_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._
[Illustration: _Whitney_, 1586.]
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._
[Illustration: _Whitney, 1586._]
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._
[Illustration: _Whitney, 1586._]
“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.
[Illustration: _Corrozet, 1540._]
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.
[Illustration: _Sambucus, 1564._]
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._
[Illustration: _Sambucus, 1584._]
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.”
Act iv. sc. 1, l. 35.
“All is oblique;
There’s nothing level in our cursed natures
But direct villany. Therefore be abhorr’d
All feasts, societies and throngs of men.”
Act iv. sc. 3, l. 18
“I am misanthropos, and hate mankind.
For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog,
That I might love thee something.”
Act iv. sc. 3, l. 51
“I never had honest man about me, I; all
I kept were knaves, to serve in meat to villains.”
Act iv. sc. 3, l. 475
And so his ungoverned passion of hatred goes on until it culminates in
the epitaph placed on his tomb, which he names his “everlasting
mansion,”—
“Upon the beached verge of the salt flood.”
That epitaph as given by Shakespeare, from North’s _Plutarch_ (edition
1579, p. 1003), is almost a literal rendering from the real epitaph
recorded in the Greek Anthology (Jacobs, vol. i. p. 86),—
“Ἐνθάδ’ ἀποῤῥηξας ψυχὴν βαρυδαίμονα κεῖμαι,
Τοὔνομα δ’ οὐ πεύσεσθε, κακοὶ δὲ κακῶς ἀπόλοισθε.”
Of which a very close translation will be,—
“Here, having rent asunder a dæmon oppressed soul, I lie;
The name ye shall not inquire, but ye bad ones badly shall perish.”
The epitaph of the drama (_Timon of Athens_, act v. sc. 4, l. 69, vol.
vii. p. 305) is thus read by Alcibiades from the wax impression taken at
the tomb,—
“Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft:
Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!
Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate:
Pass by and curse thy fill: but pass and stay not here thy gait.”
Plutarch[175] introduces a mention of Timon into the life of Marc
Antony, whom he compares in some respects to the misanthrope of Athens.
He gives the same epitaph as that of the Anthology above quoted, except
a letter or two,—
“Ἐνθαδ’ ἀποῤῥήξας ψυχὴν βαρυδαίμονα κεῖμαι,
Τοὔνομα δ’ οὐ πευσοισθε, κακοὶ δὲ κακῶς ἀπόλοισθε.”
Plutarch avers, “καὶ τοὺτο μὲν αὐτὸν ἔτιζῶντα πεποιηκέναι λέγουσι,”—“And
people say that during his life he himself made this epitaph.” The
narrator then adds, “τοὺτο δε περιφερόμενον, Καλλιμάχου εστι,”—“But this
round the margin is by Callimachus,”—
“Τίμων μισάνθρωπος ἐσοικέω· ἀλλα πάρελθε
Οἰμώζειν εἴπας πολλὰ, πάρελθε μόνον.”
“I, Timon the manhater dwell within: but pass by,
To bewail _me_ thou hast spoken many things;—only pass by.“
The two epitaphs Shakespeare has combined into one, showing indeed his
acquaintance with the above passage through North’s _Plutarch_, but not
discriminating the authorship of the two parts. North’s translation of
the epitaphs is simple and expressive, but the Langhornes, in 1770,
vulgarise the lines into,—
“At last I’ve bid the knaves farewell
Ask not my name, but go to hell.”
“My name is Timon: knaves begone,
Curse me, but come not near my stone.”
How Wrangham, in his edition of the Langhornes, 1826, could without
notice let this pass for a translation, is altogether unaccountable!
Shakespeare’s, adapted as it is by Sir Thomas North in 1612, may
certainly be regarded as a direct version from the Greek, and might
reasonably be adduced to prove that he possessed some knowledge of that
language. Probably, however, he collected, as he could, the general
particulars respecting the veritable and historical Timon, and obtained
the help of some man of learning so as to give the very epitaph which in
the time of the Peloponnesian war had been placed on the
thorn-surrounded sepulchre of the Athenian misanthrope.
To conclude this notice we may observe that the breaking of the legs,
which Sambucus mentions, is said to have been the actual cause of the
real Timon’s death; for that in his hatred of mankind he even hated
himself, and would not allow a surgeon to attempt his cure.
Envy and Hatred may be considered as nearly allied, the latter too often
springing from the former. Alciat, in his 71st Emblem, gives a brief
description of Envy,—
“SQVALLIDA _vipereas manducans femina carnes,
Cuiq. dolent oculi, quæq. suum cor edit,
Quam macies & pallor habent, spinosaq. gestat
Tela manu: talis pingitur Inuidia._”
Thus amplified with considerable force of expression by Whitney (p.
94),[176]—
_Inuidiæ deſcriptio._
[Illustration: _Whitney_, 1586.]
“WHAT hideous hagge with visage sterne appeares?
Whose feeble limmes, can scarce the bodie staie:
This, Enuie is: leane, pale, and full of yeares,
Who with the blisse of other pines awaie.
And what declares, her eating vipers broode?
That poysoned thoughtes, bee euermore her foode.
What meanes her eies? so bleared, sore, and redd:
Her mourninge still, to see an others gaine.
And what is mente by snakes vpon her head?
The fruite that springes, of such a venomed braine.
But whie, her harte shee rentes within her brest?
It shewes her selfe, doth worke her owne vnrest.
Whie lookes shee wronge? bicause shee woulde not see,
An happie wight, which is to her a hell:
What other partes within this furie bee?
Her harte, with gall: her tonge, with stinges doth swell.
And laste of all, her staffe with prickes aboundes:
Which showes her wordes, wherewith the good shee woundes.”
The dramatist speaks of the horrid creature with equal power. Among his
phrases are,—
“Thou makest thy knife keen; but no metal can,
No, not the hangman’s axe, bear half the keenness
Of thy sharp envy.”
_Merchant of Venice_, act iv. sc. 1, l. 124
“And for we think the eagle-winged pride
Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts,
With rival-hating envy, set on you
To wake our peace.”
_Richard II._, act i. sc. 3, l. 129
“Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan,
I would invent as bitter-searching terms,
As curst, as harsh and horrible to hear,
Deliver’d strongly through my fixed teeth,
With full as many signs of deadly hate,
As lean-faced Envy in her loathsome cave.”
_2 Hen. VI._, act iii. sc. 2, l. 310
“’tis greater skill
In a true hate, to pray they have their will:
The very devils cannot plague them better.”
_Cymbeline_, act ii. sc. 5, l. 33
“Men that make
Envy and crooked malice nourishment
Dare bite the best.”
_Hen. VIII._, act v. sc. 3, l. 43
“That monster envy.”
_Pericles_, act iv. _Introd._, l. 12
The ill-famed Thersites, that railer of the Grecian camp, may close the
array against “the hideous hagge with visage sterne” (_Troilus and
Cressida_, act ii. sc. 3, l. 18, vol. vi. p. 169),—
“I have said my prayers; and devil Envy say Amen.”
The wrong done to the soul, through denying it at the last hour the
consolations of religion, or through negligence in not informing it of
its danger when severe illness arises, is set forth with true
Shakespearean power in Holbein’s _Simulachres & Historiees faces de la
Mort_ (Lyons, 1538), on sign. Nij,—
“O si ceulx, qui font telles choses, scauoient le mal qu’ilz font,
ilz ne cõmettroient iamais vne si grande faulte. Car de me oster mes
biens, persecuter ma personne, denigrer ma renommée, ruyner ma maison,
destruire mõ parẽtaige, scãdalizer ma famille, criminer ma vie, ces
ouures sõt dũg cruel ennemy. Mais d’estre occasion, q̃ ie perde mõ ame,
pour nõ la cõseiller au besoing, c’est vne oeuure dũg diable d’Enfer.
Car pire est q̃ vng diable l’hõme, qui trompe le malade.”
It is in a similar strain that Shakespeare in _Othello_ (act iii. sc. 3,
lines 145 and 159, vol. viii. pp. 512, 513) speaks of the wrong done by
keeping back confidence, and by countenancing calumny,—
“_Oth._ Thou dost conspire against thy friend, Iago,
If thou but think’st him wrong’d and mak’st his ear
A stranger to thy thoughts.
