act ii. sc. 3, l. 189, vol. vi. p. 175), Ulysses declares,—

“That were to enlard his fat-already pride, And add more coals to Cancer when he burns With entertaining great Hyperion.”

The figure of the ninth of the zodiacal constellations, Sagittarius, is named in _Troilus and Cressida_ (act v. sc. 5, l. 11, vol. vi. p. 253),—

“Polixenes is slain, Amphimachus and Thaos deadly hurt; Patroclus ta’en or slain; and Palamedes Sore hurt and bruised: the dreadful sagittary Appals our number.”

If it be demanded why we do not give a fuller account of these constellations, we may almost remark as the fool does in _King Lear_ (act i. sc. 5, l. 33, vol. viii. p. 295)—“The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven, is a pretty reason.

_Lear._ Because they are not eight? _Fool._ Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.”

How soon the American bird, which we name a Turkey, was known in England, is in some degree a subject of conjecture. It has been supposed that its introduction into this country is to be ascribed to Sebastian Cabot, who died in 1557, and that the year 1528 is the exact time; but if so, it is strange that the bird in question should not have been called by some other name than that which indicates a European or an Asiatic origin. Coq d’Inde, or Poule d’Inde, Gallo d’India, or Gallina d’India, the French and Italian names, point out the direct American origin, as far as France and Italy are concerned; for we must remember that the term India, at the early period of Spanish discovery, was applied to the western world. But most probably the Turkey fleet brought the bird into England, by way of Cadiz and Lisbon, and hence the name; and hence also the reasonableness of supposing that its permanent introduction into this country was not so early as the time of Cabot. A general knowledge of the bird was at any rate spread abroad in Europe soon after the middle of the sixteenth century, for we find it figured in the Emblem-books; one of which, Freitag’s _Mythologia Ethica_, in 1579, p. 237, furnishes a most lively and exact representation to illustrate “the violated right of hospitality.”[155]

Ius hoſpitalitatis violatum.

_Si habitauerit aduena in terra veſtra, & moratus fuerit inter vos, non exprobretis ei._ _Lev. 19. 33._

[Sidenote: _i.e._]

“And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him.”

Shakespeare, no doubt, was familiarly acquainted with the figure and habits of the Turkey, and yet may have seized for description some of the expressive delineations and engravings which occur in the Emblem writers. Freitag’s turkey he characterises with much exactness, though the sentiment advanced is more consistent with the lines from Camerarius. In the _Twelfth Night_ (act ii. sc. 5, lines 15, 27, vol. iii. p. 257), Malvolio, as his arch-tormenter Maria narrates the circumstance, “has been yonder i’ the sun practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour;” he enters on the scene, and Sir Toby says to Fabian, “Here’s an overweening rogue!” to which the reply is made, “O peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; how he jets under his advancing plumes!”

The same action is well hit off in showing the bearing of the “pragging knave, Pistol,” as Fluellen terms him (_Henry V._, act v. sc. 1, l. 13, vol. iv. p. 591),—

“_Gow._ Why here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.

_Flu._ ’Tis no matter for his swellings, nor his turkey-cocks. God pless you, Aunchient Pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, God pless you!”

Referring again to the “Prometheus ty’d on Caucasus,” the Vulture may be accepted as the Emblem of cruel retribution. So when Falstaff expresses his satisfaction at the death of Henry IV. (2nd part, act v. sc. 3, l. 134, vol. iv. p. 474), “Blessed are they that have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief-justice;” Pistol adds,—

“Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also!”

And Lear, telling of the ingratitude of one of his daughters (_King Lear_, act ii. sc. 4, l. 129. vol. viii. p. 320). says,—

“Beloved Regan, Thy sister’s naught: O Regan, she hath tied Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture, here.”

A remarkable instance of similarity between Whitney and Shakespeare occurs in the descriptions which they both give of the Commonwealth of Bees. Whitney, it may be, borrowed his device (p. 200) from the “HIEROGLYPHICA” of Horus Apollo (edition 1551, p. 87), where the question is asked, Πῶς λαὸν πειθήνιον βασιλεῖ;—

“How to represent a people obedient to their king? They depict a BEE, for of all animals bees alone have a king, whom the crowd of bees follow, and to whom as to a king they yield obedience. It is intimated also, as well from the remarkable usefulness of honey as from the force which the animal has in its sting, that a king is both useful and powerful for carrying on their affairs.”

It is worthy of remark that several, if not all, of the Greek and Roman authors name the head of a hive not a queen but a king. Plato, in his _Politics_ (Francfort edition, 1602, p. 557A). writes,—

“Νὺν δὲ γε ὃτε οὐκ ἔστι γιγνόμενος, ὡς δὴ φαμὲν, ἔν ταῖς πόλεσι βασιλεὺς, οἱ~υς ἐν σμήνεσιν, εμφυέται, τό,τε σῶμα εὐθὺς καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν διαφέρων,” κ. τ. λ.

“There is not born, as we say, in cities a king such as is naturally produced in hives, decidedly differing both in body and soul.”

Xenophon’s _Cyropædia_ (bk. v. c. 1, § 23) declares of his hero,—

“Βασιλεὺς μὲν γὰρ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖς σὺ φυσεί πεφυκέναι, οὐδὲν ἤττον η ἐν τῳ σμῆνει φυόμενος τῶν μελιττῶν ἡγεμών.”

“Thou seemest to me to have been formed a king by nature, no less than he who in the hive is formed general of the bees.”

In his _Georgics_ Virgil always considers the chief bee to be a king, as iv. 75,—

“Et circa regem atque ipsa ad prætoria densæ Miscentur, magnisque vocant clamoribus hostem.”[156]

“And thick around the king, and before the royal tent They crowd, and with mighty din call forth the foe.”

Alciat’s 148th Emblem (edition 1581, p. 528, or edition 1551, p. 161) sets forth the clemency of a prince; but the description relates to wasps, not bees,—

Principis clementia.

_Veſparũ quòd nulla vnquam Rex ſpicula figet: Quodque aliis duplo corpore maior erit. Arguet imperium clemens, moderataque, regna, Sanctaque indicibus credita iura bonis_.

“That the king of the wasps will never his sting infix; And that by double the size of body he is larger than others, This argues a merciful empire and well-ordered rule, And sacred laws to good judges entrusted.”

Whitney’s stanzas (p. 200), dedicated to “Richard Cotton, Esquier,” of Combermere, Cheshire, are original writing, not a translation.

We will take the chief part of them; the motto being, “To every one his native land is dear.”

_Patria cuique chara._ _To_ RICHARDE COTTON _Eſquier_.

“The bees at lengthe retourne into their hiue, When they haue suck’d the sweete of FLORAS bloomes; And with one minde their worke they doe contriue, And laden come with honie to their roomes: A worke of arte; and yet no arte of man, Can worke, this worke; these little creatures can.

The maister bee, within the midst dothe liue, In fairest roome, and most of stature is; And euerie one to him dothe reuerence giue, And in the hiue with him doe liue in blisse: Hee hath no stinge, yet none can doe him harme, For with their strengthe, the rest about him swarme.

Lo, natures force within these creatures small, Some, all the daye the honie home doe beare. And some, farre off on flowers freshe doe fall, Yet all at nighte vnto their home repaire: And euerie one, her proper hiue doth knowe Althoughe there stande a thousande on a rowe.

A Common-wealthe, by this, is right expreste: Bothe him, that rules, and those, that doe obaye: Or suche, as are the heads aboue the rest, Whome here, the Lorde in highe estate dothe staye: By whose supporte, the meaner sorte doe liue, And vnto them all reuerence dulie giue.

Which when I waied: I call’d vnto my minde Your CVMBERMAIRE, that fame so farre commendes: A stately seate, whose like is harde to finde, Where mightie IOVE the horne of plentie lendes: With fishe, and foule, and cattaile sondrie flockes, Where christall springes doe gushe out of the rockes.

There, fertile fieldes; there, meadowes large extende: There, store of grayne: with water, and with wood. And, in this place, your goulden time you spende, Vnto your praise, and to your countries good: This is the hiue; your tennaunts, are the bees: And in the same, haue places by degrees.”

By the side of these stanzas let us place for comparison what Shakespeare wrote on the same subject,—the Commonwealth of Bees,—and I am persuaded we shall perceive much similarity of thought, if not of expression. In _Henry V._ (act i. sc. 2, l. 178, vol. iv. p. 502), the Duke of Exeter and the Archbishop of Canterbury enter upon an argument respecting a well-governed state,—

“_Exe._ While that the armed hand doth fight abroad, The advised head defends itself at home; For government, though high and low and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congreeing in a full and natural close, Like music. _Cant._ Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavour in continual motion: To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience: for so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom. They have a king[157] and officers of sorts; Where some, like magistrates, correct at home, Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad, Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds, Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate, The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum. Delivering o’er to executors pale The lazy yawning drone.”

Again, in the _Troilus and Cressida_ (act i. sc. 3, l. 75, vol. vi. p. 144), Ulysses draws from the unsuitableness of a general, as he terms the ruling bee, over a hive, an explanation of the mischiefs from an incompetent commander,—

“Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down, And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master, But for these instances. The specialty of rule hath been neglected: And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions. When that the general is not like the hive To whom the foragers shall all repair. What honey is expected?”

The Dramatist’s knowledge of bee-life appears also in the metaphor used by Warwick (_2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 2, l. 125, vol. v. p. 168),—

“The commons, like an angry hive of bees, That want their leader, scatter up and down, And care not who they sting in his revenge.”

In an earlier play, _2 Henry IV._ (act iv. sc. 5, l. 75, vol. iv. p. 454), the comparison is taken from the bee-hive,—

“When, like the bee, culling from every flower The virtuous sweets, Our thighs pack’d with wax, our mouths with honey, We bring it to the hive; and like the bees, Are murdered for our pains.”

In the foregoing extracts on the bee-king, the plea is inadmissible that Shakespeare and Whitney went to the same fountain; for neither of them follows Alciatus. The two accounts of the economy and policy of these “creatures small” are almost equally excellent, and present several points of resemblance, not to name them imitations by the more recent writer. Whitney speaks of the “Master bee,” Shakespeare of the king, or “emperor,”—both regarding the head of the hive not as a queen, but a “born king,” and holding forth the polity of the busy community as an admirable example of a well-ordered kingdom or government.

The conclusion of Whitney’s reflections on those “that suck the sweete of FLORA’S bloomes,” conducts to another parallelism; and to show it we have only to follow out his idea of returning home after “absence manie a yeare,” “when happe some goulden honie bringes.” Here is the whole passage (p. 201),—

“And as the bees, that farre and neare doe straye, And yet come home, when honie they haue founde: So, thoughe some men doe linger longe awaye, Yet loue they best their natiue countries grounde. And from the same, the more they absent bee, With more desire, they wishe the same to see.

Euen so my selfe; throughe absence manie a yeare, A straunger meere, where I did spend my prime. Nowe, parentes loue dothe hale mee by the eare, And sayeth, come home, deferre no longer time: Wherefore, when happe, some goulden honie bringes? I will retorne, and rest my wearie winges.

Ouid. 1. Pont. 4.

_Quid melius Roma? Scythico quid frigore peius? Huc tamen ex illa barbarus vrbe fugit._”

The parallel is from _All’s Well that Ends Well_ (act i. sc. 2, 1. 58, vol. iii. p. 119), when the King of France speaks the praise of Bertram’s father,—

“‘Let me not live,’ quoth he, ‘After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses All but new things disdain; whose judgments are Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies Expire before their fashions.’ This he wish’d: I after him do after him wish too, Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home, I quickly were dissolved from my hive, To give some labourers room.”

