oxenforde.”
Intimately connected with Giovio’s little work, indeed often constituting parts of the same volume, were Ruscelli’s “Discorso” on the same subject, Venice, 1556; and Domenichi’s “Ragionamento,” also at Venice, in 1556. From the testimony of Sir Egerton Brydges (Res Lit.), “Ruscelli was one of the first literati of his time, and was held in esteem by princes and all ranks of people.”
Very frequently, too, in combination with Giovio’s Dialogue on Emblems, are to be found Ruscelli’s “Imprese illvstri,” Venice, 1566; or Symeoni’s “Imprese heroiche et morali,” Lyons, 1559; and “Sententiose Imprese,” Lyons, 1562.
Roville’s Lyons edition, of 1574, thus unites in one title-page Giovio, Symeoni, and Domenichi, “Dialogo Dellimprese militari et amorose, De Monsignor Giouio Vescouo di Nocera Et del S. Gabriel Symeoni Fiorentino, Con vn ragionamento di M. Lodouico Domenichi, nel medesimo soggetto.”
Taking together all the editions in Italian, French, and Spanish, of these four authors, single or combined, which I have had the opportunity of examining, there are no less than twenty-two between 1555 and 1585, besides five or six other editions named by Brunet in his Manuel du Libraire. Roville’s French edition, 4to, Lyons, 1561, is by Vasquin Philieul, “Dialogve des Devises d’Armes et d’Amovrs dv S. Pavlo Iovio, Auec vn Discours de M. Loys Dominique—et les Deuises Heroiques et Morales du Seigneur Gabriel Symeon.”
At this epoch we enter upon ground which has been skilfully upturned and cultivated by Claude Francis Menestrier, born at Lyons in 1631, and “distinguished by his various works on heraldry, decorations, public ceremonials, &c.” (Aikin’s Gen. Biog. vii. p. 41.) In his “Philosophia Imaginum,”—Philosophy of Images,—an octavo volume of 860 pages, published at Amsterdam, 1695, he gives, in ninety-four pages, a “Judicium,” i.e., a judgment respecting all authors who have written on Symbolic Art; and of those Authors whom we have named, or may be about to name, within the Period to which our Sketch extends, he mentions that he has examined the works of
| A.D. | |
| 1555.[58] | Paulus Jovius, p. 1. |
| 1556. | Ludovicus Dominicus, p. 3. |
| ” | Hieronymus Ruscellius, p. 4. |
| 1561. | Alphonsus Ulloa, ibid. |
| 1562. | Scipio Amiratus, p. 5. |
| 1571. | Alexander Farra, p. 6. |
| ” | Bartholoæmus Taëgius, p. 7. |
| 1574. | Lucas Contile, p. 9. |
| 1577. | Johannes Andreas Palatius, p. 10. |
| 1578. | Scipio Bergalius, p. 12. |
| 1580. | Franciscus Caburaccius, p. 12. |
| 1588. | Abrahamus Fransius, p. 15. |
| 1591. | Julius Cæsar Capacius, ibid. |
| ” | D. Albertus Bernardetti, p. 17. |
| 1594. | Torquatus Tassus, p. 14. |
| 1600. | Jacobus Sassus, p. 18. |
| 1601. | Andreas Chioccus, ibid. |
| 1612. | Hercules Tassus, p. 19. |
| ” | P. Horatius Montalde, p. 23. |
| ” | Johannes Baptista Personé, ib. |
| 1620. | Franciscus d’Amboise, ibid. |
It may also be gathered from the “Judicium” that Menestrier had read with care what had been written on Emblems by the following authors:—
| A.D. | |
| 1551. | Gabriel Simeoni, p. 63. |
| 1557. | Claudius Paradinus, p. 68. |
| 1562. | Mauritius Sevus, p. 55. |
| 1565. | J. Baptista Pittonius, p. 70. |
| 1573. | Claudius Minos, p. 54. |
| 1588. | Bernardinus Percivalle, p. 64. |
| ” | Principius Fabricius, p. 76. |
| 1600. | Johannes Pinedi, p. 60. |
| 1609. | Jacobus Le Vasseur, p. 91. |
| 1613. | J. Franciscus de Villava, p. 55. |
Excluding the editions before enumerated, the books of emblems which I have noted from various sources as assigned to the authors in the above lists from Menestrier, amount to from twenty-five to thirty, with the titles of which there is no occasion to trouble the reader.
Returning from this digression, Vincenzo Cartari should next be named in order of time. At Venice, in 1556, appeared his “Imagini Dei Dei degli Antichi,”—Images of the Gods of the Ancients,—4to, of above 500 pages. It contains an account of the Idols, Rites, Ceremonies, and other things appertaining to the old Religions. It was a work often reprinted, and in 1581 translated into French by Antoine du Verdier, the same who, in 1585, gave in folio a Catalogue of all who have written or translated into French up to that time.
A folio of 1100 pages, which within the period of our sketch was reprinted four times, issued from Bâle in 1556; it is, “Hieroglyphica,”—Hieroglyphics, or, Commentaries on the Sacred Literature of the Egyptians,—by John Pierius Valerian, a man of letters, born in extreme poverty at Belluno in 1477, and untaught the very elements of learning until he was fifteen. (Aikin’s Gen. Biog. ix. 537.) He died in 1558. As an exposition of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, his very learned work is little esteemed; but it contains emblems innumerable, comprised in fifty-eight books, each book dedicated to a person of note, and treating one class of objects. The devices—small woodcuts—amount to 365.