. . . . . . . .
_Iago._ It were not for your quiet nor your good,
Nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom,
To let you know my thoughts.
_Oth._ What dost thou mean?
_Iago._ Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.”
The gallant ship, courageously handled and with high soul of
perseverance and fearlessness guided through adverse waves, has for long
ages been the type of brave men and brave women struggling against
difficulties, or of states and nations amid opposing influences battling
for deliverance and victory. Even if that gallant ship fails in her
voyage she becomes a fitting type, how “human affairs may decline at
their highest.” So Sambucus, and Whitney after him (p. 11), adapt their
device and stanzas to the motto,—
Res humanæ in ſummo declinant.
[Illustration: _Sambucus, 1584._]
IN _medio librat Phœbus dum lumina cælo,
Diſſoluit radiis, quæ cecidere, niues.
Cùm res humanæ in ſummo ſtant, ſæpe liqueſcunt:
Et nihil æternum, quod rapit atra dies.
Nil iuuat ingentes habitare palatia Reges,
Conditio miſeros hæc eadémque manet.
Mors æquat cunctos, opibus nec parcit in horam,
Verbáque dum Volitant, ocyus illa venit.
Heu, leuiter ventus pellit nos omnis inermes,
Concidimus citiùs quàm leuat aura roſas._
“The gallante Shipp, that cutts the azure surge,
And hathe both tide, and wisshed windes, at will:
Her tackle sure, with shotte her foes to vrge,
With Captaines boulde, and marriners of skill,
With streamers, flagges, topgallantes, pendantes braue,
When Seas do rage, is swallowed in the waue.
The snowe, that falles vppon the mountaines greate,
Though on the Alpes, which seeme the clowdes to reache,
Can not indure the force of Phœbus heate,
But wastes awaie, Experience doth vs teache:
Which warneth all, on Fortunes wheele that clime
To beare in minde how they haue but a time.”
But with brighter auguries, though from a similar device, Alciat (Emb.
43) shadows forth hope for a commonwealth when dangers are threatening.
A noble vessel with its sails set is tossing upon the billows, the
winds, however, wafting it forward; then it is he gives utterance to the
thought, _Constancy the Companion of Victory_; and thus illustrates his
meaning,[177]—
“By storms that are numberless our Commonwealth is shaken,
And hope for safety in the future, hope alone is present:
So a ship with the ocean about her, when the winds seize her,
Gapes with wide fissures ’mid the treacherous waters.
What of help, the shining stars, brothers of Helen, can bring:
To spirits cast down good hope soon doth restore.”
Whitney (p. 37), from the same motto and device, almost with a clarion’s
sound, re-echoes the thought,—
_Constantia comes victoriæ._
_To_ MILES CORBET _Esſquier._
[Illustration: _Whitney, 1586._]
“THE shippe, that longe vppon the sea dothe saile,
And here, and there, with varrijng windes is toste:
On rockes, and sandes, in daunger ofte to quaile.
Yet at the lengthe, obtaines the wished coaste:
Which beinge wonne, the trompetts ratlinge blaste,
Dothe teare the skie, for ioye of perills paste.
Thoughe master reste, thoughe Pilotte take his ease,
Yet nighte, and day, the ship her course dothe keepe:
So, whilst that man dothe saile theise worldlie seas,
His voyage shortes: althoughe he wake, or sleepe.
And if he keepe his course directe, he winnes
That wished porte, where lastinge ioye beginnes.”
To a similar purport is the “FINIS CORONAT OPVS,” _The end crowns the
work_,—of Otho Vænius (p. 108), if perchance Shakespeare may have seen
it. Cupid is watching a sea-tossed ship, and appears to say,—
“_Ni ratis optatum varijs iactata procellis
Obtineat portum, tum perijsse puta.
Futilis est diuturnus amor, ni in fine triumphet,
Nam benè cœpit opus, qui benè finit opus._”
[Sidenote: _i.e._]
“Unless the raft though tossed by various storms
The port desired obtains, think that it perishes;
Vain is the daily love if it no triumph forms,
For well he work begins, who well work finishes.”
Thus, however, rendered at the time into English and Italian,—
“_Where the end is good all is good._”
“The ship toste by the waues doth to no purpose saile,
Vnlesse the porte shee gayn whereto her cours doth tend.
Right so th’ euent of loue appeereth in the end,
For losse it is to loue and neuer to preuaile.”
“Il fine corona l’opere.”
“_Inutile è la naue, che in mar vaga
Senza prender giamai l’amato porto:
Impiagato d’Amor quel cor’ è à torto,
Che con vano sperar mai non s’appaga._”
Messin in his translation of Boissard’s _Emblems_ (edition 1588, p. 24),
takes the motto, “AV NAVIRE AGITÉ _semble le jour de l’homme_,” and
dilates into four stanzas the neatly expressed single stanza of the
original.
“_Vita hæc est tanquam pelago commissa carina,
Instanti semper proxima naufragio.
Optima res homini est non nasci: proxima, si te
Nasci fata velent, quàm citò posse mori._”
[Sidenote: _i.e._]
“This life is as a keel entrusted to the sea,
Ever to threatening shipwreck nearest.
Not to be born for man is best; next, if to thee
The fates give birth, quick death is dearest.”
Shakespeare takes up these various ideas of which the ship in storm and
in calm is typical, and to some of them undoubtedly gives utterance from
the lips of the dauntless Margaret of Anjou (_3 Henry VI._, act v. sc.
4, l. 1, vol. v. p. 325),—
“Great lords, wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss,
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
What though the mast be now blown overboard,
The cable broke, our holding-anchor lost,
And half our sailors swallow’d in the flood?
Yet lives our pilot still: Is’t meet that he
Should leave the helm and like a fearful lad
With tearful eyes add water to the sea
And give more strength to that which hath too much;
Whiles, in his moan, the ship splits on the rock,
Which industry and courage might have saved?
Ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this!
Say, Warwick was our anchor; what of that?
And Montague our top-mast; what of him?
Our slaughter’d friends the tackles; what of these?
Why, is not Oxford here another anchor?
And Somerset another goodly mast?
The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings?
And, though unskilful, why not Ned and I
For once allow’d the skilful pilot’s charge?
We will not from the helm to sit and weep,
But keep our course, though the rough wind say,—no,
From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wreck.
As good to chide the waves as speak them fair.
And what is Edward but a ruthless sea?
What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit?
And Richard but a rugged fatal rock?
All these the enemies to our poor bark.
Say, you can swim; alas, ’tis but a while:
Tread on the sand; why, there you quickly sink:
Bestride the rock; the tide will wash you off,
Or else you famish; that’s a threefold death.
This speak I, lords, to let you understand,
If case some one of you would fly from us,
That there’s no hoped-for mercy with the brothers
More than with ruthless waves, with sands and rocks.
Why, courage then! what cannot be avoided
’Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.”
Well did the bold queen merit the outspoken praises of her son,—
“Methinks, a woman of this valiant spirit
Should, if a coward heard her speak these words,
Infuse his breast with magnanimity,
And make him, naked, foil a man at arms.”
And in a like strain, when Agamemnon would show that the difficulties of
the ten years’ siege of Troy were (l. 20),—
“But the protractive trials of great Jove
To find persistive constancy in men;”
the venerable Nestor, in _Troilus and Cressida_ (act i. sc. 3, l. 33,
vol. vi. p. 142), enforces the thought by adding,—
“In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth,
How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribb’d bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements
Like Perseus’ horse.
. . . . . . . .
Even so
Doth valour’s show and valour’s worth divide
In storms of fortune: for in her ray and brightness
The herd hath more annoyance by the breese
Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,
And flies fled under shade, why then the thing of courage
As roused with rage with rage doth sympathize,
And with an accent tuned in selfsame key
Retorts to chiding fortune.”
