CHAPTER VII.

MISCELLANEOUS EMBLEMS; RECAPITULATION, AND CONCLUSION.

Emblems Miscellaneous will include some which have been omitted, or which remain unclassified from not belonging to any of the foregoing divisions. They are placed here without any attempt to bring them into any special order.

Several words and forms of thought employed by the Emblem writers, and especially by Whitney, have counterparts, if not direct imitations, in Shakespeare’s dramas; he often treats of the same heroes in the same way.

Thus, in reference to Paris and Helen, Whitney utters his opinion respecting them (p. 79),—

“Thoughe PARIS, had his HELEN at his will, Thinke howe his faite, was ILIONS foule deface.”

And Shakespeare sets forth Troilus (_Troilus and Cressida_, act ii. sc. 2, l. 81, vol. vi. p. 164) as saying of Helen,—

“Why, she is a pearl, Whose price hath launch’d above a thousand ships, And turn’d crown’d kings to merchants.”

And then, as adding (l. 92),—

“O, theft most base, That we have stol’n what we do fear to keep! But thieves unworthy of a thing so stol’n. That in their country did them that disgrace, We fear to warrant in our native place!”

Whitney inscribes a frontispiece or dedication of his work with the letters, D. O. M.,—_i.e._, _Deo, Optimo, Maximo_,—“To God, best, greatest,”—and writes,—

D. O. M.

_Since man is fraile, and all his thoughtes are sinne, And of him ſelfe he can no good inuent, Then euerie one, before they oughte beginne, Should call on GOD, from whome all grace is ſent: So, I beſeeche, that he the ſame will ſende, That, to his praiſe I maie beginne, and ende._

Very similar sentiments are enunciated in several of the dramas; as in _Twelfth Night_ (act iii. sc. 4, l. 340, vol. iii. p. 285),—

“Taint of vice, whose strong corruption Inhabits our frail blood.”

In _Henry VIII._ (act v. sc. 3, l. 10, vol. vi. p. 103), the Lord Chancellor says to Cranmer,—

“But we all are men, In our own nature frail and capable Of our flesh; few are angels.”

Even Banquo (_Macbeth_, act ii. sc. 1, l. 7, vol. vii. P. 444) can utter the prayer,—

“Merciful powers, Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature Gives way to in repose!”

And very graphically does Richard III. (act iv. sc. 2, l. 65, vol. v. p. 583) describe our sinfulness as prompting sin,—

“But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin.”

Or as Romeo puts the case (_Romeo and Juliet_, act v. sc. 3, l. 61, vol. vii. p. 124),—

“I beseech thee, youth, Put not another sin upon my head, By urging me to fury.”

Coriolanus thus speaks of man’s “unstable lightness” (_Coriolanus_, act iii. sc. 1, l. 160, vol. vi. p. 344),—

“Not having the power to do the good it would, For the ill which doth control ’t.”

Human dependence upon God’s blessing is well expressed by the conqueror at Agincourt (_Henry V._, act iv. sc. 7, l. 82, vol. iv. p. 582),—“Praised be God, and not our strength, for it;” and (act iv. sc. 8, l. 100),—

“O God, thy arm was here! And not to us, but to thy arm alone Ascribe we all.”

And simply yet truly does the Bishop of Carlisle point out that dependence to Richard II. (act iii. sc. 2, l. 29, vol. iv. p. 164),—

“The means that heaven yields must be embraced, And not neglected; else, if heaven would, And we will not, heaven’s offer we refuse, The proffer’d means of succour and redress.”

The closing thought of Whitney’s whole passage is embodied in Wolsey’s earnest charge to Cromwell (_Henry VIII._, act iii. sc. 2, l. 446, vol. vi. p. 79),—

“Be just, and fear not: Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Thy God’s, and truth’s; then if thou fall’st, O Cromwell, Thou fall’st a blessed martyr!”

The various methods of treating the very same subject by the professed Emblem writers will prove that, even with a full knowledge of their works, a later author may yet allow scarcely a hint to escape him, that he was acquainted, in some particular instance, with the sentiments and expressions of his predecessors; indeed, that knowledge itself may give birth to thoughts widely different in their general character. To establish this position we offer a certain proverb which both Sambucus and Whitney adopt, the almost paradoxical saying, _We flee the things which we follow, and they flee us_,—

Quæ ſequimur fugimus, nosq́ue fugiunt. _Ad Philip. Apianum._

QVID _ſemper querimur deeſſe nobis? Cur nunquam ſatiat fames perennis? Haud res nos fugiunt, loco ſolemus Ipſi cedere ſed fugaciore. Mors nos arripit antè quàm lucremur Tantum quod cupimus, Deum & precamur, Vel ſi rem fateare confitendam, Res, & nos fugimus ſimul fugaces. Ne ſint diuitiæ tibi dolori: Ac veram ſtatuas beatitatem Firmis rebus, in aſperaq́ue vita._