The noble art and sport of Falconry were long the recreation, and, at times, the eager pursuit of men of high birth or position. Various notices, collected by Dr. Nathan Drake, in _Shakespeare and his Times_ (vol. i. pp. 255–272), show that Falconry was—

“During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, the most prevalent and fashionable of all amusements;... it descended from the nobility to the gentry and wealthy yeomanry, and no man could then have the smallest pretension to the character of a gentleman who kept not a cast of hawks.”

From joining in this amusement, or from frequently witnessing it, Shakespeare gained his knowledge of the sport and of the technical terms employed in it. We do not even suppose that our pictorial illustration supplied him with suggestions, and we offer it merely to show that Emblem writers, as well as others, found in falconry the source of many a poetical expression.[158] The Italian we quote from, Giovio’s “SENTENTIOSE IMPRESE” (Lyons, 1562, p. 41), makes it a mark “of the true nobility;” but by adding, “So more important things give place,” implies that it was wrong to let mere amusement occupy the time for serious affairs.

DELLA VERA. NOBILTÀ.

SIC MAJORA CEDVNT

_Lo ſparbier ſol tra piu falcon portato. Franchi gli fa paſſar per ogni loco, Et par che dica all’ huom triſto & da poco, Nobil’ è quel, ch’ è di virtù dotato._

Thus we interpret the motto and the stanza,—

“Many falcons the falconer carries so proud Through every place he makes them pass free; And says to men sorrowing and of low degree, Noble is he, who with virtue’s endowed.”

Falconers form part of the retinue of the drama (_2 Henry VI._, act ii. sc. 1, l. 1, vol. v. p. 132), and the dialogue at St. Albans even illustrates the expression, “Nobil’ è quel, ch’ è di virtù dotato,”—

“_Q. Marg._ Believe me, lords, for flying at the brook, I saw not better sport these seven years’ day: Yet, by your leave, the wind was very high; And, ten to one, old Joan had not gone out. _K. Henry._ But what a point, my lord, your falcon made, And what a pitch she flew above the rest! To see how God in all his creatures works! Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high. _Suf._ No marvel, an it like your majesty, My lord protector’s hawks do tower so well; They know their master likes to be aloft, And bears his thoughts above his falcon’s pitch. _Glo._ My lord, ’tis but a base ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.”

On many other occasions Shakespeare shows his familiarity with the whole art and mysteries of hawking. Thus Christophero Sly is asked (_Taming of the Shrew_, Introduction, sc. 2, l. 41, vol. iii. p. 10),—

“Dost thou love hawking? Thou hast hawks will soar Above the morning lark.”

And Petruchio, after the supper scene, when he had thrown about the meat and beaten the servants, quietly congratulates himself on having “politicly began his reign” (act iv. sc. 1, l. 174, vol. iii. p. 67),—

“My falcon now is sharp and passing empty, And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged; For then she never looks upon her lure. Another way I have to man my haggard, To make her come and know her keeper’s call, That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites That bate and beat and will not be obedient.”

Touchstone, too, in _As You Like It_ (act iii. sc. 3, 1. 67, vol. ii. p. 427), hooking several comparisons together, introduces hawking among them: “As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires; and as pigeons bill, so wedlock will be nibbling.”

Also in _Macbeth_ (act ii. sc. 4, l. 10, vol. vii. p. 459), after “hours dreadful and things strange,” so “that darkness does the face of earth entomb, when living light should kiss it,” the Old Man declares,—

“’Tis unnatural. Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last A falcon towering in her pride of place Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.”

To renew our youth, like the eagle’s, is an old scriptural expression (_Psalms_, ciii. 5); and various arc the legends and interpretations belonging to the phrase.[159] We must not wander among these,—but may mention one which is given by Joachim Camerarius, _Ex Volatilibus_ (Emb. 34), for which he quotes Gesner as authority, how in the solar rays, hawks or falcons, throwing off their old feathers, are accustomed to set right their defects, and so to renew their youth.

RENOVATA IVVENTVS.

_Exuviis vitii abjectis, decus indue recti, Ad ſolem ut plumas accipiter renovat._

[Sidenote: _i.e._]

“Sin’s spoils cast off, man righteousness assumes, As in the sun the hawk renews its plumes.”

The thought of the sun’s influence in renovating what is decayed is unintentionally advanced by the jealousy of Adriana in the _Comedy of Errors_ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 97, vol. i. p. 411), when to her sister Luciana she blames her husband Antipholus of Ephesus,—

“What ruins are in me that can be found By him not ruin’d? then is he the ground Of my defeatures. My decayed fair A sunny look of his would soon repair.”

In the _Cymbeline_ (act i. sc. 1, l. 130, vol. ix. p. 167), Posthumus Leonatus, the husband of Imogen, is banished with great fierceness by her father, Cymbeline, King of Britain. A passage between daughter and father contains the same notion as that in the Emblem of Camerarius,—

“_Imo._ There cannot be a pinch in death More sharp than this is. _Cym._ O disloyal thing, That shouldst repair my youth, thou heap’st A year’s age on me!”

Nil penna, ſed vſus.

The action of the ostrich in spreading out its feathers and beating the wind while it runs, furnished a device for Paradin (fol. 23), which, with the motto, _The feather nothing but the use_, he employs against hypocrisy.

Whitney (p. 51) adopts motto, device, and meaning,—

“The Hippocrites, that make so great a showe, Of Sanctitie, and of Religion sounde, Are shaddowes meere, and with out substance goe, And beinge tri’de, are but dissemblers founde. Theise are compar’de, vnto the Ostriche faire, Whoe spreades her winges, yet sealdome tries the aire.”

A different application is made in _1 Henry IV._ (act iv. sc. 1, l. 97, vol. iv. p. 317), yet the figure of the bird with outstretching wings would readily supply the comparison employed by Vernon while speaking to Hotspur of “the nimbled-footed madcap Prince of Wales, and his comrades,”—

“All furnish’d, all in arms; All plumed like estridges that with the wind Baited like eagles having lately bathed.”

It must, however, be conceded, according to Douce’s clear annotation (vol. i. p. 435), that “it is by no means certain that this bird (the ostrich) is meant in the present instance.” A line probably is lost from the passage, and if supplied would only the more clearly show that the falcon was intended,—“estrich,” in the old books of falconry, denoting that bird, or, rather, the goshawk. In this sense the word is used in _Antony and Cleopatra_ (act iii. sc. 13, l. 195, vol. ix. p. 100),—

“To be furious Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood The dove will peck the _estridge_.”

Though a fabulous animal, the Unicorn has properties and qualities attributed to it which endear it to writers on Heraldry and on Emblems. These are well, it may with truth be said, finely set forth in Reusner’s _Emblems_ (edition 1581, p. 60), where the creature is made the ensign for the motto, _Faith undefiled victorious_.

Victrix casta fides.

_EMBLEMA IV._

_Caſta pudicitiæ defenſtrix bellua: cornu Vnum quæ media fronte, nigrumque gerit: Theſauros ornans regum, preciumque rependens: (Nam cornu præſens hoc leuat omne malum) Fraude capi nulla, nulla valet arte virorum Callida: nec gladios, nec fera tela pauet: Solius in gremio requieſcens ſpontè puellæ: Fœminea capitur, victa ſopore, manu._

[Sidenote: _i.e._]

“This creature of maiden modesty protectress pure. In the mid-forehead bears one dark black horn, Kings’ treasures to ornament, and equalling in worth: (For where the horn abides, no evil can be born). Captured nor by guile, nor by crafty art of man, Trembling nor at swords nor iron arms, firm doth it stand; Of choice reposing in the lap of a maiden alone,[160] Should sleep overpower, it is caught by woman’s hand.”

A volume of tales and wonders might be collected respecting the unicorn; for a sketch of these the article on the subject in the _Penny Cyclopædia_ (vol. xxvi. p. 2) may be consulted. There are the particulars given which Reusner mentions, and the medical virtues of the horn extolled,[161] which, at one time, it is said, made it so estimated that it was worth ten times its weight in gold. It is remarkable that Shakespeare, disposed as he was, occasionally at least, to magnify nature’s marvels, does not dwell on the properties of the unicorn, but rather discredits its existence; for when the strange shapes which Prospero conjures up to serve the banquet for Alonso make their appearance (_Tempest_, act iii. sc. 3, l. 21, vol. i. p. 50), Sebastian avers,—

“Now I will believe That there are unicorns; that in Arabia There is one tree, the phœnix’ throne; one phœnix At this hour reigning there.”

Timon of Athens (act iv. sc. 3, 1. 331, vol. vii. p. 281) just hints at the animal’s disposition: “Wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee, and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury.”

Decius Brutus, in _Julius Cæsar_ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 203, vol. vii. p. 347), vaunts of his power to influence Cæsar, and among other things names the unicorn as a wonder to bring him to the Capitol. The conspirators doubt whether Cæsar will come forth;—

“Never fear that: if he be so resolved, I can o’ersway him; for he loves to hear That unicorns may be betray’d with trees, And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, Lions with toils, and men with flatterers.”

The humorous ballad in the _Percy Reliques_ (vol. iv. p. 198), written it is supposed close upon Shakespeare’s times, declares,—

“Old stories tell, how Hercules A dragon slew at Lerna, With seven heads and fourteen eyes To see and well discern-a: But he had a club, this dragon to drub, Or he had ne’er done it. I warrant ye.”

It is curious that the device in Corrozet’s _Hecatomgraphie_ of the Dragon of Lerna should figure forth, in the multiplication of processes or forms, what Hamlet terms “the law’s delay.”

Multiplication de proces.

Tout homm[e/] en proces tant ſoit fin, Alors qu’il penſe eſtr[e/] à la fin, Il luy en ſuruient troys ou quatre Pour leſquelz il ſe fault debatre.

That is the very subject against which even Hercules,—“qu’ aqerre honneur par ses nobles conquestes,”—is called into requisition to rid men of the nuisance. We need not quote in full so familiar a narrative, and which Corrozet embellishes with twenty-four lines of French verses,—but content ourselves with a free rendering of his quatrain,—

“All clever though a man may be in various tricks of law, Though he may think unto the end, his suit contains no flaw, Yet up there spring forms three or four with which he hardly copes, And lawyers’ talk and lawyers’ fees dash down his fondest hopes.”

It is not, however, with such speciality that Shakespeare uses this tale respecting Hercules and the Hydra. On the occasion serving, the questions may be asked, as in _Hamlet_ (act v. sc. 1, l. 93, vol. viii. p. 154), “Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery?”

But simply by way of allusion the Hydra is introduced; as in the account of the battle of Shrewsbury (_1 Henry IV._ act v. sc. 4, l. 25, vol. iv. p. 342), Douglas had been fighting with one whom he thought the king, and comes upon “another king:” “they grow,” he declares, “like Hydra’s heads.”

In _Othello_ (act ii. sc. 3, l. 290, vol. vii. p. 498), some time after the general had said to him (l. 238),—

“Cassio, I love thee; But never more be officer of mine,”—

Cassio says to Iago,—

“I will ask him for my place again; he shall tell me I am a drunkard! Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all.”