To the same great sentiments Georgette Montenay’s “EMBLEMES
CHRESTIENNES” (Rochelle edition, p. 11) supplies a very suitable
illustration; it is to the motto, _Quem timebo_?—“Whom shall I fear?”—
“_Du grand peril des vens & de la mer,
C’est homme a bien cognoissance très claire,
Et ne craind point de se voir abismer
Rusque son Dieu l’adresse et luy esclaire._”
The device itself is excellent,—a single mariner on a tempestuous sea,
undaunted in his little skiff; and the hand of Providence, issuing from
a cloud, holds out to him a beacon light.
“On a student entangled in love,” is the subject of Alciat’s 108th
Emblem. The lover appears to have been a jurisconsult, whom Alciat,
himself a jurisconsult, represents,—
“Immersed in studies, in oratory and right well skilled,
And great especially in all the processes of law,
Haliarina he loves; as much as ever loved
The Thracian prince his sister’s beauteous maid.
Why in Cyprus dost thou overcome Pallas by another judge?
Sufficient is it not to conquer at Mount Ida?”
The unfinished thoughts of Alciat are brought out more completely by
Whitney, who thus illustrates his subject (p. 135),—
_Jn ſtudioſum captum amore._
[Illustration: _Whitney_, 1586.]
“A Reuerend sage, of wisedome most profounde,
Beganne to doate, and laye awaye his bookes:
For CVPID then, his tender harte did wounde,
That onlie nowe, he lik’de his ladies lookes?
Oh VENVS staie? since once the price was thine,
Thou ought’st not still, at PALLAS thus repine.”
Note, now, how the thoughts of the Emblematists, though greatly excelled
in the language which clothes them, are matched by the avowals which the
severe and grave Angelo made to himself in _Measure for Measure_ (act
ii. sc. 4, l. 1, vol. i. p. 327). He had been disposed to carry out
against another the full severity of the law, which he now felt himself
inclined to infringe, but confesses,—
“When I would pray and think, I think and pray
To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words:
Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,
As if I did but only chew his name;
And in my heart the strong and swelling evil
Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied,
Is like a good thing, being often read,
Grown fear’d and tedious; yea, my gravity,
Wherein—let no man hear me—I take pride,
Could I with boot change for an idle plume,
Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,
How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood:
Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horn;
’Tis not the devil’s crest.”
But the entire force of this parallelism in thought is scarcely to be
apprehended, unless we mark Angelo’s previous conflict of desire and
judgment. Isabel utters the wish, “Heaven keep your honour safe!” And
after a hearty “Amen,” the old man confesses to himself (p. 324),—
“For I am that way going to temptation,
Where prayers cross.”
Act ii. sc. 2, l. 158.
“What’s this, what’s this? Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
Ha!
Not she; nor doth she tempt: but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman’s lightness.”
Act ii. sc. 2, l. 162.
“What, do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is’t I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue.”
Act ii. sc. 2, l. 177
There is an Emblem by Whitney (p. 131), which, though in some respects
similar to one at p. 178 of the “PEGMA” by Costalius, 1555, entitled
“Iron,” “on the misery of the human lot,” is to a very great degree his
own, and which makes it appear in a stronger light than usual, that a
close resemblance exists between his ideas and even expressions and
those of Shakespeare. The subject is “Writings remain,” and the device
the overthrow of stately buildings, while books continue unharmed.
_Scripta manent._
_To Sir_ ARTHVRE MANWARINGE _Knight._
[Illustration: _Whitney_, 1586.]
“If mightie TROIE, with gates of steele, and brasse,
Bee worne awaie, with tracte of stealinge time:
If CARTHAGE, raste: if THEBES be growne with grasse.
If BABEL stoope: that to the cloudes did clime:
If ATHENS, and NVMANTIA suffered spoile:
If ÆGYPT spires, be euened with the soile.
Then, what maye laste, which time dothe not impeache,
Since that wee see, theise monumentes are gone:
Nothinge at all, but time doth ouer reache,
It eates the steele, and weares the marble stone:
But writinges laste, thoughe yt doe what it can,
And are preseru’d, euen since the worlde began.
And so they shall, while that they same dothe laste,
Which haue declar’d, and shall to future age:
What thinges before three thousande yeares haue paste,
What martiall knightes, haue march’d vppon this stage:
Whose actes, in bookes if writers did not saue,
Their fame had ceaste, and gone with them to graue.
Of SAMSONS strengthe, of worthie IOSVAS might.
Of DAVIDS actes, of ALEXANDERS force.
Of CÆESAR greate; and SCIPIO noble knight,
Howe shoulde we speake, but bookes thereof discourse:
Then fauour them, that learne within their youthe:
But loue them beste, that learne, and write the truthe.”
_La vie de Memoire_, and _Vine ut viuas_,—“Live that you may
live,”—emblematically set forth by pen, and book, and obelisk, and
ruined towers, in Boissard’s _Emblems_ by Messin (1588, pp. 40, 41),
give the same sentiment, and in the Latin by a few brief lines,—
“_Non omnis vivit, vitâ qui spirat in istâ:
Sed qui post fati funera vivit adhuc:
Et cui posteritas famæ præconia servat
Æternum is, calamo vindice, nomen habet._”
Thus having the main idea taken up in the last of the four French
stanzas,—
“Mais qui de ses vertus la plume a pour garand:
Celuy centre le temps invincible se rend:
Car elle vainc du temps & l’effort, & l’injure.”
In various instances, only with greater strength and beauty, Shakespeare
gives utterance to the same sequences of thought. When, in _Love’s
Labour’s Lost_ (act i. sc. 1, l. 1, vol. ii. p. 97), fashioning his
court to be,—
“A little Academe,
Still and contemplative in living art,”
Ferdinand, king of Navarre, proclaims,—
“Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register’d upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,
The endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge,
And make us heirs of all eternity.”
In his Sonnets, more especially, Shakespeare celebrates the enduring
glory of the mind’s treasures. Thus, the 55th Sonnet (_Works_, vol. ix.
p. 578) is written almost as Whitney wrote,—
“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents,
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish lime.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry.
Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity,
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.”
But the 65th Sonnet (p. 583) is still more in accordance with Whitney’s
ideas,—not a transcript of them, but an appropriation,—
“Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack!
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
No one, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.”
How closely, too, are these thoughts allied to some in that Emblem (p.
197) in which Whitney, following Hadrian Junius, so well celebrates “the
eternal glory of the pen.”
Pennæ gloria immortalis.
_Ad Iacobum Blondelium._
[Illustration: _Junius_, 1565.[178]]
He has been telling of Sidney’s praise, and in a well-turned compliment
to him and to his other friend, “EDWARDE DIER,” makes the award,—
“This Embleme lo, I did present, vnto this woorthie Knight.
Who, did the same refuse, as not his proper due:
And at the first, his sentence was, it did belonge to you.
Wherefore, lo, fame with trompe, that mountes vnto the skye:
And, farre aboue the highest spire, from pole, to pole dothe flye,
Heere houereth at your will, with pen adorn’d with baies:
Which for you bothe, shee hath prepar’d, vnto your endlesse praise.
The laurell leafe for you, for him, the goulden pen;
The honours that the Muses giue, vnto the rarest men.
Wherefore, proceede I praye, vnto your lasting fame;
For writinges last when wee bee gonne, and doe preserue our name.
And whilst wee tarrye heere, no treasure can procure,
The palme that waites vpon the pen, which euer doth indure.
Two thousand yeares, and more, HOMERVS wrat his books;
And yet, the same doth still remayne, and keepes his former looke.
Wheare Ægypte spires bee gonne, and ROME doth ruine feele,
Yet, both begonne since he was borne, thus time doth turne the wheele.
Yea, thoughe some Monarche greate some worke should take in hand,
Of marble, or of Adamant, that manie worldes shoulde stande,
Yet, should one only man, with labour of the braine,
Bequeathe the world a monument, that longer shoulde remaine,
And when that marble waules, with force of time should waste;
It should indure from age, to age, and yet no age should taste.”
“EX MALO BONUM,”—_Good out of evil_,— contains a sentiment which
Shakespeare not unfrequently expresses. An instance occurs in the
_Midsummer Nights Dream_ (act i. sc. 1, l. 232, vol. ii. p. 206),—
“Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.”