Etienne Jodelle, a poet, equally versatile whether in Latin or in French, was skilled in the ancient languages, and acquainted with the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, as well as dexterous in the use of arms. He published, in 1558, a thin quarto “Recueil,” or Collection of the inscriptions, figures, devices, and masks ordained in Paris at the Hôtel de Ville. The same year, and again in 1569 and 1573, appeared the large folio volume, in five parts, “Austriacis Gentis Imagines,”—Portraits of the Austrian family,—full lengths, engraved by Gaspar ab Avibus, of Padua. At the foot of each portrait are a four-lined stanza, a brief biographical notice, and some emblematical figure. Of similar character, though much inferior as a work of art, is Jean Nestor’s Histoire des Hommes illustres de la Maison de Medici; a quarto of about 240 leaves, printed at Paris in 1564. (See the Keir Catalogue, p. 143.) It contains “twelve woodcuts of the emblems of the different members of the House of Medici.”
Hoffer’s “Icones catecheseos,” or Pictures of instruction, and of virtues and vices, illustrated by verses, and also by seventy-eight figures or woodcuts, was printed at Wittenberg in 1560. The next year, 1561—if not in 1556 (see Brunet’s Manuel, vol. ii. cc. 930, 931)—John Duvet, one of the earliest engravers on copper in France, at Lyons, published in twenty-four plates, folio, his chief work, “Lapocalypse figuree;” and in 1562, at Naples, the Historian of Florence, Scipione Ammirato, gave to the world “Il Rota overo dell’ Imprese,” or, Dialogue of the Sig. Scipione Ammirato, in which he discourses of many emblems of divers excellent authors, and of some rules and admonitions concerning this subject written to the Sig. Vincenzo Carrafa.
Were it less a subject of debate between Dutch and German critics as to the exact character of the “Spelen van sinne,”[59] which were published by the Chambers of Rhetoric at Ghent in 1539, and by those of Antwerp in 1561 and 1562 (see Brunet’s Manuel, vol. v. c. 484), we should claim these works for our Emblem domain. But whether claimed or not, the exhibitions and amusements of the Chambers of Rhetoric, especially at their great gatherings in the chief cities of the Netherlands, were often very lively representations by action and accessory devices of dramatic thought and sentiment, from “King Herod and his Deeds,” “enacted in the Cathedral of Utrecht in 1418,” to what Motley, in his Dutch Republic, vol. i. p. 80, terms the “magnificent processions, brilliant costumes, living pictures, charades, and other animated, glittering groups,”—“trials of dramatic and poetic skill, all arranged under the superintendence of the particular association which in the preceding year had borne away the prize.”
“The Rhetorical Chambers existed in the most obscure villages” (Motley, i. p. 79); and had regular constitutions, being presided over by officers with high-sounding titles, as kings, princes, captains, and archdeacons,—and each having “its peculiar title or blazon, as the Lily, the Marigold, or the Violet, with an appropriate motto.” After 1493 they were “incorporated under the general supervision of an upper or mother-society of Rhetoric, consisting of fifteen members, and called by the title of ‘Jesus with the balsam flower.’”
As I have been informed by Mr. Hessells, Siegenbeek, in his Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde, says,—“Besides the ordinary meetings of the Chambers, certain poetical feasts were in vogue among the Rhetor-gevers, whereby one or other subject, to be responded to in burdens or short songs (liedekens), according to the contents of the card, was announced, with the promise of prizes to those who would best answer the proposed question. But the so-called Entries deserve for their magnificence, and the diversity of poetical productions which they give rise to, especially our attention.
“It happened from time to time that one or other of the most important Chambers sent a card in rhyme to the other Chambers of the same province, whereby they were invited to be at a given time in the town where the senders of the card were established, for the sake of the celebration of a poetical feast. This card contained further everything by which it was desired that the Chambers, which were to make their appearance, should illustrate this feast, viz., the performance of an allegorical play (zinnespel) in response to some given question;[60] the preparation of esbatementez (drawings), facéties (jests), prologues; the execution of splendid entries and processions; the exhibitions of beautifully painted coats of arms, &c. These entries were of two kinds, landiuweelen, and haagspelen>;—the landjewels were the most splendid, and were performed in towns; the hedge-plays belonged properly to villages, though sometimes in towns these followed the performance of a landjewel.” Originally, landjewel meant a prize of honour of the land; called also landprys (land-prize).
Such were the periodic jubilees of a neighbouring people, their “land-jewels,” as they were termed, when the birthtime of our greatest English dramatist arrived. And as we mark the wide and increasing streams of the Emblem Literature flowing over every European land, and how the common tongue of Rome gave one language to all Christendom, can we deem it probable that any man of genius, of discernment, and of only the usual attainments of his compeers, would live by the side of these streams and never dip his finger into the waters, nor wet even the soles of his feet where the babbling emblems flowed?
Some there have been to maintain that Shakespeare had visited the Netherlands, or even resided there; and it is consequently within the limits of no unreasonable conjecture that he had seen the landjewels distributed, and at the sight felt himself inspirited to win a nobler fame.