In both instances there is exactly the same pictorial illustration, indeed the wood-block which was engraved for the Emblems of Sambucus, in 1564, with simply a change of border, did service for Whitney’s Emblems in 1586. The device contains Time, winged and flying and holding forward a scythe; a man and woman walking before him, the scythe being held over their heads threateningly,—the man as he advances turning half round and pointing to a treasure-box left behind. Sambucus thus moralizes,—

“What do we querulous always deem our want? Why never to hunger sense of fulness grant? Wealth flees us not,—but we accustomed are By our own haste its benefits to mar. Death takes us off before we reach the gain Great as our wish; and vows to God we feign For wealth which fleeing at the time we flee, Even when wealth around we own to be. O let not riches prove thy spirit’s bane! Nor shall thou seek for happiness in vain,— Though rough thy paths of life on every hand, Firm on its base thy truest bliss shall stand.”

Now Whitney adopts, in part at least, a much more literal interpretation; he follows out what the figure of Time and the accessory figures suggest, and so improves his proverb-text as to found upon it what appears pretty plainly to have been the groundwork of the ancient song,—“The old English gentleman, one of the olden time.” The type of that truly venerable character was “THOMAS WILBRAHAM _Esquier_,” an early patron of Lord Chancellor Egerton. Whitney’s lines are (p. 199),—

“Wee flee, from that wee seeke; & followe, that wee leaue: And, whilst wee thinke our webbe to skante, & larger still would weaue, Lo, Time dothe cut vs of, amid our carke: and care. Which warneth all, that haue enoughe, and not contented are. For to inioye their goodes, their howses, and their landes: Bicause the Lorde vnto that end, commits them to their handes.

Yet, those whose greedie mindes: enoughe, doe thinke too small: Whilst that with care they seeke for more, oft times are reu’d of all, Wherefore all such (I wishe) that spare, where is no neede: To vse their goodes whilst that they may, for time apace doth speede. And since, by proofe I knowe, you hourde not vp your store; Whose gate, is open to your frende: and purce, vnto the pore: And spend vnto your praise, what GOD dothe largely lende: I chiefly made my choice of this, which I to you commende. In hope, all those that see your name, aboue the head: Will at your lampe, their owne come light, within your steppes to tread. Whose daily studie is, your countrie to adorne: And for to keepe a worthie house, in place where you weare borne.”

In the spirit of one part of these stanzas is a question in Philemon Holland’s _Plutarch_ (p. 5). “What meane you, my masters, and whither run you headlong, carking and caring all that ever you can to gather goods and rake riches together?”

Similar in its meaning to the two Emblems just considered is another by Whitney (p. 218), _Mulier vmbra viri_,—“Woman the shadow of man,”—

“Ovr shadowe flies, if wee the same pursue: But if wee flie, it followeth at the heele. So, he throughe loue that moste dothe serue, and sue, Is furthest off his mistresse harte is steele. But if hee flie, and turne awaie his face, Shee followeth straight, and grones to him for grace.”

This Emblem is very closely followed in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ (act ii. sc. 2, l. 187, vol. i. p. 196), when Ford, in disguise as “Master Brook,” protests to Falstaff that he had followed Mrs. Ford “with a doting observance;” “briefly,” he says, “I have pursued her as love hath pursued me; which hath been on the wing of all occasions,”—

“Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues; Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.”

Death in most of its aspects is described and spoken of by the great Dramatist, and possibly we might hunt out some expressions of his which coincide with those of the Emblem writers on the same subject, but generally his mention of death is peculiarly his own,—as when Mortimer says (_1 Henry VI._, act ii. sc. 5, l. 28, vol. v. p. 40),—

“The arbitrator of despairs, Just death, kind umpire of men’s miseries, With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence.”

In his beautiful edition of Holbein’s _Dance of Death_, Noel Humphreys (p. 81), in describing the CANONESS, thus conjectures,—“May not Shakespeare have had this device in his mind when penning the passage in which Othello” (act v. sc. 2, l. 7, vol. viii. p. 574), “determining to kill Desdemona, exclaims, ‘Put out the light—and then—put out the light?’”