Also more plainly in _Henry V._ (act iv. sc. 1, l. 3, vol. iv. p. 555),—
“God Almighty!
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out.
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry:
Besides they are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus we may gather honey from the weed,
And make a moral of the devil himself!”
So in Georgette Montenay’s _Christian Emblems_ we find the stanzas,—
“_On tire bien des epines poignantes
Rose tres bonn[e/] & pleine de beauté.
Des reprouuer & leurs œuures meschantes
Dieu tir[e/] aussi du bien par sa bonté,
Faisant seruir leur fausse volonté
A sa grand’ gloir[e/] & salut des esleuz,
Et par iustic[e/], ainsi qu’ a decreté,
Dieu fait tout bien; que nul n’en doute plus._”
As we have mentioned before (pp. 242, 3), Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ are the
chief source to which, from his time downwards, poets in general have
applied for their most imaginative and popular mythic illustrations; and
to him especially have Emblem writers been indebted. For a fact so well
known a single instance will suffice; it is the description of Chaos and
of the Creation of the World (bk. i. fab. 1),—
“Ante mare et terras, et quod tegit omnia, cœlum,
Unus erat toto naturæ vultus in orbe,
Quem dixêre Chaos: rudis indigestaque moles.”
An early Italian Emblematist, Gabriel Symeoni, in 1559, presents on this
subject the following very simple device in his _Vita et Metamorfoseo
d’Ovidio_ (p. 12), accompanied on the next page by “The creation and
confusion of the world,”—
Il Caos.
[Illustration: _Symeoni, 1559._]
“_Prima fuit rerum confusa sine ordine moles,
Vnaq. erat facies sydera, terra, fretum._”
[Sidenote: _i.e._]
“First was there a confused mass of things without order,
And one appearance was stars, earth, sea.”
But Ovid’s lines are applied in a highly figurative sense, to show the
many evils and disorders of injustice. A wild state where wrong triumphs
and right is unknown,—that is the Chaos which Anulus sets forth in his
“PICTA POESIS” (p. 49); _Without justice, confusion_.
SINE IVSTITIA, CONFVSIO.
[Illustration: _Aneau_, 1555.]
SI TERRAE _Cœlum ſemiſceat: & mare cœlo.
Sol Erebo. Tenebris lumina, Terra Polo.
Quattuor & Mundi mixtim primordia pugnent.
Arida cum ſiccis, algida cum calidis.
In Chaos antiquum omnia denique confundantur:
Vt cùm ignotus adhuc mens Deus orbis erat.
Eſt Mundanarum talis confuſio rerum.
Quo Regina latet Tempore Iuſtitia._
[Sidenote: _i.e._]
“If with earth heaven should mingle and the sea with heaven,
The sun with Erebus, light with darkness, the earth with the pole,
Should the four elements of the world in commixture fight,
Dry things with the moist and cold things with the hot,
Into ancient chaos at last all things would be confounded
As when God as yet unknown was the soul of the globe.
Such is the confusion of all mundane affairs,
At what time soever Justice the queen lies concealed.”
Whitney (p. 122), borrowing this idea and extending it, works it out
with more than his usual force and skill, and dedicates his stanzas to
Windham and Flowerdewe, two eminent judges of Elizabeth’s reign,—but his
amplification of the thought is to a great degree peculiar to himself.
Ovid, indeed, is his authority for representing the elements in wild
disorder, and the peace and the beauty which ensued,—
“When they weare dispos’d, eache one into his roome.”
The motto, dedication, and device, are these,—
_Sine iuſtitia, confuſio._
_Ad eoſdem Iudices_.
[Illustration: _Whitney, 1586._]
“When Fire, and Aire, and Earthe, and Water, all weare one:
Before that worke deuine was wroughte, which nowe wee looke vppon.
There was no forme of thinges, but a confused masse:
A lumpe, which CHAOS men did call: wherein no order was.
The Coulde, and Heate, did striue: the Heauie thinges, and Lighte.
The Harde, and Softe, the Wette, and Drye, for none had shape arighte.
But when they weare dispos’d, eache one into his roome:
The Fire, had Heate: the Aire, had Lighte: the Earthe, with fruites did
bloome.
The Sea, had his increase: which thinges, to passe thus broughte:
Behoulde, of this vnperfecte masse, the goodly worlde was wroughte.”
Whitney then celebrates “The goulden worlde that Poëttes praised moste;”
next, “the siluer age;” and afterwards, “the age of brasse.”
“The Iron age was laste, a fearefull cursed tyme:
Then, armies came of mischiefes in: and fil’d the worlde with cryme.
Then rigor, and reuenge, did springe in euell hower:
And men of mighte, did manadge all, and poore opprest with power.
And hee, that mightie was, his worde, did stand for lawe:
And what the poore did ploughe, and sowe: the ritch away did drawe.
None mighte their wiues inioye, their daughters, or their goodes,
No, not their liues: such tyraunts broode, did seeke to spill their
bloodes.
Then vertues weare defac’d, and dim’d with vices vile,
Then wronge, did maske in cloke of righte: then bad, did good exile.
Then falshood, shadowed truthe: and hate, laugh’d loue to skorne:
Then pitie, and compassion died: and bloodshed fowle was borne.
So that no vertues then, their proper shapes did beare:
Nor coulde from vices bee decern’d, so straunge they mixed weare.
That nowe, into the worlde, an other CHAOS came:
But GOD, that of the former heape: the heauen and earthe did frame.
And all thinges plac’d therein, his glorye to declare:
Sente IVSTICE downe vnto the earthe: such loue to man hee bare.
Who, so suruay’d the world, with such an heauenly vewe:
That quickley vertues shee aduanc’d: and vices did subdue.
And, of that worlde did make, a paradice, of blisse:
By which wee doo inferre: That where this sacred Goddes is.
That land doth florishe still, and gladnes, their doth growe:
Bicause that all, to God, and Prince, by her their dewties knowe.
And where her presence wantes, there ruine raignes, and wracke:
And kingdomes can not longe indure, that doe this ladie lacke.
Then happie England most, where IVSTICE is embrac’d:
And eeke so many famous men, within her chaire are plac’d.”
With the description thus given we may with utmost appropriateness
compare Shakespeare’s noble commendation of order and good government,
into which, by way of contrast, he introduces the evils and miseries of
lawless power. The argument is assigned to Ulysses, in the _Troilus and
Cressida_ (act i. sc. 3, l. 75, vol. vi. p. 144), when the great
chieftains, Agamemnon, Nestor, Menelaus, and others are discussing the
state and prospects of their Grecian confederacy against Troy. With
great force of reasoning, as of eloquence, he contends,—
“Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master.
But for these instances.
bloodes.
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? Degree being vizarded,
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre,
Observe degree, priority and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order:
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other;
. . . . . .
but when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels.
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf.
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is
That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general’s disdain’d
By him one step below; he, by the next;
That next by him beneath: so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation:
And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.”
At a hasty glance the two passages may appear to have little more
connection than that of similarity of subject, leading to several
coincidences of expression; but the Emblem of Chaos, given by Whitney,
represents the winds, the waters, the stars of heaven, all in confusion
mingling, and certainly is very suggestive of the exact words which the
dramatic poet uses,—
“What raging of the sea? shaking of earth?
Commotion in the winds?
. . . . . .
The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe.”
Discord as one of the great causes of confusion is also spoken of with
much force (_1 Henry VI_., act iv. sc. 1, l. 188, vol. v. p. 68),—
“No simple man that sees
This jarring discord of nobility,
This should’ring of each other in the court,
This factious bandying of their favourites,
But that he doth presage some ill event.
’Tis much, when sceptres are in children’s hands;
But more when envy breeds unkind division;
There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.”
The Paris edition of Horapollo’s _Hieroglyphics_, 1551, subjoins several
to which there is no Greek text (pp. 217–223). Among them (at p. 219) is
one that figures, _The thread of life_, a common poetic idea.
[Illustration: _Horapollo, ed. 1551._]
Quo pacto mortem ſeu hominis
exitum.