So of the change which suddenly came over the Prince of Wales (_Henry V._, act i. sc. 1, l. 35, vol. iv. p. 493), on his father’s death, it is said,—

“Never Hydra-headed wilfulness So soon did lose his seat and all at once As in this king.”

This section of our subject is sufficiently ample, or we might press into our service a passage from _Timon of Athens_ (act iv. sc. 3, l. 317, vol. vii. p. 281), in which the question is asked, “What wouldst thou do with the world, Apemantus, if it lay in thy power?” and the answer is, “Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men.”

In the wide range of the pre-Shakespearean Emblematists and Fabulists we might peradventure find a parallel to each animal that is named (l. 324),—

“If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee: if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee: if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee when peradventure thou wert accused by the ass: if thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou livedst but as a breakfast to the wolf: if thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner[162] ... wert thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse: wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seized by the leopard: wert thou a leopard, thou wert german to the lion, and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life: all thy safety were remotion, and thy defence absence.”

And so may we take warning, and make our defence for writing so much,—it is the absence of far more that might be gathered,—

“Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’ Like the poor cat i’ the adage.” _Macbeth_, act i. sc. 7, l. 44.

SECTION VII. _EMBLEMS FOR POETIC IDEAS._

ALTHOUGH many persons may maintain that the last two or three examples from the Naturalist’s division of our subject ought to be reserved as Emblems to illustrate Poetic Ideas, the animals themselves may be inventions of the imagination, but the properties assigned to them appear less poetic than in the instances which are now to follow. The question, however, is of no great importance, as this is not a work on Natural History, and a strictly scientific arrangement is not possible when poets’ fancies are the guiding powers.

How finely and often how splendidly Shakespeare makes use of the symbolical imagery of his art, a thousand instances might be brought to show. Three or four only are required to make plain our meaning. One, from _All’s Well that Ends Well_ (act i. sc. 1, l. 76, vol. iii. p. 112), is Helena’s avowal to herself of her absorbing love for Bertram,—

“My imagination Carries no favour in’t but Bertram’s. I am undone: there is no living, none, If Bertram be away. ’Twere all one That I should love a bright particular star And think to wed it, he is so above me: In his bright radiance and collateral light Might I be comforted, not in his sphere. The ambition in my love thus plagues itself: The hind that would be mated by the lion Must die of love. ’Twas pretty, though a plague, To see him every hour; to sit and draw His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, In our heart’s table; heart too capable Of every line and trick of his sweet favour: But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy Must sanctify his reliques.”

Another instance shall be from _Troilus and Cressida_ (act iii. sc. 3, l. 145, vol. vi. p. 198). Neglected by his allies, Achilles demands, “What, are my deeds forgot?” and Ulysses pours forth upon him the great argument, that to preserve fame and honour active exertion is continually demanded,—

“Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes: Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour’d As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.”

And so on, with inimitable force and beauty, until the crowning thoughts come (l. 165),—

“Time is like a fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin; That all with one consent praise new-born gawds, Though they are made and moulded of things past, And give to dust that is a little gilt More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.”

As a last instance, from the _Winter’s Tale_ (act iv. sc. 4, l. 135, vol. iii. p. 383), take Florizel’s commendation of his beloved Perdita,—

“What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I’ld have you do it ever: when you sing, I’ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms. Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that; move still, still so, And own no other function: each your doing. So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds, That all your acts are queens.”

Our Prelude we may take from Le Bey de Batilly’s _Emblems_ (_Francofurti_ 1596, Emb. 51), in which with no slight zeal he celebrates “The Glory of Poets.” For subject he takes “The Christian Muse” of his Jurisconsult friend, Peter Poppæus of Barraux, near Chambery.

POETARVM GLORIA.

With the sad fate of Icarus, Le Bey contrasts the far different condition of Poets,—

“_Quos Phœbus ad aurea cœli Limina sublimis Iouis omnipotentis in aula Sistit, & ætherei monstrat commercia cœtus; Et sacri vates & Diuûm cura vocantur. Quos etiam sunt qui numen habere putent._”

[Sidenote: _i.e._]

“Whom at heaven’s golden threshold, Within the halls of lofty Jove omnipotent Phœbus doth place, and to them clearly shows The intercourses of ethereal companies. Both holy prophets and the care of gods Are poets named; and those there are who think That they possess the force of power divine.”

In vigorous prose Le Bey declares “their home of glory is the world itself, and for them honour without death abides.” Then personally to his friend Poppæus he says,—

“Onward, and things not to be feared fear not thou, who speakest nothing little or of humble measure, nothing mortal. While the pure priest of the Muses and of Phœbus with no weak nor unpractised wing through the liquid air as prophet stretches to the lofty regions of the clouds. Onward, and let father Phœbus himself bear thee to heaven.”

Now by the side of Le Bey’s laudatory sentences, may be placed the Poet’s glory as sung in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act v. sc. 1, l. 12, vol. ii. p. 258),—

“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.”

The Swan of silvery whiteness may have been the heraldic badge of the Poets, but that “bird of wonder,” the Phœnix, which,—

“Left sweete Arabie: And on a Cædar in this coast Built vp her tombe of spicerie,”[163]—

is the source of many more Poetic ideas. To the Emblem writers as well as to the Poets, who preceded and followed the time of Shakespeare, it really was a constant theme of admiration.

One of the best pictures of what the bird was supposed to be occurs in Freitag’s “MYTHOLOGIA ETHICA” (Antwerp, 1579). The drawing and execution of the device are remarkably fine; and the motto enjoins that “youthful studies should be changed with advancing age,”—

Iuuenilia ſtudia cum prouectiori ætate permutata.

“_Deponite vos, ſecundum priſtinam conuerſationem, veterem hominem, qui corrumpitur ſecundum deſideria erroris._”—_Epheſ._ 4. 22.

After describing the bird, Freitag applies it as a type of the resurrection from the dead; but its special moral is,—

“That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.”

Ancient authors, as well as the comparatively modern, very gravely testify to the lengthened life, and self-renovating power, and splendid beauty of the Phœnix. In the “EUTERPE” of Herodotus (bk. ii. 73) we meet with the following narrative,—

“Ἔστι δε καὶ ἄλλος ὄμνις,” κ. τ. λ. “There is another sacred bird, named the Phœnix, which I myself never saw except in picture; for according to the people of Heliopolis, it seldom makes its appearance among them, only once in every 500 years. They state that he comes on the death of his sire. If at all like the picture, this bird may be thus described both in size and shape. Some of his feathers are of the colour of gold; others are red. In outline he is exceedingly similar to the Eagle, and in size also. This bird is said to display an ingenuity of contrivance which to me does not seem credible: he is represented as coming out of Arabia and bringing with him his father, embalmed in myrrh, to the temple of the Sun, and there burying him. The following is the manner in which this is done. First of all he sticks together an egg of myrrh, as much as he can carry, and then if he can bear the burden, this experiment being achieved, he scoops out the egg sufficiently to deposit his sire within; next he fills with fresh myrrh the opening in the egg, by which the body was enclosed; thus the whole mass containing the carcase is still of the same weight. The embalming being completed, he transports him into Egypt and to the temple of the Sun.”

Pliny’s account is brief (bk. xiii. ch. iv.),—

“The bird Phœnix is supposed to have taken that name from the date tree, which in Greek is called φοῖνιξ; for the assurance was made me that the said bird died with the tree, and of itself revived when the tree again sprouted forth.”

Numerous indeed are the authorities of old to the same or a similar purport. They are nearly all comprised in the introductory dissertation of Joachim Camerarius to his device of the Phœnix, and include about eighteen classic writers, ten of the Greek and Latin Fathers, and three modern writers of the sixteenth century.

Appended to the works of Lactantius, an eloquent Christian Father of the latter part of the third century, there is a _Carmen De Phœnice_,—“Song concerning the Phœnix,”—in elegiac verse, which contains very many of the old tales and legends of “the Arabian bird,” and describes it as,—

“_Ipsa sibi proles, suus est pater, & suus hæres: Nutrix ipsa sui, semper alumna sibi._”

“She to herself offspring is, and her own father, and her own heir: Nurse is she of herself, and ever her own foster daughter.”

(See _Lactantii Opera, studio Gallæi_, Leyden, 8vo. 1660, pp. 904–923.)

Besides Camerarius, there are at least five Emblematists from whom Shakespeare might have borrowed respecting the Phœnix. Horapollo, whose _Hieroglyphics_ were edited in 1551; Claude Paradin and Gabriel Symeoni, whose _Heroic Devises_ appeared in 1562; Arnold Freitag, in 1579; Nicholas Reusner, in 1581; Geffrey Whitney, in 1586, and Boissard, in 1588,—these all take the Phœnix for one of their emblems, and give a drawing of it in the act of self-sacrifice and self-renovation. They make it typical of many truths and doctrines,—of long duration for the soul, of devoted love to God, of special rarity of character, of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and of the resurrection of all mankind.

There is a singular application of the Phœnix emblem which existed before and during Shakespeare’s time, but of which I find no pictorial representation until 1633. It is in Henry Hawkins’ rare volume, “Η ΠΑΡΘΕΝΟΣ,”—_The Virgin_—“Symbolically set forth and enriched with piovs devises and emblemes for the entertainement of Devovt Sovles.” This peculiar emblem bestows upon the bird two hearts, which are united in closest sympathy and in entire oneness of affection and purpose; they are the hearts of the Virgin-Mother and her Son.

Eadem inter ſe. Sunt eadem uni tertia.

“Behold, how Death aymes with his mortal dart, And wounds a Phœnix with a twin-like hart. These are the harts of Jesus and his Mother So linkt in one, that one without the other Is not entire. They (sure) each others smart Must needs sustaine, though two, yet as one hart. One Virgin-Mother, Phenix of her kind, And we her Sonne without a father find. The Sonne’s and Mothers paines in one are mixt, His side, a Launce, her soule a Sword transfixt. Two harts in one, one Phenix loue contriues:[164] One wound in two, and two in one reuiues.”

Whitney’s and Shakespeare’s uses of the device resemble each other, as we shall see, more closely than the rest do,—and present a singular coincidence of thought, or else show that the later writer had consulted the earlier.

“_The Bird always alone_,” is the motto which Paradin, Reusner, and Whitney adopt. Paradin (fol. 53), informs us,—

Vnica ſemper auis

Comme le Phenix eſt à jamais ſeul, & vnique Oiſeau au monde de ſon eſpece. Auſſi ſont les tresbonnes choſes de merueilleuſe rarité, & bien cler ſemees. Deuiſe que porte Madame Alienor d’ Auſtriche, Roine Douairiere de France.

Theophraſte.

_i.e._ “As the Phœnix is always alone, and the only bird of its kind in the world, so are very good things of marvellous rarity and very thinly sown. It is the device which Madam Elinor of Austria bears, Queen Dowager of France.”

The Phœnix is Reusner’s 36th Emblem (bk. ii. p. 98),—

Vnica ſemper auis _EMBLEMA XXXVI._

_Quæ thuris lacrymis, & ſucco viuit amomi:_[165] _Fert cunas Phœnix, buſta paterna, ſuas._

Sixteen elegiac lines of Latin are devoted to its praise and typical signification, mixed with some curious theological conjectures,—

“On tears of frankincense, and on the juice of balsam lives The Phœnix, and bears its cradle, the coffin of its sire. Always alone is this bird;—itself its own father and son, By death alone does it give to itself a new life. For oft as on earth it has lived the ten ages through, Dying at last, in the fire it is born of its own funeral pile. So to himself and to his, Christ gives life by his death, Life to his servants, whom in equal love he joins to himself. True Man is he, the one true God, arbiter of ages, Who illumines with light, with his spirit cherishes all. Happy, who by holy baptisms in Christ is reborn, In the sacred stream he takes hold of life,—in the stream he obtains it.”