The way, however, in which Shakespeare sometimes speaks of Death and Sleep induces the supposition that he was acquainted with those passages in Holbein’s _Simulachres de la Mort_ (Lyons, 1538) which treat of the same subjects by the same method. Thus,—

“Cicero disoit bien: Tu as le sommeil pour imaige de la Mort, & tous les iours tu ten reuestz. Et si doubtes, sil y à nul sentiment a la Mort, combien que tu voyes qu’ en son simulachre il n’y à nul sentimẽt.” Sign. Liij _verso_. And again, sign. Liiij _verso_, “La Mort est le veritable reffuge, la santé parfaicte, le port asseure, la victoire entiere, la chair sans os, le poisson sans espine, le grain sans paille.... La Mort est vng eternel sommeil, vne dissolution du Corps, vng espouuẽtement des riches, vng desir des pouures, vng cas ineuitable, vng pelerinaige incertain, vng larron des hõmes, vne Mere du dormir, vne vmbre de vie, vng separement des viuans, vne compaignie des Mortz.”

Thus the Prince Henry by his father’s couch, thinking him dead, says (_2 Hen. IV._, act iv. sc. 5, l. 35, vol. iv. p. 453),—

“This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep, That from this golden rigol hath divorced So many English kings.”

And still more pertinently speaks the Duke (_Measure for Measure_, act iii. sc. 1, l. 17, vol. i. p. 334),—

“Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear’st Thy death, which is no more.”

Again, before Hermione, as a statue (_Winter’s Tale_, act v. sc. 3, l. 18, vol. iii. p. 423),—

“prepare To see the life as lively mock’d as ever Still sleep mock’d death.”

Or in _Macbeth_ (act ii. sc. 3, l. 71, vol. vii. p. 454), when Macduff raises the alarm,—

“Malcolm! awake! Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, And look on death itself! up, up, and see The great doom’s image.”[180]

Finally, in that noble soliloquy of Hamlet (act iii. sc. 1, lines 60–69, vol. viii. p. 79),—

“To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to; ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep: To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life.”

So the _Evils of Human Life_ and the _Eulogy on Death_, ascribed in Holbein’s _Simulachres de la Mort_ to Alcidamus, sign. Liij _verso_[181] may have been suggestive of the lines in continuation of the above soliloquy in _Hamlet_, namely (lines 70–76),—

“For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin?”

To another of the devices of the _Images of Death_ (Lyons, 1547), attributed to Holbein, we may also refer as the source of one of the Dramatist’s descriptions, in Douce’s _Dance of Death_, (London, 1833, and Bonn’s, 1858); the device in question is numbered XLIII. and bears the title of the IDIOT FOOL. Woltmann’s _Holbein and his Time_ (Leipzig, 1868, vol. ii. p. 121), names the figure “~Narr des Todes~,”—_Death’s Fool_,—and thus discourses respecting it. “Among the supplemental Figures,”—that is to say, in the edition of 1545, supplemental to the _forty-one_ Figures in the edition of 1538,—“is found that of the Fool, which formerly in the Spectacle-plays of the _Dance of Death_ represented by living persons played an important part. Also as these were no longer wont to be exhibited, the Episode of the contest of Death with the Fool was kept separate, and for the diversion of the people became a pantomimic representation. From England expressly have we information that this usage maintained itself down to the former century. The Fool’s efforts and evasions in order to escape from Death, who in the end became his master, form the subject of the particular figures. On such representations Shakespeare thought in his verses in _Measure for Measure_” (act iii. sc. 1, lines 6–13, vol. i. p. 334). Though Woltmann gives only three lines, we add the whole passage better to bring out the sense,—

“Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences, That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st, Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death’s fool; For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun, And yet runn’st toward him still.”

The action described by Shakespeare is so conformable to Holbein’s Figures of Death and the Idiot Fool that, without doing violence to the probability, we may conclude that the two portraits had been in the Poet’s eye as well as in his mind.

Woltmann’s remarks in continuation uphold this idea. He says (vol. ii. p. 122),—

“Also in the Holbein picture the Fool is foolish enough to think that he can slip away from Death. He springs aside, seeks through his movements to delude him, and brandishes the leather-club, in order unseen to plant a blow on his adversary; and this adversary seems in sport to give in, skips near him, playing on the bag-pipe, but unobserved has him fast by the garment, in order not again to let him loose.”

Old Time is a character introduced by way of Chorus into the _Winter’s Tale_ (act iv. sc. 1, l. 7, vol. III. p. 371), and he takes upon himself “to use his wings,” as he says,—

“It is in my power To o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour To plant and o’erwhelm custom. Let me pass The same I am, ere ancient’st order was Or what is now received: I witness to The times that brought them in; so shall I do To the freshest things now reigning, and make stale The glistering of this present.”

Something of the same paradox which appears in the Emblematist’s motto, “What we follow we flee,” also distinguishes the quibbling dialogue about time between Dromio of Syracuse and Adriana (_Comedy of Errors_,