Hominis exitum innuentes, fuſum pingebant, & fili extremum reſectum,
quaſi à colo diuulſum, finguntur ſiquidem à poetis Parcæ hominis vitam
nere: Clotho quidem colum geſtans: Lacheſis quæ Sors exponitur, nens:
Atropos verò inconuertibilis ſeu inexorabilis Latinè redditur, filum
abrumpens.
The question is asked, “How do they represent the death or end of man?”
Thus answered,—“To intimate the end of man they paint a spindle, and the
end of the thread cut off, as if broken from the distaff: so indeed by
the poets the Fates are feigned to spin the life of man: Clotho indeed
bearing the distaff; Lachesis spinning whatever lot is declared; but
Atropos, breaking the thread, is rendered unchangeable and inexorable.”
This thread of life Prospero names when he speaks to Ferdinand
(_Tempest_, act iv. sc. 1, l. 1, vol. i. p. 54) about his daughter,—
“If I have too austerely punish’d you,
Your compensation makes amends; for I
Have given you here a thread[179] of mine own life
Or that for which I live.”
“Their thread of life is spun,” occurs in _2 Henry VI._ (act iv. sc. 2,
l. 27).
So the “aunchient Pistol,” entreating Fluellen to ask a pardon for
Bardolph (_Henry V._, act iii. sc. 6, l. 44, vol. iv. p. 544). says,—
“The duke will hear thy voice;
And let not Bardolph’s vital thread be cut
With edge of penny cord and vile reproach.
Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.”
The full application of the term, however, is given by Helena in the
_Pericles_ (act i. sc. 2, l. 102, vol. ix. p. 325), when she says to the
Prince of Tyre,—
“Antiochus you fear,
And justly too, I think, you fear the tyrant,
Who either by public war or private treason
Will take away your life.
Therefore, my lord, go travel for a while,
Till that his rage and anger be forgot,
Or till the Destinies do cut his thread of life.”
The same appendix to Horapollo’s _Hieroglyphics_ (p. 220) assigns a
burning lamp as the emblem of life; thus,—
[Illustration: _Horapollo, ed. 1551._]
Quo modo vitam.
Vitam innuentes ardentem lampada pingebant: quòd tantiſper dum
accenſa lampas eſt, luceat, extincta verò tenebras offundat, ita & anima
corpore ſoluta, & aſpectu & luce caremus.
“To intimate life they paint a burning lamp; because so long as the lamp
is kindled it gives forth light, but being extinguished spreads
darkness; so also the soul being freed from the body we are without
seeing and light.”
This Egyptian symbol Cleopatra names just after Antony’s death (_Antony
and Cleopatra_, act iv. sc. 15, l. 84, vol. ix. p. 132),—
“Ah, women, women, look
Our lamp is spent, it’s out.”
Similar the meaning when Antony said (act iv. sc. 14, l. 46, vol. ix. p.
123),—
“Since the torch is out,
Lie down and stray no farther.”
Of the Emblems which depict moral qualities and æsthetical principles,
scarcely any are more expressive than that which denotes an abiding
sense of injury. This we can trace through Whitney (p. 183) to the
French of Claude Paradin (fol. 160), and to the Italian of Gabriel
Symeoni (p. 24). It is a sculptor, with mallet and chisel, cutting a
memorial of his wrongs into a block of marble; the title, _Of offended
Poverty_, and the motto, “Being wronged he writes on marble.”
DI POVERTA
OFFESA.
[Illustration: _Giovio and Symeoni, 1562._]
Scribit in marmore læſus.
_Tempri l’ ira veloce ogniun, che viue,
Et per eſſer potente non ha cura,
Di far’ altrui talhor danno o paura,
Che l’offeſo l’ingiuria in marmo ſeriue_.
Like the other “Imprese” of the “TETRASTICHI MORALI,” the woodcut is
surrounded by a curiously ornamented border, and manifests much artistic
skill. The stanza is,—
“Each one that lives may be swift passion’s slave,
And through a powerful will at times delight
In causing others harm and terror’s fright:
The injured doth those wrongs on marble grave.”
The “DEVISES HEROIQVES” adds to the device a simple prose description of
the meaning of the Emblem,—
Scribit in marmore leſus.
[Illustration: _Paradin, 1562._]
_Certains fols éuentés s’ aſſeurans trop ſus leur credit &
richeſſes, ne font point cas d’iniurier ou gourmander de faict & de
paroles une pauure perſonne, eſtimans que à faute de biens, de faueur,
de parens, ou d’amis elle n’aura jamais le moyen de ſe venger, ou leur
rẽdre la pareille, ains qu’elle doiue lien toſt oublier le mal qu’elle a
receu. Or combien ces Tirans (c’eſt leur propre nom) ſoyent abuſez de
leur grande folie & ignorance, l’occaſion & le temps le leur fera à la
fin connoiſtre, apres les auoir admoneſtez par ceſte Deuiſe d’un homme
aſſis, qui graue en un tableau de marbre ce qu’il a en memmoire auec ces
parolles_: Scribit in marmore læsus. (f.160.)
The word here propounded is of very high antiquity. The prophet Jeremiah
(xvii. 1 and 13) set forth most forcibly what Shakespeare names “men’s
evil manners living in brass;” and Whitney, “harms graven in marble
hard.” “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the
point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon
the horns of your altars.” And the writing in water, or in the dust, is
in the very spirit of the declaration, “They that depart from me shall
be written in the earth,”—_i.e._, the first wind that blows over them
shall efface their names,—“because they have forsaken the LORD, the
fountain of living waters.”
Some of Shakespeare’s expressions,—some of the turns of thought, when he
is speaking of injuries,—are so similar to those used by the Emblem
writers in treating of the same subject, that we reasonably conclude
“the famous Scenicke Poet, Master W. Shakespeare,” was intimate with
their works, or with the work of some one out of their number; and, as
will appear in a page or two, very probably those expressions and turns
of thought had their origin in the reading of Whitney’s _Choice of
Emblemes_ rather than in the study of the French and Italian authors.
Of the same cast of idea with the lines illustrative of _Scribit in
marmore læsus_, are the words of Marc Antony’s oration over Cæsar
(_Julius Cæsar_, act iii. sc. 2, l. 73, vol. vii. p. 375),—
“I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Cæsar.”
A sentiment, almost the converse of this, and of higher moral
excellence, crops out where certainly we should not expect to find it—in
the _Timon of Athens_ (act iii. sc. 5, l. 31, vol. vii. p. 254),—
“He’s truly valiant that can wisely suffer
The worst that man can breathe, and make his wrongs
His outsides, to wear them like his raiment, carelessly,
And ne’er prefer his injuries to his heart,
To bring it into danger.
If wrongs be evils and enforce us kill,
What folly ’tis to hazard life for ill!”
In that scene of unparalleled beauty, tenderness, and simplicity, in
which there is related to Queen Katharine the death of “the great child
of honour,” as she terms him, Cardinal Wolsey (_Henry VIII._, act iv.
sc. 2, l. 27, vol. vi. p. 87), Griffith describes him as,—
“Full of repentance,
Continual meditations, tears and sorrows,
He gave his honours to the world again,
His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.”
And just afterwards (l. 44), when the Queen had been speaking with some
asperity of the Cardinal’s greater faults, Griffith remonstrates,—
“Noble Madam,
Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water. May it please your highness
To hear me speak his good now?”
How very like to the sentiment here enunciated is that of Whitney (p.
183),—
“In marble harde our harmes wee alwayes graue,
Bicause, wee still will beare the same in minde:
In duste wee write the benifittes wee haue,
Where they are soone defaced with the winde.
So, wronges wee houlde, and neuer will forgiue,
And soone forget, that still with vs shoulde liue.”
Lavinia’s deep wrongs (_Titus Andronicus_, act iv. sc. 1, l. 85, vol.
vi. p. 490) were written by her on the sand, to inform Marcus and Titus
what they were and who had inflicted them; and Marcus declares,—
“There is enough written upon this earth
To stir a mutiny in the mildest thoughts
And arm the minds of infants to exclaims.”