And again, in reference to the birth unto life eternal,—

“If men report true, death over again forms the Phœnix, To this bird both life and death the same funeral pile may prove. Onward, executioners! of the saints burn ye the sainted bodies; For whom ye desire perdition, to them brings the flame new birth.”

Whitney, borrowing his woodcut and motto from Plantin’s edition of “LES DEVISES HEROIQVES,” 1562, to a very considerable degree makes the explanatory stanzas his own both in the conception and in the expression. The chief town near to his birth-place had on December 10, 1583, been almost totally destroyed by fire, but through the munificence of the Queen and many friends, by 1586, “the whole site and frame of the town, so suddenly ruined, was with great speed re-edified in that beautifull manner,” says the chronicler, “that now it is.” The Phœnix (p. 177) is standing in the midst of the flames, and with outspreading wings is prepared for another flight in renewed youth and vigour.

_Vnica semper auis._ _To my countrimen of the_ Namptwiche _in Cheshire_.

“THE Phœnix rare, with fethers freshe of hewe, ARABIAS righte, and sacred to the Sonne: Whome, other birdes with wonder seeme to vewe, Dothe liue vntill a thousande yeares bee ronne: Then makes a pile: which, when with Sonne it burnes, Shee flies therein, and so to ashes turnes.

Whereof, behoulde, an other Phœnix rare, With speede dothe rise most beautifull and faire: And thoughe for truthe, this manie doe declare, Yet thereunto, I meane not for to sweare: Althoughe I knowe that Aucthors witnes true, What here I write, bothe of the oulde, and newe.

Which when I wayed, the newe, and eke the oulde, I thought vppon your towne destroyed with fire: And did in minde, the newe NAMPWICHE behoulde, A spectacle for anie mans desire: Whose buildinges braue, where cinders weare but late, Did represente (me thought) the Phœnix fate.

And as the oulde, was manie hundreth yeares, A towne of fame, before it felt that crosse: Euen so, (I hope) this WICHE, that nowe appeares, A Phœnix age shall laste, and knowe no losse: Which GOD vouchsafe, who make you thankfull, all: That see this rise, and sawe the other fall.”

The _Concordance to Shakespeare_, by Mrs. Cowden Clarke, for thoroughness hitherto unmatched,[166] notes down eleven instances in which the Phœnix is named, and in most of them, with some epithet expressive of its nature. It is spoken of as the Arabian bird, the bird of wonder; its nest of spicery is mentioned; it is made an emblem of death, and employed in metaphor to flatter both Elizabeth and James.

Besides the instances already given (p. 236), we here select others of a general nature; as:—When on the renowned Talbot’s death in battle, Sir William Lucy, in presence of Charles, the Dauphin, exclaims over the slain (_1 Hen. VI._, act iv. sc. 7, l. 92),—

“O that I could but call these dead to life! It were enough to fright the realm of France:”

his request for leave to give their bodies burial is thus met,—

“_Pucelle._ I think this upstart is old Talbot’s ghost, He speaks with such a proud commanding spirit. For God’s sake, let him have ’em.... _Charles._ Go, take their bodies hence. _Lucy._ I’ll bear them hence; but from their ashes shall be rear’d A phœnix, that shall make all France afeard.”

And York, on the haughty summons of Northumberland and Clifford, declares (_3 Hen. VI._, act i. sc. 4, l. 35),—

“My ashes, as the Phœnix, may bring forth A bird that will revenge upon you all.”

In the _Phœnix and the Turtle_ (lines 21 and 49, vol. ix. p. 671), are the lines,—

“Here the anthem doth commence: Love and constancy is dead; Phœnix and the turtle fled In a mutual flame from hence. . . . . . . Whereupon it made this threne To the phœnix and the dove, Co-supremes and stars of love, As chorus to their tragic scene.”

The “threne,” or _Lamentation_ (l. 53, vol. ix. p. 672), then follows,—

“Beauty, truth and rarity Grace in all simplicity, Here enclosed in cinders lie.

Death is now the phœnix’ nest; And the turtle’s loyal breast To eternity doth rest.”

The Maiden in _The Lover’s Complaint_ (l. 92, vol. ix. p. 638) thus speaks of her early love,—

“Small show of man was yet upon his chin; His phœnix down began but to appear, Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin, Whose bare out-bragg’d the web it seem’d to wear.”

Some of the characteristics of the Phœnix are adduced in the dialogue, _Richard III._ (act iv. sc. 4, l. 418, vol. v. p. 606), between Richard III. and the queen or widow of Edward IV. The king is proposing to marry her daughter,—

“_Q. Eliz._ Shall I be tempted of the devil thus? _K. Rich._ Ay, if the devil tempt thee to do good. _Queen._ Shall I forget myself, to be myself? _K. Rich._ Ay, if yourself’s remembrance wrong yourself. _Queen._ But thou didst kill my children. _K. Rich._ But in your daughter’s womb I bury them: Where in that nest of spicery, they shall breed Selves of themselves, to your recomforture.”

Another instance is from _Antony and Cleopatra_ (act iii. sc. 2, l. 7, vol. ix. p. 64). Agrippa and Enobarbus meet in Cæsar’s ante-chamber, and of Lepidus Enobarbus declares,—

“O how he loves Cæsar! _Agrip._ Nay, but how dearly he adores Marc Antony! _Enob._ Cæsar? Why, he’s the Jupiter of men. _Agrip._ What’s Antony? The god of Jupiter. _Enob._ Speak you of Cæsar? How? the nonpareil! _Agrip._ O Antony! O thou Arabian bird!”

And in _Cymbeline_ (act i. sc. 6, l. 15, vol. ix. p. 183), on being welcomed by Imogen, Iachimo says, _aside_,—

“All of her that is out of door most rich! If she be furnish’d with a mind so rare. She is alone th’ Arabian Bird, and I Have lost the wager.”

But the fullest and most remarkable example is from _Henry VIII._ (act v. sc. 5, l. 28, vol. vi. p. 114). Cranmer assumes the gift of inspiration, and prophesies of the new-born child of the king and of Anne Bullen an increase of blessings and of all princely graces,—

“Truth shall nurse her, Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her: She shall be loved and fear’d: her own shall bless her; Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, And hang their heads with sorrow. Good grows with her: In her days every man shall eat in safety, Under his own vine, what he plants, and sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours: God shall be truly known; and those about her From her shall read the perfect ways of honour, And by these claim their greatness, not by blood. Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but, as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phœnix, Her ashes new create another heir, As great in admiration as herself, So shall she leave her blessedness to one— When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness— Who from the sacred ashes of her honour Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was, And so stand fix’d.”

There is another bird, the emblem of tranquillity and of peaceful and happy days; it is the KING-FISHER, which the poets have described with the utmost embellishment of the fancy. Aristotle and Pliny tell even more marvellous tales about it than Herodotus and Horapollo do about the Phœnix.

The fable, on which the poetic idea rests, is two-fold; one that Alcyone, a daughter of the wind-god Æolus, had been married to Ceyx; and so happily did they live that they gave one another the appellations of the gods, and by Jupiter in anger were changed into birds; the other narrates, that Ceyx perished from shipwreck, and that in a passion of grief Alcyone threw herself into the sea. Out of pity the gods bestowed on the two the shape and habit of birds. Ovid has greatly enlarged the fable, and has devoted to it, in his _Metamorphoses_ (xi. 10), between three and four hundred lines. We have only to do with the conclusion,—

“The gods at length taking compassion The pair are transformed into birds; tried by one destiny Their love remained firm; nor is the conjugal bond Loosened although they are birds; parents they become, And through a seven days’ quietness in midwinter In nests upborne by the sea the King-fishers breed. Safe then is the sea-road; the winds Æolus guards, Debarring from egress; and ocean’s plain favours his children.”

According to Aristotle’s description (_Hist. Anim._ ix. 14),—

“The nest of the Alcyon is globular, with a very narrow entrance, so that if it should be upset the water would not enter. A blow from iron has no effect upon it, but the human hand soon crushes it and reduces it to powder. The eggs are five.”

“The _halcyones_,” Pliny avers, “are of great name and much marked. The very seas, and they that saile thereupon, know well when they sit and breed. This bird, so notable, is little bigger than a sparrow; for the more part of her pennage, blew, intermingled yet among with white and purple feathers; having a thin small neck and long withal they lay and sit about mid-winter, when daies be shortest; and the times while they are broodie, is called the _halcyon_ daies; for during that season the sea is calm and navigable, especially on the coast of Sicilie.”—_Philemon Holland’s Plinie_, x. 32.

We are thus prepared for the device which Paolo Giovio sets before his readers, with an Italian four-lined stanza to a French motto, _We know well the weather_. The drawing suggests that the two Alcyons in one nest are sailing “on the coast of Sicilie,” in the straits of Messina, with Scylla and Charybdis on each hand—but in perfect calmness and security,—

_DE I MEDESIMI._

Novs scavons bien le temps

_San gl’ Alcionij augei il tempo eletto, Ch’ al nido; e all’ oua lor non nuoca il mare. Infelice quell’ huom, ch’el dí aſpettare Non ſa, per dare al ſuo diſegno effetto._

Nous ſauons bien le temps.

“Happy the Alcyons, whom choice times defend. Nor in the nest nor egg the sea can harm; But luckless man knows not to meet alarm, Nor to his purpose gives the wished for end.”

The festival of Saint Martin, or Martlemas, is held November 11th, at the approach of winter, and was a season of merriment and good cheer. It is in connection with this festival that Shakespeare first introduces a mention of the Alcyon (_1 Henry VI._, act i. sc. 2, l. 129, vol. v. p. 14). The Maid of Orleans is propounding her mission for the deliverance of France to Reignier, Duke of Anjou,—

“Assign’d I am to be the English scourge. This night the siege assuredly I’ll raise: Expect Saint Martin’s summer, halcyon days, Since I have enter’d into these wars.”

It was, and I believe still is, an opinion prevalent in some parts of England, that a King-fisher, suspended by the tail or beak, will turn round as the wind changes. To this fancy, allusion is made in _King Lear_ (act ii. sc. 2, l. 73, vol. viii. p. 307),—

“Renege, affirm and turn their halcyon beaks With every gale and vary of their masters, Knowing nought, like dogs, but following.”

The Poet delights to tell of self-sacrificing love; and hence the celebrity which the PELICAN has acquired for the strong natural affection which impels it, so the tale runs, to pour forth the very fountain of its life in nourishment to its young. From Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in the island of Cyprus, whose _Physiologvs_ was printed by Plantin in 1588, we have the supposed natural history of the Pelicans and their young, which he symbolizes in the Saviour. His account is accompanied by a pictorial representation, “ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΠΕΛΕΚΑΝΟΣ,”—_Concerning the Pelican_ (p. 30).

The good bishop narrates as physiological history the following,—

“Beyond all birds the Pelican is fond of her young. The female sits on the nest, guarding her offspring, and cherishes and caresses them and wounds them with loving; and pierces their sides and they die. After three days the male pelican comes and finds them dead, and very much his heart is pained. Driven by grief he smites his own side, and as he stands over the wounds of the dead young ones, the blood trickles down, and thus are they made alive again.”

