(Vol. vii., p. 469.)
In your 185th Number, two or three Queries are proposed by the REV. MR.
CORSER in {580} connexion with that interesting branch of literature called
_Books of Emblems_. To these it shall be my endeavour to reply.
First. Some years ago I made particular inquiry from the surviving
relatives of the late Rev. William Beloe, whether among his manuscripts
there had been found any "Treatise on Emblems," or any notices which had a
bearing on the subject? They informed me that they had made search, but
without success.
Second. Of Thomas Combe, mentioned by Meres in his _Palladis Tamia_, I have
been unable to learn anything.
Third. It appears certain that Bunyan never published any _Book of
Emblems_, whatever may have been hawked under his name; nor can I find, in
the Account of his Life and Writings just published in Glasgow, Edinburgh,
and London, or in any preceding edition of his works, that such a
production was ever contemplated by him.
Fourth. In the extensive and valuable "English Books of Emblems" furnished
(chiefly from his own library) by MR. CORSER, he mentions R. Burton's
_Choice Emblems, Divine and Moral; or Delights for the Ingenious, &c._,
12mo. 1721. Perhaps my learned and accomplished friend may not be aware
that _Burton_ is an _assumed_ name, placed in the title-pages of several
cheap books which appeared at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning
of the eighteenth centuries, but which were thought to have been written by
a Mr. Nathaniel Crouch, a bookseller, who sold them. I have a sixth edition
of these "choice emblems," dated 1732, which was then sold for "two
shillings bound." The work is merely a collection of fifty emblems, taken,
without acknowledgment, from George Wither, the copper-plate engravings
being poor copies from those of Depasse. To this sixth edition there is
prefixed a portrait of K. Charles I., with eight pages of sympathising
verses.
MR. CORSER'S list of English works is very complete. I possess, however, an
unpublished manuscript translation of Alciato into English verse. It is of
the time of James I., and possesses much merit; but it has unfortunately
been mutilated.