Marcus is for instant revenge, but Titus knows the power and cruel
nature of their enemies, and counsels (l. 102),—
“You are a young huntsman, Marcus; let alone;
And, come, I will go get a leaf of brass.
And with a gad of steel will write these words,
And lay it by: the angry northern wind
Will blow these sands, like Sibyl’s leaves, abroad.
And where’s your lesson then?”
The Italian and French Emblems as pictures to be looked at would readily
supply Shakespeare with thoughts respecting the record of “men’s evil
manners,” and of “their virtues,” but there is a closer correspondence
between him and Whitney; and allowing for the easy substitution of
“brass” and of “water” for “marble” and “dust,” the parallelism of the
ideas and words is so exact as to be only just short of being complete.
We must not, however, conceal what may have been a common origin of the
sentiment for all the four writers,—for the three Emblematists and for
the dramatist, namely, a sentence written by Sir Thomas More, about the
year 1516, before even Alciatus had published his book of Emblems. Dr.
Percy, as quoted by Ayscough (p. 695), remarks that, “This reflection
bears a great resemblance to a passage in Sir Thomas More’s _History of
Richard III._, where, speaking of the ungrateful turns which Jane Shore
experienced from those whom she had served in her prosperity, More adds,
‘Men use, if they have an evil turne, to write it in marble, and whoso
doth us a good turne, we write it in duste.’”
But the thought is recorded as passing through the mind of Columbus,
when, during mutiny, sickness, and cruel tidings from home, he had, on
the coast of Panama, the vision which Irving describes and records. A
voice had been reproving him, but ended by saying, “Fear not, Columbus,
all these tribulations are written in marble, and are not without
cause.”
“To write in dust,” however, has sometimes a simple literal meaning in
Shakespeare; as when King Edward (_3 Henry VI._, act v. sc. 1, l. 54,
vol. v. p. 319), uses the threat,—
“This hand, fast wound about thy coal-black hair,
Shall, while thy head is warm and new cut off,
Write in the dust this sentence with thy blood,—
Wind-changing Warwick now can change no more.”
But in the _Titus Andronicus_ (act iii. sc. 1, l. 12, vol. vi. p. 472),
the phrase is of doubtful meaning: it may denote the oblivion of
injuries or the deepest of sorrows,—
“In the dust I write
My heart’s deep languor, and my soul’s sad tears.”
Whitney also has the lines to the praise of Stephen Limbert, Master of
Norwich School (p. 173),—
“Our writing in the duste, can not indure a blaste;
But that which is in marble wroughte, from age to age, doth laste.”
It is but justice to Shakespeare to testify that at times his judgment
respecting injuries rises to the full height of Christian morals. The
spirit Ariel avows, that, were he human, his “affections would become
tender” towards the shipwrecked captives on whom his charms had been
working (_Tempest_, act v. sc. 1, l. 21, vol. i. p. 64); and Prospero
enters into his thought with strong conviction,—
“Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,
Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason ’gainst my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further.”
The subject in this connection finds a fitting conclusion from the words
of a later writer, communicated to me by the Rev. T. Walker, M.A.,
formerly of Nether Tabley, in which a free forgiveness of injuries is
ascribed to the world’s great and blessed Saviour,—
“Some write their wrongs on marble, He more just
Stoop’d down serene, and wrote them in the dust,
Trod under foot, the sport of every wind,
Swept from the earth, quite banished from his mind,
There secret in the grave He bade them lie,
And grieved, they could not ’scape the Almighty’s eye.”
[Illustration: _Whitney. Reprint, 1866, p. 431._]
-----
Footnote 153:
See a most touching account of a she-hear and her whelps in the
_Voyage of Discovery to the North Seas_ in 1772, under Captain C. J.
Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave.
Footnote 154:
“Zodiacvs Christianvs, seu signa 12, _diuinæ Prædestinationis, &c., à
Raphaele Sadelero_, 12mo, p. 126, Monaci CD. DCXVIII.”
Footnote 155:
See also the Emblems of Camerarius (pt. iii. edition 1596, Emb. 47),
where the turkey is figured to illustrate “RABIE SVCCENSA
TVMESCIT,”—_Being angered it swells with rage._
“_Quam deforme malum ferventi accensa furore
Ira sit, iratis Indica monstrat avis,_”—
“How odious an evil to the violent anger may be
Inflamed to fury.—the Indian bird shows to the angry.”
Footnote 156:
See also other passages from the _Georgics_,—
“Ut, cum prima novi ducent examina reges
Vere suo.” iv. 21.
“Sin autem ad pugnam exierint, nam sæpe duobus
Regibus incessit magno discordia motu.” iv. 67.
Description of the kings (iv. 87–99),—
“tu regibus alas
Eripe.” iv. 106.
And,—
“ipsæ regem parvosque Quirites
Sufficiunt, aulasque ei cerea regna refingunt.” iv, 201.
Footnote 157:
At a time even later than Shakespeare’s the idea of a king-bee
prevailed; Waller, the poet of the Commonwealth, adopted it, as in the
lines to Zelinda,—
“Should you no honey vow to taste
But what the master-bees have placed
In compass of their cells, how small
A portion to your share will fall.”
In Le Moine’s _Devises Heroiqves et Morales_ (4to, Paris, 1649, p. 8)
we read, “Du courage & du conseil au Roy des abeilles,”—and the
creature is spoken of as a male.
Footnote 158:
To mention only Joachim Camerarius, edition 1596, _Ex Volatilibus_
(Emb. 29–34); here are no less than five separate devices connected
with Hawking or Falconry.
Footnote 159:
Take an example from the Paraphrase in an old Psalter: “The arne,”
_i.e._ the eagle, “when he is greved with grete elde, his neb waxis so
gretely, that he may nogt open his mouth and take mete: hot then he
smytes his neb to the stane, and has away the slogh, and then he gaes
til mete, and he commes yong a gayne. Swa Crist duse a way fra us oure
elde of syn and mortalite, that settes us to ete oure brede in hevene,
and newes us in hym.”
Footnote 160:
The Virgin, in Brucioli’s _Signs of the Zodiac_, as given in our Plate
XIII., has a unicorn kneeling by her side, to be fondled.
Footnote 161:
The wonderful curative and other powers of the horn are set forth in
his _Emblems_ by Joachim Camerarius, _Ex Animalibus Quadrupedibus_
(Emb. 12, 13 and 14). He informs us that “Bartholomew Alvianus, a
Venetian general, caused to be inscribed on his banner, _I drive away
poisons_, intimating that himself, like a unicorn putting to flight
noxious and poisonous animals, would by his own warlike valour
extirpate his enemies of the contrary factions.”
Footnote 162:
See the fable of the Wolf and the Ass from the _Dialogues of
Creatures_ (pp. 53–55 of this volume).
Footnote 163:
See p. 11 of J. Payne Collier’s admirably executed Reprint of “THE
PHŒNIX NEST,” from the original edition of 1593.
Footnote 164:
There are similar thoughts in Shakespeare’s _Phœnix and Turtle_
(Works, lines 25 and 37, vol. ix. p. 671),—
“So they loved, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none,
Number there in love was slain.”
And,—
“Property was thus appalled,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature’s double name
Neither two nor one was called.”
Footnote 165:
Reusner adopts this first line from Ovid’s _Fable of the Phœnix_
(_Metam._, bk. xv. 37. l. 3),—
“Sed thuris lacrymis, & succo vivit amomi.”
Footnote 166:
To render it still more useful, the words should receive something of
classification, as in Cruden’s _Concordance to the English Bible_, and
the _number_ of the _line_ should be given as well as of the _Act_ and
_Scene_.
Footnote 167:
The whole stanza as given on the last page, beginning with the line,—
“The Pellican, for to reuiue her younge,”
is quoted in Knight’s “PICTORIAL SHAKSPERE” (vol. i. p. 154), in
illustration of these lines from _Hamlet_ concerning “the kind
life-rendering pelican.” The woodcut which Knight gives is also copied
from Whitney, and the following remark added,—“Amongst old books of
emblems there is one on which Shakspere himself might have looked,
containing the subjoined representation. It is entitled ‘A Choice of
Emblemes and other Devices by Geffrey Whitney, 1586.’” Knight thus
appears prepared to recognise what we contend for, that Emblem writers
were known to Shakespeare.