Reusner and Camerarius both adopt the Pelican as the emblem of a good king who devotes himself to the people’s welfare. _For Law and for Flock_, is the very appropriate motto they prefix; Camerarius simply saying (ed. 1596, p. 87),—

“_Sanguine vivificat Pelicanus pignora, sic rex Pro populi vitæ est prodigus ipse suæ._”

“By blood the Pelican his young revives; and so a king For his people’s sake himself of life is prodigal.”

Reusner (bk. ii. p. 73) gives the following device,—

Pro lege, & grege. _EMBLEMA XIV._

And tells how,—

“Alphonsus the wise and good king of Naples, with his own honoured hand painted a Pelican which with its sharp beak was laying open its breast so as with its own blood to save the lives of its young. Thus for people, for law, it is right that a king should die and by his own death restore life to the nations. As by his own death Christ did restore life to the just, and with life peace and righteousness.”

He adds this personification of the Pelican,—

“For people and for sanctioned law heart’s life a king will pour; So from this blood of mine do I life to my young restore.”

The other motto, which Hadrian Junius and Geffrey Whitney select, opens out another idea, _Quod in te est, prome_,—“Bring forth what is in thee.” It suggests that of the soul’s wealth we should impart to others.

Junius (Emb. 7) thus addresses the bird he has chosen,—

“By often striking, O Pelican, thou layest open the deep recesses of thy breast and givest life to thy offspring. Search into thine own mind (my friend), seek what is hidden within, and bring forth into the light the seeds of thine inner powers.”

And very admirably does Whitney (p. 87) apply the sentiment to one of the most eminent of divines in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,—namely, to Dr. Alexander Nowell, the celebrated Dean of St. Paul’s, illustrious both for his learning and his example,—

“The Pellican, for to reuiue her younge, Doth peirce her brest, and geue them of her blood: Then searche your breste, and as yow haue with tonge, With penne proceede to doe our countrie good: Your zeale is great, your learning is profounde, Then helpe our wantes, with that you doe abounde.”

The full poetry of the thoughts thus connected with the Pelican is taken in, though but briefly expressed by Shakespeare. In _Hamlet_ (act iv. sc. 5, l. 135, vol. viii. p. 135), on Laertes determining to seek revenge for his father’s death, the king adds fuel to the flame,—

“_King._ Good Laertes, If you desire to know the certainty Of your dear father’s death, is’t writ in your revenge, That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe, Winner and loser? _Laer._ None but his enemies. _King._ Will you know them then? _Laer._ To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms; And like the kind life-rendering pelican, Repast them with my blood.”[167]

From _Richard II._ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 120, vol. iv. p. 140) we learn how in zeal and true loyalty John of Gaunt counsels his headstrong nephew, and how rudely the young king replies,—

“Now, by my seat’s right royal majesty, Wert thou not brother to great Edward’s son, This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders. _Gaunt._ O, spare me not, my brother Edward’s son, For that I was his father Edward’s son; That blood already, like the pelican, Hast thou tapp’d out and drunkenly caroused.”

The idea, indeed, almost supposes that the young pelicans strike at the breasts of the old ones, and forcibly or thoughtlessly drain their life out. So it is in _King Lear_ (act iii. sc. 4, l. 68, vol. viii. p. 342), when the old king exclaims,—

“Death, traitor! nothing could have subdued nature To such a lowness but his unkind daughters. Is it the fashion that discarded fathers Should have thus little mercy on their flesh? Judicious punishment! ’twas this flesh begot Those pelican daughters.”

And again (_2 Henry VI._, act iv. sc. 1, l. 83, vol. v. p. 182), in the words addressed to Suffolk,—

“By devilish policy art thou grown great, And, like ambitious Sylla, over-gorged With gobbets of thy mother’s bleeding heart.”

The description of the wounded stag, rehearsed to the banished duke by one of his attendants, is as touching a narrative, as full of tenderness, as any which show the Poet’s wonderful power over our feelings; it is from _As You Like It_ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 29, vol. ii. p. 394),—

“To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself Did steal behind him [_Jaques_] as he lay along Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood: To the which place a poor sequester’d stag, That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt, Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord, The wretched animal heaved forth such groans, That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting, and the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool, Much marked of the melancholy Jacques, Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, Augmenting it with tears.”

Graphic and highly ornamented though this description may be, it is really the counterpart of Gabriel Symeoni’s Emblem of love incurable. The poor stag lies wounded and helpless,—the mortal dart in his flank, and the life-stream gushing out. The scroll above bears a Spanish motto, _This holds their Remedy and not I_; and it serves to introduce the usual quatrain.

D’VN AMORE. INCVRABILE.

_Troua il ceruio ferito al ſuo gran male Nel dittamo Creteo fido ricorſo, Ma laſſo (io’lsò) rimedio ne ſoccorſo All’ amoroſo colpo alcun non vale._

Eſto tiene ſu remedio, y non yo.

“The smitten stag hath found sad pains to feel, No trusted Cretan dittany[168] is near, Wearied, for succour there is only fear,— The wounds of love no remedy can heal.”

To the same motto and the same device Paradin (fol. 168) furnishes an explanation,—

“_The device of love incurable,_” he says, “_may be a stag wounded by an arrow, having a branch of Dittany in its mouth, which is a herb that grows abundantly in the island of Crete. By eating this the wounded stag heals all its injuries. The motto,_ ‘Esto tienne su remedio, y no yo,’ _follows those verses of Ovid in the Metamorphoses, where Phœbus, complaining of the love for Daphne, says, ‘~Hei mihi, quòd nullis amor est medicabilis herbis~.’_”

The connected lines in Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ (bk. i. fab. 9), show that even Apollo, the god of healing, whose skill does good to all others, does no good to himself. The _Emblems_ of Otho Vænius (p. 154) gives a very similar account to that of Symeoni,—

“_Cerua venenato venantûm saucia ferro Dyctamno quærit vulneris auxilium. Hei mihi, quod nullis sit Amor medicabilis herbis, Et nequeat medicâ pellier arte malum._”

The following is the English version of that date,—

“_No help for the louer._”

“The hert that wounded is, knowes how to fynd relief, And makes by dictamon the arrow out to fall, And with the self-same herb hee cures his wound withall, But love no herb can fynd to cure his inward grief.”

In the presence of those who had slain Cæsar, and over his dead body at the foot of Pompey’s statue, “which all the while ran blood,” Marc Antony poured forth his fine avowal of continued fidelity to his friend (_Julius Cæsar_, act iii. sc. 1, l. 205, vol. vii. p. 368),—

“Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bay’d, brave hart; Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand, Sign’d in thy spoil and crimson’d in thy lethe. O world! thou wast the forest to this hart; And this, indeed, O world, the heart of thee. How like a deer strucken by many princes Dost thou here lie!”

The same metaphor from the wounded deer is introduced in _Hamlet_ (act iii. sc. 2, l. 259, vol. viii. p. 97). The acting of the play has had on the king’s mind the influence which Hamlet hoped for; and as in haste and confusion the royal party disperse, he recites the stanza,—

“Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must watch, whilst some must sleep: Thus runs the world away.”

The very briefest allusion to the subject of our Emblem is also contained in the _Winter’s Tale_ (act i. sc. 2, l. 115, vol. iii. p. 323). Leontes is discoursing with his queen Hermione,—

“But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers, As now they are, and making practised smiles, As in a looking glass, and then to sigh, as ’twere The mort o’ the deer; O, that is entertainment My bosom likes not, nor my brows!”

The poetical epithet “golden,” so frequently expressive of excellence and perfection, and applied even to qualities of the mind, is declared by Douce (vol. i. p. 84) to have been derived by Shakespeare either from Sidney’s _Arcadia_ (bk. ii.), or from Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ (4to, fol. 8), where speaking of Cupid’s arrows, he says,—

“_That causeth love_ is all of _golde_ with point full sharp and bright. That chaseth love, is blunt, whose steele with leaden head is dight.”

This borrowing and using of the epithet “golden” might equally well, and with as much probability, have taken place through the influence of Alciat, or by adoption from Whitney’s very beautiful translation and paraphrase of Joachim Bellay’s _Fable of Cupid and Death_. The two were lodging together at an inn,[169] and unintentionally exchanged quivers: death’s darts were made of bone, Cupid’s were “dartes of goulde.”

The conception of the tale is admirable, and the narrative itself full of taste and beauty. Premising that the same device is employed by Whitney as by Alciat, we will first give almost a literal version from the 154th and 155th Emblems of the latter author (edition 1581),—

“Wandering about was Death along with Cupid as companion, With himself Death was bearing quivers; little Love his weapons; Together at an inn they lodged; one night together one bed they shared; Love was blind, and on this occasion Death also was blind. Unforeseeing the evil, one took the darts of the other, Death the golden weapons,—those of bone the boy rashly seizes. Hence an old man who ought now to be near upon Acheron. Behold him loving,—and for his brow flower-fillets preparing. But I, since Love smote me with the dart that was changed, I am fainting, and their hand the fates upon me are laying. Spare, O boy; spare, O Death, holding the ensigns victorious,— Make me the lover, the old man make him sink beneath Acheron.”

And carrying on the idea into the next Emblem (155),—

“Why, O Death, with thy wiles darest thou deceive Love the boy, That thy weapons he should hurl, while he thinks them his own?”

Whitney’s “sportive tale, concerning death and love,” possesses sufficient merit to be given in full (p. 132),—

_De morte, & amore: Iocoſum._ _To_ EDWARD DYER, _Eſquier._

“While furious Mors, from place, to place did flie, And here, and there, her fatall dartes did throwe: At lengthe shee mette, with Cupid passing by, Who likewise had, bene busie with his bowe: Within one Inne, they bothe togeather stay’d, And for one nighte, awaie theire shooting lay’d.

The morrowe next, they bothe awaie doe haste, And eache by chaunce, the others quiuer takes: The frozen dartes, on Cupiddes backe weare plac’d. The fierie dartes, the leane virago shakes: Whereby ensued, suche alteration straunge, As all the worlde, did wonder at the chaunge.

For gallant youthes, whome Cupid thoughte to wounde, Of loue, and life, did make an ende at once. And aged men, whome deathe woulde bringe to grounde: Beganne againe to loue, with sighes, and grones; Thus natures lawes, this chaunce infringed soe: That age did loue, and youthe to graue did goe.

Till at the laste, as Cupid drewe his bowe, Before he shotte: a younglinge thus did crye, Oh Venus sonne, thy dartes thou doste not knowe, They pierce too deepe: for all thou hittes, doe die: Oh spare our age, who honored thee of oulde, Theise dartes are bone, take thou the dartes of goulde.

Which beinge saide, a while did Cupid staye, And sawe, how youthe was almoste cleane extinct: And age did doate, with garlandes freshe, and gaye, And heades all balde, weare newe in wedlocke linckt: Wherefore he shewed, this error vnto Mors, Who miscontent, did chaunge againe perforce.

Yet so, as bothe some dartes awaie conuay’d, Which weare not theirs: yet vnto neither knowne, Some bonie dartes, in Cupiddes quiver stay’d, Some goulden dartes, had Mors amongst her owne. Then, when wee see, vntimelie deathe appeare: Or wanton age: it was this chaunce you heare.”