Footnote 168:
Virgil’s _Æneid_ (bk. xii. 412–414), thus expressed in Dryden’s
rendering, will explain the passage; he is speaking of Venus,—
“A branch of healing dittany she brought:
Which in the Cretan fields with care she sought:
Rough is the stem, which wooly leafs surround;
The leafs with flow’rs, the flow’rs with purple crown’d.”
See also Joachim Camerarius, _Ex Animalibus Quadrup._ (ed. 1595, Emb.
69, p. 71).
Footnote 169:
In Haechtan’s _Parvus Mundus_ (ed. 1579), Gerard de Jode represents
the sleeping place as “sub tegmine fagi,”—but the results of the
mistake as equally unfortunate with those in Bellay and Whitney.
Footnote 170:
See “ARCHÆOLOGIA,” vol. xxxv. 1853, pp. 167–189; “Observations on the
Origin of the Division of Man’s Life into Stages. By John Winter
Jones, Esq.”
Footnote 171:
It may be noted that the Romans understood by _Pueritia_ the period
from infancy up to the 17th year; by _Adolescentia_, the period from
the age of 15 to 30; by _Juventus_, the season of life from the 20th
to the 40th year. _Virilitas_, manhood, began when in the 16th year a
youth assumed the _virilis toga_, “the manly gown.”
Footnote 172:
Soon after Whitney’s time this emblem was repeated in that very odd
and curious volume; “Stamm Buch, Darinnen Christliche Tugenden
Beyspiel Einhundert ausserlesener _Emblemata_, mit schönen
Kupffer-stücke geziener:” Franckfurt-am-Mayn, Anno MDCXIX. 8vo, pp.
447. At p. 290, Emb. 65, with the words “UBI ES?” there is the figure
of Adam hiding behind a tree, and among descriptive stanzas in seven
or eight languages, are some intended to be specimens of the language
at that day spoken and written in Britain:—
“Adam did breake God’s commandement,
In Paradise against his dissent,
Therefore he hyde him vnder a tree
Because _h_is Lorde, him _sh_ould not see.
But (alas) to God is all t_h_ing euident.
Th_a_n _h_e faunde _h_im in a moment
_A_n_d_ will alwayes such wicked men
Feind, if they doo from _h_im runn.”
Footnote 173:
For a fine Emblem to illustrate this passage, see “HORATII EMBLEMATA,”
by Otho Vænius, pp. 58, 59, edit. Antwerp, 4to, 1612; also pp. 70 and
71, to give artistic force to the idea of the “just man firm to his
purpose.”
Footnote 174:
Shakespeare illustrated by parallelisms from the Fathers of the Church
might, I doubt not, be rendered very interesting and instructive by a
writer of competent learning and enthusiasm, not to name it _furore_,
in behalf of his subject.
Footnote 175:
_Opera_, vol. i. p. 649 B, Francofurti, 1620.
Footnote 176:
Reference might be made also to Whitney’s fine tale, _Concerning Envy
and Avarice_, which immediately follows the _Description of Envy_.
Footnote 177:
The original lines are,—
“Innvmeris _agitur Respublica nostra procellis,
Et spes venturæ sola salutis adest:
Non secus ac nauis medio circum æquore, venti,
Quam rapiunt; falsis tamq. fatiscit aquis.
Quòd si Helenæ adueniant lucentia sidera fratres:
Amissos animos spes bona restituit._”
Footnote 178:
The original lines by Hadrian Junius are,—
“_Oculata, pennis fulta, sublimem vehens
Calamum aurea inter astra Fama collocat.
Illustre claris surgit è scriptis decus,
Feritque perpes vertice alta sidera._”
Footnote 179:
“A third,” in the modern sense of the word, is just nonsense, and
therefore we leave the reading of the Cambridge edition, and abide by
those critics who tell us that thread was formerly spelt thrid or
third. See Johnson and Steevens’ _Shakspeare_, vol. i. ed. 1785, p.
92.
-----
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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._
[Illustration: _Sambucus, 1564._]
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.”
[Illustration: _Holbein’s Simulachres, 1538._]
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?”
[Illustration: _Holbein’s Imagines, Cologne, 1566._]
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_,
act iv. sc. 2, l. 53, vol. i. p. 437),—
“_Dro. S._ ’Tis time that I were gone:
It was two ere I left him, and now the clock strikes one.
_Adr._ The hours come back! that did I never hear.
_Dro. S._ O, yes; if any hour meet a sergeant, a’turns back for very
fear.
_Adr._ As if Time were in debt! how fondly dost thou reason!
_Dro. S._ Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he’s worth to
season.
Nay, he’s a thief too: have you not heard men say,
That Time comes stealing on by night and day?
If Time be in debt and theft, and a sergeant in the way,
Hath he not reason to turn back an hour in a day?”
Almost of the same complexion are some of the other strong contrasts of
epithets which Shakespeare applies. Iachimo, in _Cymbeline_ (act i. sc.
6, l. 46, vol. ix. p. 185), uses the expressions,—
“The cloyed will,
That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub
Both fill’d and running, ravening first the lamb,
Longs after for the garbage.”
But “old fond paradoxes, to make fools laugh i’ the ale-house,” are also
given forth from the storehouse of his conceits. Desdemona and Emilia
and Iago play at these follies (_Othello_, act ii. sc. 1, l. 129, vol.
viii. p. 477), and thus some of them are uttered,—
“_Iago._ If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,
The one’s for use, the other useth it.
_Des._ Well praised! How if she be black and witty?
_Iago._ If she be black, and thereto have a wit,
She’ll find a white that shall her blackness fit.
. . . . . .
_Des._ But what praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving woman
indeed?
one that, on the authority of her merit, did justly put on the vouch of
very
malice itself?
_Iago._ She that was ever fair, and never proud,
Had tongue at will, and yet was never loud.
Never lack’d gold, and yet went never gay,
Fled from her wish, and yet said, now I may;
. . . . . .
She was a wight, if ever such wight were,—
_Des._ To do what?
_Iago._ To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer.”
We thus return, by a wandering path indeed, to the paradoxical saying
with which we set out,—concerning “fleeing what we follow;” for Iago’s
paragon of a woman,—
“Fled from her wish, and yet said, now I may.”
Taken by itself, the coincidence of a few words in the dedications of
works by different authors is of trifling importance; but when we notice
how brief are the lines in which Shakespeare commends his “VENUS AND
ADONIS” to the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, it is remarkable
that he has adopted an expression almost singular, which Whitney had
beforehand employed in the long dedication of his Emblems to the Earl of
Leycester. “Being abashed,” says Whitney, “that my habillitie can not
affoorde them such, as are fit to be offred vp to so honorable a
suruaighe” (p. xi); and Shakespeare, “I leave it to your honourable
survey, and your Honour to your heart’s content.” Whitney then declares,
“yet if it shall like your honour to allowe of anie of them, I shall
thinke my pen set to the booke in happie hour; and it shall incourage
mee, to assay some matter of more momente, as soon as leasure will
further my desire in that behalfe;” and Shakespeare, adopting the same
idea, also affirms, “only if your Honour seem but pleased, I account
myself highly praised and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till
I have honoured you with some graver labour.” Comparing these passages
together, the inference appears not unwarranted, that Whitney’s
dedication had been read by Shakespeare, and that the tenor of it abided
in his memory, and so was made use of by him.