For an interlude to our remarks on the “golden,” we must mention that the pretty tale _Concerning Death and Cupid_ was attributed to Whitney by one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries; and, if known to other literary men of the age, very reasonably may be supposed not unknown to the dramatist. Henry Peacham, in 1612, p. 172 of his _Emblems_, acknowledges that it was from Whitney that he derived his own tale,—

“_De Morte, et Cupidine._”

“DEATH meeting once, with _CVPID_ in an Inne, Where roome was scant, togeither both they lay. Both weariè, (for they roving both had beene,) Now on the morrow when they should away, _CVPID_ Death’s quiver at his back had throwne, And _DEATH_ tooke _CVPIDS_, thinking it his owne.

By this o’re-sight, it shortly came to passe, That young men died, who readie were to wed: And age did revell with his bonny-lasse, Composing girlonds for his hoarie head: Invert not Nature, oh ye Powers twaine, Giue _CVPID’S_ dartes, and _Death_ take thine againe.”

Whitney luxuriates in this epithet “golden;”—golden fleece, golden hour, golden pen, golden sentence, golden book, golden palm are found recorded in his pages. At p. 214 we have the lines,—

“A Leaden sworde, within a goulden sheathe, Is like a foole of natures finest moulde, To whome, shee did her rarest giftes bequethe, Or like a sheepe, within a fleece of goulde.”

We may indeed regard Whitney as the prototype of Hood’s world-famous “Miss Kilmansegg, with her golden leg,”—

“And a pair of Golden Crutches.” (vol. i. p. 189.)

Shakespeare is scarcely more sparing in this respect than the Cheshire Emblematist; he mentions for us “golden tresses of the dead,” “golden oars and a silver stream,” “the glory, that in gold clasps locks in the golden story,” “a golden casket,” “a golden bed,” and “a golden mind.” _Merchant of Venice_ (act ii. sc. 7, lines 20 and 58, vol. ii. p. 312),—

“A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross. . . . . . . But here an angel in a golden bed Lies all within.”

And applied direct to Cupid’s artillery in _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act i. sc. 1, l. 168, vol. ii. p. 204), Hermia makes fine use of the epithet golden,—

“My good Lysander! I swear to thee by Cupid’s strongest bow, By his best arrow with the golden head.”

So in _Twelfth Night_ (act i. sc. 1, l. 33, vol. iii. p. 224), Orsino, Duke of Milan, speaks of Olivia,—

“O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame To pay the debt of love but to a brother, How will she love, when the rich golden shaft Hath kill’d the flock of all affections else That live in her; when liver, brain and heart These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill’d Her sweet perfections with one self king!”

And when Helen praised the complexion or comeliness of Troilus above that of Paris, Cressida avers (_Troilus and Cressida_, act i. sc. 2, l. 100, vol. vi. p. 134),—

“I had as lief Helen’s golden tongue had commended Troilus for a copper nose.”

_Plate 14_

THEATRVM VITÆ HVMANÆ.

CAPVT I.

_VITA HVMANA EST TANQVAM_

_Theatrum omnium miſeriarum._

_Vita hominis tanquam circus, vel grande theatrum est: Quod tragici ostentat cuncta referta metus. Hoc laſciva caro, peccatum, morsſque, Satanque Triſti hominem vexant, exagitantque modo._

As Whitney’s pictorial illustration represents them, Death and Cupid are flying in mid-air, and discharging their arrows from the clouds. Confining the description to Cupid, this is exactly the action in one of the scenes of the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 155, vol. ii. p. 216). The passage was intended to flatter Queen Elizabeth; it is Oberon who speaks,—

“That very time I saw, but thou couldst not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts: But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy free. Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness.”

Scarcely by possibility could a dramatist, who was also an actor, avoid the imagery of poetic ideas with which his own profession made him familiar. I am not sure if Sheridan Knowles did not escape the temptation; but if Shakespeare had done so, it would have deprived the world of some of the most forcible passages in our language. The theatre for which he wrote, and the stage on which he acted, supplied materials for his imagination to work into lines of surpassing beauty.

Boissard’s “THEATRVM VITÆ HUMANÆ” (edition Metz, 4to, 1596) presents its first Emblem with the title,—_Human life is as a Theatre of all Miseries_. (See Plate XIV.)

“The life of man a circus is, or theatre so grand: Which every thing shows forth filled full of tragic fear; Here wanton sense, and sin, and death, and Satan’s hand Molest mankind and persecute with penalties severe.”

The picture of human life which Boissard draws in his “Address to the Reader” is gloomy and dispiriting; there are in it, he declares, the various miseries and calamities to which man is subject while he lives,—and the conflicts to which he is exposed from the sharpest and cruellest enemies, the devil, the flesh, and the world; and from their violence and oppression there is no possibility of escape, except by the favour and help of God’s mercy.

Very similar ideas prevail in some of Shakespeare’s lines; as “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” (_Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 1, l. 62, vol. viii. p. 79); “my heart all mad with misery beats in this hollow prison of my flesh” (_Titus Andronicus_, act iii. sc. 2, l. 9, vol. vi. p. 483); and, “shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh” (_Romeo and Juliet_, act v. sc. 3, l. 111, vol. vii. p. 126).

But more particularly in _As You Like It_ (act ii. sc. 7, l. 136, vol. ii. p. 409),—

“Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy: This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in.”

Also in _Macbeth_ (act v. sc. 5, l. 22, vol. vii. p. 512),—

“And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.”

And when the citizens of Angiers haughtily closed their gates against both King Philip and King John, the taunt is raised (_King John_, act ii. sc. 1, l. 373, vol. iv. p. 26),—

“By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you, kings, And stand securely on their battlements, As in a theatre, whence they gape and point At your industrious scenes and acts of death.”

_Plate 15_

The stages or ages of man have been variously divided. In the Arundel MS., and in a Dutch work printed at Antwerp in 1820, there are ten of these divisions of Man’s Life.[170] The celebrated physician Hippocrates (B.C. 460–357), and Proclus, the Platonist (A.D. 412–485), are said to have divided human life, as Shakespeare has done, into _seven_ ages. And a mosaic on the pavement of the cathedral at Siena gives exactly the same division. This mosaic is very curious, and is supposed to have been executed by Antonio Federighi in the year 1476. Martin’s “SHAKSPERE’S SEVEN AGES,” published in 1848, contains a little narrative about it, furnished by Lady Calcott, who shortly before that time had been travelling in Italy,—

“We found,” she says, “in the cathedral of Sienna a curious proof that the division of human life into seven periods, from infancy to extreme old age with a view to draw a moral inference, was common before Shakspeare’s time: the person who was showing us that fine church directed our attention to the large and bold designs of Beccafumi, which are inlaid in black and white in the pavement, entirely neglecting some works of a much older date which appeared to us to be still more interesting on account of the simplicity and elegance with which they are designed. Several of these represent Sibyls and other figures of a mixed moral and religious character; but in one of the side chapels we were both suprised and pleased to find seven figures, each in a separate compartment, inlaid in the pavement, representing the Seven Ages of Man.”

Lord Lindsay notices the same work, and in his “CHRISTIAN ART,” vol. iii. p. 112, speaking of the Pavement of the Duomo at Siena, says,—“Seven ages of life in the Southern Nave, near the Capella del Voto.”

Of as old a date, even if not more ancient, is the Representation of the Seven Ages from a Block-Print belonging to the British Museum, and of which we present a diminished facsimile (Plate XV.), the original measuring 15½ in. by 10½ in.

The inscription on the centre of the wheel, _Rota vite que septima notatur_,—“The wheel of life which seven times is noted:” on the outer rim,—_Est velut aqua labuntur deficiens ita. Sic ornati nascuntur in hac mortali vita_,—“It is as water so failing, they pass away. So furished are they born in this mortal life.” The figures for the seven ages are inscribed, _Infans ad vii. annos_,—“An infant for vii. years.” _Pueritia_[171] _ad xv. años_,—“Childhood up to xv. years.” _Adolescẽtia ad xxv. años_,—“Youthhood to xxv. years.” _Iuvẽtus ad xxxv. annos_,—“Young manhood to xxxv. years.” _Virilitas ad l. annos_,—“Mature manhood to 50 years.” _Senatus ad lxx. annos_,—“Age to 70 years.” _Decrepitus usque ad mortem_,—“Decrepitude up to death.” The angel with the scrolls holds in her right hand that on which is written _Beuerano_, in her left, _Corruptio_,—“Corruption;” below her left, _clav_, for _clavis_, “a key.”

Some parts of the Latin stanzas are difficult to decipher; they appear, however, to be the following, read downward,—

“Est hominis status in flore significatus Situ sentires quis esses et unde venisses Sunt triaque vere quæ faciunt me sæpe dicere, Secundum timeo quia hoc nescio quando

Flos cadit et periit sic homo cinis erit Nunquam rideres sed olim sæpe fleres Est primo durum quare scio me moriturum Hinc ternum flebo quare nescio ut manebo.”

The lines, however, are to be read across the page,—

“Est hominis status in flore significatus, Flos cadit et periit sic homo cinis erit. Situ sentires quis esses et unde venisses, Nunquam rideres sed olim sæpe fleres. Sunt triaque vere quæ faciunt me sæpe dicere, Est primo durum quare scio me moriturum. Secundum timeo quia hoc nescio quando, Hinc ternum flebo quare nescio ut manebo.”

They are only doggerel Latin, and in doggerel English may be expressed,—

“Lo here is man’s state—in flowers significate: The flower fades and perishes,—so man but ashes is; Who mayst be thou feelest,—whence com’st thou revealest;

Laugh shouldst thou never,—but be weeping for ever; Three things there are truly,—which make me say duly, The first hard thing ’tis to know,—that to death I must go; The second I fear then,—since I know not the when;— The third again will I weep,—for I know not in life to keep.”

The celebrated speech of Jaques to his dethroned master, “All the world’s a stage,” from _As You Like It_ (act ii. sc. 7, lines 139–165, vol. ii. p. 409), is closely constructed on the model of the Emblematical Devices in the foregoing Block-print. The simple quoting of the passage will be sufficient to show the parallelism and correspondence of the thoughts, if not of the expressions,—

“_Jaques._ All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.”

In far briefer phrase, but with a similar comparison, in reply to the charge of having “too much respect upon the world,” Antonia (_Merchant of Venice_, act i. sc. 1, l. 77, vol. ii. p. 281) remarked,—

“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage, where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.”

The pencil and the skill alone are wanting to multiply the Emblems for the Poetic Ideas which abound in Shakespeare’s dramas. His thoughts and their combinations are in general so clothed with life and with other elements of beauty, that materials for pictures exist in all parts of his writings. Our office, however, is not to exercise the inventive faculty, nor, even when the invention has been perfected for us by the poet’s fancy, to give it a visible form and to portray its outward graces. We have simply to gather up the scattered records of the past, and to show what correspondencies there really are between Shakespeare and the elder Emblem artists, and, when we can, to point out where to him they have been models, imitated and thus approved. Though, therefore, we might draw many a sketch, and finish many a picture from ideas to be supplied from this unexhausted fountain, we are mindful of the humbler task belonging to him who collects, and on his shelf of literary antiquities places, only what has the stamp of nearly three centuries upon them.

SECTION VIII. _MORAL AND ÆSTHETIC EMBLEMS._

REJOICING much if the end should crown the earlier portions of our work, we enter now on the last and most welcome section of this chapter,—on the Emblems which depict moral qualities and æsthetical properties,—the Emblems which concern the judgments and perceptions of the mind, and the conduct of the heart, the conscience, and the life.

_Quæ ante pedes._

We will initiate this division by the motto and device which Whitney (p. 64) adopts from Sambucus (edition 1564, p. 30),—“Things lying at our feet,”—that is, of immediate importance and urgency. The Emblems are warnings from the hen which is eating her own eggs, and from the cow which is drinking her own milk.

The Hungarian poet thus sets forth his theme,—

“The hen which had seen the eggs to her care entrusted, Is here sucking them, and hope she holds forth by no pledge. It is herself she serves and not others,—of future days heedless, No sense of feeling has she for the good of posterity. This a fault is in many,—things gained without labour Thoughtless they waste, unmindful of times that are coming. So cows suck their own udders,—the milk proper for milk pails They pilfer away,—and why bear to them the rich fodder? Not alone for ourselves do we live,—we live from the birth hour For our friends and our country, and whom the ages shall bring.”

The sentiment is admirable, and well placed by Whitney in the foremost ground,—

“Not for our selues, alone wee are create, But for our frendes, and for our countries good: And those, that are vnto theire frendes ingrate, And not regarde theire ofspringe, and theire blood, Or hee, that wastes his substance till he begges, Or selles his landes, which seru’de his parentes well: Is like the henne, when shee hathe lay’de her egges, That suckes them vp and leaues the emptie shell, Euen so theire spoile, to theire reproche, and shame, Vndoeth theire heire, and quite decayeth theire name.”

These two, Sambucus and Whitney, are the types, affirming that our powers and gifts and opportunities were all bestowed, not for mere selfish enjoyments, but to be improved for the general welfare; Shakespeare is the antitype: he amplifies, and exalts, and finishes; he carries out the thought to its completion, and thus attains absolute perfection; for in _Measure for Measure_ (act i. sc. 1, l. 28, vol. i. p. 296), Vincentio, the duke, addresses Angelo,—

“There is a kind of character in thy life, That to th’ observer doth thy history Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper, as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for ourselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch’d But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor, Both thanks and use.”

Now, there is beauty in the types, brief though they be, and on a very lowly subject: but how admirable is the antitype! It entirely redeems the thought from any associated meanness, carries it out to its full excellence, and clothes it with vestments of inspiration. Such, in truth, is Shakespeare’s great praise;—he can lift another man’s thought out of the dust, and make it a fitting ornament even for an archangel’s diadem.

One of Whitney’s finest Emblems, in point of conception and treatment, and, I believe, peculiar to himself, one of those “newly devised,” is founded on the sentiment, “By help of God” (p. 203).

_Auxilio diuino._ _To_ RICHARDE DRAKE, _Eſquier, in praiſe of Sir_ FRANCIS DRAKE _Knight._

The representation is that of the hand of Divine Providence issuing from a cloud and holding the girdle which encompasses the earth. With that girdle Sir Francis Drake’s ship, “the Golden Hind,” was drawn and guided round the globe.

The whole Emblem possesses considerable interest,—for it relates to the great national event of Shakespeare’s youth,—the first accomplishment by Englishmen of the earth’s circumnavigation. With no more than 164 able-bodied men, in five small ships, little superior to boats with a deck, the adventurous commander set sail 13th December, 1577; he went by the Straits of Magellan, and on his return doubled the Cape of Good Hope, the 15th of March, 1580, having then only fifty-seven men and three casks of water. The perilous voyage was ended at Plymouth, September the 26th, 1580, after an absence of two years and ten months.

These few particulars give more meaning to the Poet’s description,—

“Throvghe scorchinge heate, throughe coulde, in stormes, and tempests force, By ragged rocks, by shelfes, & sandes: this Knighte did keepe his course. By gapinge gulfes hee pass’d, by monsters of the flood, By pirattes, theeues, and cruell foes, that long’d to spill his blood. That wonder greate to scape: but, GOD was on his side, And throughe them all, in spite of all, his shaken shippe did guide. And, to requite his paines: _By helpe of Power deuine._ His happe, at lengthe did aunswere hope, to finde the goulden mine. Let GRÆCIA then forbeare, to praise her IASON boulde? Who throughe the watchfull dragons pass’d, to win the fleece of goulde. Since by MEDEAS helpe, they weare inchaunted all, And IASON without perrilles, pass’de: the conqueste therefore small? But, hee, of whome I write, this noble minded DRAKE, Did bringe away his goulden fleece, when thousand eies did wake. Wherefore, yee woorthie wightes, that seeke for forreine landes: Yf that you can, come alwaise home, by GANGES goulden sandes. And you, that liue at home, and can not brooke the flood, Geue praise to them, that passe the waues, to doe their countrie good. Before which sorte, as chiefe: in tempeste, and in calme, Sir FRANCIS DRAKE, by due deserte, may weare the goulden palme.”

How similar, in part at least, is the sentiment in _Hamlet_ (act v. sc. 2, l. 8, vol. viii. p. 164),—

“Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.”

In the Emblem we may note the girdle by which Drake’s ship is guided; may it not have been the origin of Puck’s fancy in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 173, vol. ii. p. 216), when he answers Oberon’s strict command,—

“And be thou here again Ere the Leviathan can swim a league.

_Puck._ I’ll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes.”

Besides, may it not have been from this voyage of Sir Francis Drake, and the accounts which were published respecting it, that the correct knowledge of physical geography was derived which Richard II. displays (act iii. sc. 2, l. 37, &c. vol. iv. p. 165)? as in the lines,—

“when the searching eye of heaven is hid, Behind the globe, that lights the lower world. . . . . . . when from under this terrestrial ball He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines And darts his light through every guilty hole. . . . . . . revell’d in the night Whilst we were wandering with the antipodes.”

A mere passing allusion to the same sentiment, a hint respecting it, a single line expressing it, or only a word or two relating to it, may sometimes very decidedly indicate an acquaintance with the author by whom the sentiment has been enunciated in all its fulness. Thus, Shakespeare, in speaking of Benedick, in _Much Ado about Nothing_ (act v. sc. 1, l. 170, vol. ii. p. 75), makes Don Pedro say,—

“An if she did not hate him deadly, she would love him dearly: the old man’s daughter told us all.”

To which Claudius replies,—

“All, all; and, moreover, God saw him when he was hid in the garden.”

Now, Whitney (p. 229) has an Emblem on this very subject; the motto, “God lives and sees.” It depicts Adam concealing himself, and a divine light circling the words, “VBI ES?”—_Where art thou?_

_Dominus viuit & videt._

“Behinde a figtree great, him selfe did ADAM hide: And thought from GOD hee there might lurke, and should not bee espide. Oh foole, no corners seeke, thoughe thou a sinner bee; For none but GOD can thee forgiue, who all thy ~waies~ doth see.”[172]

With the same motto, “VBI ES?” and a similar device, Georgette de Montenay (editions 1584 and 1620) carries out the same thought,—

“_Adam pensoit estre fort bien caché, Quand il se meit ainsi souz le figuier. Mais il n’y a cachett[e/] où le peché Aux yeux de Dieu se puisse desnier. Se vante donc, qui voudra s’oublier, Que Dieu ne void des hommes la meschance, Je croy qu’ à rien ne sert tout ce mestier Qu’ à se donner à tout peché licence._”

The similarity is too great to be named on Shakespeare’s part an accidental coincidence; it may surely be set down as a direct allusion, not indeed of the mere copyist, but of the writer, who, having in his mind another’s thought, does not quote it literally, but gives no uncertain indication that he gathered it up he cannot tell where, yet has incorporated it among his own treasures, and makes use of it as entirely his own.

From Corrozet, Georgette de Montenay, Le Bey de Batilly, and others their contemporaries, we might adduce various Moral and Æsthetical Emblems to which there are similarities of thought or of expression in Shakespeare’s Dramas, but too slight to deserve special notice. For instance, there are ingratitude, the instability of the world, faith and charity and hope, calumny, adversity, friendship, fearlessness,—but to dwell upon them would lengthen our statements and remarks more than is necessary.

We will, however, make one more extract from Corrozet’s “HECATOMGRAPHIE” (Emb. 83); to the motto, _Beauty the companion of goodness_; which might have been in Duke Vincentio’s mind (_Measure for Measure_, act iii. sc. 1, l. 175, vol. i. p. 340) when he addressed Isabel,—

“The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good; the goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair.”

Beautlé compaigne de bonté.

Comme la pierre precieuſe Eſt à l’anneau d’or bien conioncte, Ainſi la beaulté gracieuſe Doibt eſtr[e/] auecq la bonté ioincte.

La pierre bonne A l’homme donne Ioyeuseté, Quand la personne A voir ſ’adonne Sa grand clarté, Mais ſa beaulté Et dignité Augmente quand l’or l’enuironne Que ie compar[e/] à la bonté Pour ſa treſgrande vtilité Qui à telle vertu conſonne.

* Form[e/] elegante Beaulté patente De personnage Du tout augmente Se rend luyſante Quand il est ſage Non au viſage, Mais au courage Reluyct la bonté excellente Et alors c’eſt vng chef d’ouurage Quand on eſt tresbeau de corſage Et qu’au cueur eſt vertu latente.

The French verse which immediately follows the Emblem well describes it,—

“As, for the precious stone The ring of gold is coin’d; So, beauty in its grace Should be to goodness join’d.”

The dramas we have liberty to select from furnish several instances of the same thought. First, from the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ (act iv. sc. 2, l. 38, vol. i. p. 135), in that exquisitely beautiful little song which answers the question, “Who is Silvia?”—

“Who is Silvia? what is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admired be.

Is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness. Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness, And, being help’d, inhabits there.

Then to Silvia let us sing, That Silvia is excelling; She excels each mortal thing Upon the dull earth dwelling: To her let us garlands bring.”

But a closer parallelism to Corrozet’s Emblem of beauty joined to goodness occurs in _Henry VIII._ (act ii. sc. 3, lines 60 and 75, vol. vi. pp. 45, 46); it is in the soliloquy or _aside_ speech of the Lord Chamberlain, who had been saying to Anne Bullen,—

“The king’s majesty Commends his good opinion of you, and Does purpose honour to you no less flowing Than Marchioness of Pembroke.”

With perfect tact Anne meets the flowing honours, and says,—

“Vouchsafe to speak my thanks and my obedience, As from a blushing handmaid to his highness, Whose health and royalty I pray for.”

In an _aside_ the Chamberlain owns,—

“I have perused her well; Beauty and honour in her are so mingled That they have caught the king: and who knows yet But from this lady may proceed a gem To lighten all this isle?”

So on Romeo’s first sight of Juliet _(Romeo and Juliet_, act i. sc. 5, l. 41, vol. vii. p. 30), her beauty and inner worth called forth the confession,—

“O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.”

And the Sonnet (CV. vol. ix. p. 603, l. 4) that represents love,—

“Still constant in a wondrous excellence;”

also tells us of the abiding beauty of the soul,—

“‘Fair, kind, and true,’ is all my argument, ‘Fair, kind, and true,’ varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. ‘Fair, kind, and true,’ have often lived alone, Which three till now never kept seat in one.”

The power of Conscience, as the soul’s bulwark against adversities, has been sung from the time when Horace wrote (_Epist._ i. 1. 60),—

“Hic murus aëneus esto, Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa,”—

“This be thy wall of brass, to be conscious to thyself of no shame, to become pale at no crime.”

Or, in the still more popular ode (_Carm._ i. 22), which being of old recited in the palaces of Mæcenas and Augustus at Rome, has, after the flow of nearly nineteen centuries, been revived in the drawing rooms of Paris and London, and of the whole civilized world;—

“Integer vitæ, scelerisque purus, Non eget Mauris jaculis, neque arcu, Non venenatis gravida sagittis, Fusce, pharetra,”—

“He, sound in his life, from all transgression free, Doth need no Moorish javelins, nor bended bow, Nor of arrows winged with poisons a quiver-tree, Fuscus, to strike his foe.”[173]

Both these sentiments of the lyric poet have been imitated or adapted by the dramatic; as in _2 Henry VI._ (act iii. sc. 2, l. 232, vol. v. p. 171), where the good king exclaims,—

“What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted! Thrice is he arm’d, that hath his quarrel just, And he but naked, though lock’d up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.”

And again, in _Titus Andronicus_ (act iv. sc. 2, l. 18, vol. vi. p. 492), in the words of the original, on the scroll which Demetrius picks up,—

“_Dem._ What’s here? A scroll, and written round about! Let’s see: [_Reads._] ‘Integer vitæ, scelerisque purus, Non eget Mauri jaculis, nec arcu.’ _Chi._ O, ’tis a verse in Horace; I know it well: I read it in the grammar long ago. _Aar._ Ay, just; a verse in Horace; right, you have it. [_Aside._] Now, what a thing it is to be an ass! Here’s no sound jest: the old man hath found their guilt, And sends them weapons wrapp’d about with lines, That wound, beyond their feeling, to the quick.”

Several of the Emblem writers, however, propound a sentiment not so generally known, in which Apollo’s favourite tree, the Laurel, is the token of a soul unalarmed by threatening evils. Sambucus and Whitney so consider it, and illustrate it with the motto,—_The pure conscience is man’s laurel tree._

Conſcientia integra, laurus.

The saying rests on the ancient persuasion that the laurel is the sign of joy, victory and safety, and that it is never struck even by the bolts of Jove. Sambucus, personifying the laurel, celebrates its praise in sixteen elegiac lines beginning,—

“PRONA _virens cælum ſpecto, nec fulmina terrent, Ob ſcelus excelſa quæ iacit arce pater,” &c._

“Spread out flourishing heaven I survey, nor do lightnings terrify, Though for crime’s sake the father hurls them from citadels on high, Yea even with my leaves I crackle, and although burnt Daphne I name, whom the master’s love so importuned. So conscious virtue strengthens, and placed far from destruction Pleasing my state is to powers above, and long time is flourishing. Men’s voices he never fears, nor the weapons of fire, Who hath girded his mind round with snow-bright love. This mind the raging Eumenides will not distress, nor the home For the sad and the guiltless overturn’d without cause. Even the hoary swan worn out in inactive old age Gives forth admonitions, as it sings from a stifling throat; Pure of heart with its mate conversing, it washes in water, And morals of clearest hue in due form rehearses. Who repents of unlawful life, and whom conscious errors Do not oppress,—that man sings forth hymns everlasting.”

These thoughts in briefer and more nervous style Whitney rehearses to the old theme, _A brazen wall, a sound conscience_ (p. 67),—

_Murus æneus, ſana conſcientia._ _To_ MILES HOBART _Eſquier_.

“BOTHE freshe, and greene, the Laurell standeth sounde, Thoughe lightninges flasshe, and thunderboltes do flie: Where, other trees are blasted to the grounde, Yet, not one leafe of it, is withered drie: Euen so, the man that hathe a conscience cleare. When wicked men, doe quake at euerie blaste, Doth constant stande, and dothe no perrilles feare, When tempestes rage, doe make the worlde agaste: Suche men are like vnto the Laurell tree, The others, like the blasted boughes that die.”

But a much fuller agreement with the above motto does Whitney express in the last stanza of Emblem 32,—

“A conscience cleare, is like a wall of brasse, That dothe not shake, with euerie shotte that hittes; Eauen soe there by, our liues wee quiet passe, When guiltie mindes, are rack’de with fearful fittes: Then keepe thee pure, and soile thee not with sinne, For after guilte, thine inwarde greifes beginne.”

The same property is assigned to the Laurel by Joachim Camerarius (“EX RE HERBARIA,” p. 35, edition 1590). He quotes several authorities, or opinions for supposing that the laurel was not injured by lightning. Pliny, he says, supported the notion; the Emperor Tiberius in thunder storms betook himself to the shelter of the laurel; and Augustus before him did the same thing, adding as a further protection a girdle made from the skin of a sea-calf. Our modern authorities give no countenance to either of these fancies.

Now, combining the thoughts on Conscience presented by the Emblems on the subject which have been quoted, can we fail to perceive in Shakespeare, when he speaks of Conscience and its qualities, a general agreement with Sambucus, and more especially with Whitney?

How finely, in _Henry VIII._ (act iii. sc. 2, l. 372, vol. vi. p. 76), do the old Cardinal and his faithful Cromwell converse,—

“_Enter_ CROMWELL, _and stands amazed._ _Wol._ Why, how now, Cromwell! _Crom._ I have no power to speak, sir. _Wol._ What, amazed At my misfortunes? can thy spirit wonder A great man should decline? Nay, an you weep, I am fall’n indeed. _Crom._ How does your grace? _Wol._ Why, well: Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell. I know myself now; and I feel within me A peace above all earthly dignities, A still and quiet conscience. . . . . . . . . I am able now, methinks, Out of a fortitude of soul I feel, To endure more miseries and greater far Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer.”

And, on the other hand, the stings of Conscience, the deep remorse for iniquities, the self-condemnation which lights upon the sinful, never had expounder so forcible and true to nature. When Alonso, as portrayed in the _Tempest_ (act iii. sc. 3, l. 95, vol. i. p. 53), thought of his cruel treachery to his brother Prospero, he says,—

“O, it is monstrous, monstrous! Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it: The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder. That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass.”

And the King’s dream, on the eve of Bosworth battle (_Richard III._, act v. sc. 3, lines 179, 193, and 200, vol. v. p. 625), what a picture it gives of the tumult of his soul!—

“O coward conscience, how dost thou affright me! . . . . . . . . My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. . . . . . . . . There is no creature loves me; And, if I die, no soul shall pity me:— Nay, wherefore should they? since that I myself, Find in myself no pity to myself. Methought, the souls of all that I had murder’d Came to my tent; and everyone did threat To-morrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.”

Various expressions of the dramatist may end this notice of the Judge within us,—

“The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul.”

“Every man’s conscience is a thousand swords To fight against that bloody homicide.”

“I’ll haunt thee, like a wicked conscience still, That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy thought.”

“Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.”

In some degree allied to the power of conscience is the retribution for sin ordained by the Divine Wisdom. We have not an Emblem to present in illustration, but the lines from _King Lear_ (act v. sc. 3. l. 171, vol. viii. p. 416),—

“The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us,”—

are so co-incident with a sentiment in the _Confessions_ (bk. i. c. 12, § 19) of the great Augustine that they deserve at least to be set in juxta-position. The Bishop is addressing the Supreme in prayer, and naming the sins and follies of his youth, says,—

“_De peccanti meipso justè retribuebas mihi._ JUSISTI _enim, & sic est, ut pœna sua sibi sit omnis inordinatus animis._”

_i.e._ “By my own sin Thou didst justly punish me. For thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection should bear its own punishment.”[174]

“_Timon of Athens_,” we are informed by Dr. Drake (vol. ii. p. 447), “is an admirable satire on the folly and ingratitude of mankind; the former exemplified in the thoughtless profusion of Timon, the latter in the conduct of his pretended friends; it is, as Dr. Johnson observes,—

“‘A very powerful warning against that ostentatious liberality, which scatters bounty, but confers no benefits, and buys flattery but not friendship.’”

There is some doubt whether Shakespeare derived his idea of this play from the notices of Timon which appear in Lucian, or from those given by Plutarch. The fact, however, that the very excellent work by Sir Thomas North, Knight, _The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romaines, &c._, was published in 1579,—and that Shakespeare copies it very closely in the account of Timon’s sepulchre and epitaph, show, I think, Plutarch to have been the source of his knowledge of Timon’s character and life.

One of the Emblem writers, Sambucus, treated of the same subject in eighteen Latin elegiacs, and expressly named it, _Timon the Misanthrope_. The scene, too, which the device represents, is in a garden, and we can very readily fancy that the figure on the left is the old steward Flavius come to reason with his master,—

Μισάνθρωπ!ος! Τίμων. _Ad Hieron. Cardanum._

ODERAT _hic cunctos, nec ſe, nec amabat amicos, Μισῶν ἀνθρώπους nomina digna gerens. Hoc vitium, & morbus de bili naſcitur atra, Anxiat hæc, curas ſuppeditatque graues. Quapropter cecidiſſe piro, fregiſſeque crura Fertur, & auxilium non petiiſſe malo. Suauibus à sociis, & conſuetudine dulci Qui se ſubducunt, vulnera ſæua ferunt. Conditio hæc miſera eſt, triſtes ſuſpiria ducunt, Cumque nihil cauſæ eſt, occubuiſſe velint. At tu dum poteris, noto ſociere ſodali, Subleuet vt preſſum, corque dolore vacet. Quos nulla attingunt prorſus commercia grato Atque ſodalitio, ſubſidiisque carent: Aut Dij ſunt proprij, aut falſus peruertit inanes Senſus, vt hos ſtolidos, vanaque corda putes. Tu verò tandem nobis dialectica ſponte Donata, in lucem mittito, ſi memor es._

In this case we have given the Latin of Sambucus in full, and append a nearly literal translation,—

“All men did he hate, nor loved himself, nor his kindred,— One hating mankind was the name, worthy of him, he bore. This faultiness and disease from the black bile arise, When freely it flows heavy cares it increases. Wherefore from a pear tree he is said to have fallen, To have broken his legs, nor help to have sought for the evil. From pleasant companions, and sweet conversation They who withdraw themselves, cruel wounds have to bear. Wretched this state of theirs, sorrowful what sighs they draw, And though never a cause arise, ’tis their wish to have died. But thou, while the power remains, join thy well-known companion, Thee overwhelmed he strengthens, and free sets the heart from its grief. Whom, with a friend that is pleasing, never intercourse touches, Without companionship, long without assistance they remain. Either the gods are our own, or false feeling perverteth the soul, And you fancy men stupid, and their hearts all are vain. To us at length reasoning power freely being granted, Into light do thou send them, if of light thou art mindful.”

The character here sketched is deficient in the thorough heartiness of hatred for which Shakespeare’s Timon is distinguished, yet may it have served him for the primal material out of which to create the drama. In Sambucus there is a mistiness of thought and language which might be said almost to prefigure the doubtful utterances of some of our modern philosophers, but in Shakespeare the master himself takes in hand the pencil of true genius, and by the contrasts and harmonies, the unmistakeable delineations and portraitures, lays on the canvas a picture as rich in its colouring as it is constant in its fidelity to nature, and as perfect in its finish as it is bold in its conceptions.

The extravagance of Timon’s hatred may be gathered from only a few of his expressions,—

“Burn, house! sink, Athens! henceforth hated be Of Timon man and all humanity.” _Timon of Athens_, act iii. sc. 6, l. 103

“Timon will to the woods, where he shall find The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind The gods confound—hear me, you good gods all!— The Athenians both within and out that wall! And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow To the whole race of mankind, high and low! Amen.”