From the well-known lines of _Horace_ (Ode ii. 10),—
“Sæpius ventis agitatur ingens
Pinus; et celsæ graviore casu
Decidunt turres; feriuntque summos
Fulgura montes,”—
several of the Emblem writers, and Shakespeare after them, tell of the
huge pine and of its contests with the tempests; and how lofty towers
fall with a heavier crash, and how the lightnings smite the highest
mountains. Sambucus (edition 1569, p. 279) and Whitney (p. 59) do this,
as a comment for the injunction, _Nimium rebus ne fide secundis_,—“Be
not too confident in prosperity.” In this instance the stanzas of
Whitney serve well to express the verses of Sambucus,—
_Nimium rebus ne fide secundis._
[Illustration: _Whitney. 1586._]
“The loftie Pine, that on the mountaine growes,
And spreades her armes, with braunches freshe, & greene,
The raginge windes, on sodaine ouerthrowes,
And makes her stoope, that longe a farre was seene:
So they, that truste to muche in fortunes smiles,
Thoughe worlde do laughe, and wealthe doe moste abounde,
When leste they thinke, are often snar’de with wyles,
And from alofte, doo hedlonge fall to grounde:
Then put no truste, in anie worldlie thinges,
For frowninge fate, throwes downe the mightie kinges.”
Antonio, in the _Merchant of Venice_ (act iv. sc. 1, l. 75, vol. ii. p.
345), applies the thought to the fruitlessness of Bassanio’s endeavour
to soften Shylock’s stern purpose of revenge,—
“You may as well forbid the mountain pines
To wag their high tops, and to make no noise
When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven.”
And when “dame Eleanor Cobham, Gloster’s wife,” is banished, and her
noble husband called on to give up the Lord Protector’s staff of office
(_2 Henry VI._, act ii. sc. 3, l. 45, vol. v. p. 145), Suffolk makes the
comparison,—
“Thus droops this lofty pine, and hangs his sprays;
Thus Eleanor’s pride dies in her youngest days.”
So, following almost literally the words of Horace, the exiled Belarius,
in _Cymbeline_ (act iv. sc. 2, l. 172, vol. ix. p. 253), declares of the
“two princely boys,” that passed for his sons,—
“They are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing below the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchafed, as the rudest wind
That by the top doth take the mountain pine
And make him stoop to the vale.”
Words, which, though now obsolete, were in current use in the days of
Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare, cannot of themselves be
adduced in evidence of any interchange of ideas; but when the form of
the sentence and the application of some peculiar term agree, we may
reasonably presume that it has been more than the simple use of the same
common tongue which has caused the agreement. When, indeed, one author
writes in English, and the others in Latin, or Italian, or French, we
cannot expect much more than similarity of idea in treating of the same
subject, and a mutual intercommunion of thought; but, in the case of
authors employing the same mother tongue, there are certain
correspondencies in the use of the same terms and turns of expression
which betoken imitation.
Such correspondencies exist between Whitney and Shakespeare, as may be
seen from the following among many other instances. I adopt the old
spelling of the folio edition of Shakespeare, 1632,—
Abroach Whitney, p. 7 And bluddie broiles at home are
set _abroache_.
_Rom. and J._ i. 1. Who set this ancient quarrell new
l. 102 _abroach_?
_2 Hen. IV._ iv. 2, Alacke, what Mischeifes might be
14 set _abroach_.
a-worke Whitney, p. vi. They set them selues _a worke_.
_2 Hen. IV._ iv. 3, Skill in the Weapon is nothing,
107 without Sacke (for that sets it
_a-worke_).
_K. Lear_, iii. 5, 5 — a provoking merit set _a-worke_
by a reprovable badnesse in
himselfe.
Banne Whitney, p. 189 The maide her pacience quite
forgot
And in a rage, the brutishe beaste
did _banne_.
_Hamlet_, iii. 2, With Hecats _ban_, thrice blasted,
246 thrice infected.
_1 Hen. IV._ v. 3, Fell _banning_ Hagge, Inchantresse
42 hold thy tongue.
_2 Hen IV._ ii. 4, And _banne_ thine Enemies, both
25 mine and thine.
Cates Whitney, p. 18 Whose backe is fraughte with
_cates_ and daintie cheere.
_C. Errors_, iii. 1, But though my _cates_ be meane,
28 take them in good part.
_1 Hen. IV._ iii. 1, I had rather live
163
With Cheese and Garlike in a
Windmill far
Then feed on _Cates_, and have him
talke to me
In any Summer House in
Christendome.
create Whitney, p. 64 Not for our selues alone wee are
_create_.
_M. N. Dr._ v. 1, And the issue there _create_
394
Ever shall be fortunate.
_K. John_, iv. 1, The fire is dead with griefe
106
Being _create_ for comfort.
_Hen. V._ ii. 2, 31 With hearts _create_ of duty and
of zeal.
Erksome Whitney, p. 118 With _erksome_ noise and eke with
poison fell.
_T. of Shrew_, i. 2, I know she is an _irkesome_
182 brawling scold.
_2 Hen. VI._ ii. 1, How _irkesome_ is this Musicke to
56 my heart!
Ingrate Whitney, p. 64 And those that are vnto theire
frendes _ingrate_.
_T. of Shrew_, i. 2, Will not so gracelesse be, to be
266 _ingrate_.
_Coriol._ v. 2, 80 _Ingrate_ forgetfulness shall
poison rather.
Prejudicate Whitney, xiii. The enuious who are alwaies readie
with a _prejudicate_ opinion to
condempe.
_All’s Well_, i. 2, @span 6: wherein our deerest
7 friend@
_Prejudicates_ the businesse.
Ripes Whitney, p. 23 When autumne _ripes_ the frutefull
fields of grane.
_K. John_, ii. 1, — yon greene Boy shall haue no
472 Sunne to _ripe_
The bloome that promiseth a mighty
fruit.
Vnrest Whitney, p. 94 It shewes her selfe doth worke her
own _vnrest_.
_Rich. II._ ii. 4, Witnessing Stormes to come, Woe
22 and _Vnrest_.
_T. An._ ii. 3, 8 And so repose sweet Gold for their
_unrest_.
vnsure Whitney, p. 191 So, manie men do stoope to sightes
_vnsure_.
_Hamlet_, iv. 4, 51 Exposing what is mortal and
_unsure_.
_Macbeth_, v. 4, 19 Thoughts speculative their
_unsure_ hopes relate.
vnthrifte Whitney, p. 17 And wisdome still, against such
_vnthriftes_ cries.
_Rich. II._ ii. 3, my Rights and Royalties
120
Pluckt from my armes perforce, and
giuen away
To upstart _Vnthriftes_.
_Timon_, iv. 3, 307 What man didd’st thou euer knowe
_unthrifte_ that was beloved
after his meanes?
_M. Venice_, v. 1, And with an _unthrift_ love did
16 run from Venice
As far as Belmont.[182]
So close are some of these correspondencies that they can scarcely be
accounted for except on the theory that Shakespeare had been an
observant reader of Whitney’s Emblems.
There are also various expressions, or epithets, which the Emblem-books
may be employed to illustrate, and which receive their most natural
explanation from this same theory that Shakespeare was one of the very
numerous host of Emblem students or readers. Perriere’s account of a man
attempting to swim with a load of iron on his back (Emb. 70), is applied
by Whitney with direct reference to the lines in Horace, “O cursed lust
of gold, to what dost thou not compel mortal bosoms?” He sets off the
thought by the device of a man swimming with “a fardle,” or heavy burden
(p. 179),—
_Auri ſacra fames quid non?_
[Illustration: _Whitney, 1586._]
“Desire to haue, dothe make vs muche indure.
In trauaile, toile, and labour voide of reste:
The marchant man is caried with this lure,
Throughe scorching heate, to regions of the Easte:
Oh thirste of goulde, what not? but thou canst do:
And make mens hartes for to consent thereto.
The trauailer poore, when shippe doth suffer wracke,
Who hopes to swimme vnto the wished lande,
Dothe venture life, with fardle on his backe,
That if he scape, the same in steede maye stande.
Thus, hope of life, and loue vnto his goods,
Houldes vp his chinne, with burthen in the floods.”
In the _Winter’s Tale_, the word “fardel” occurs several times; we will,
however, take a familiar quotation from _Hamlet_ (act iii. sc. 1, l. 76,
vol. viii. p. 80),—
“Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?”
The Bandogs, which Sir Thomas More and Spenser describe, appear to have
been different from those of Sambucus and Whitney, or, rather, they were
employed for a different purpose. “We must,” writes the worthy
Chancellor (p. 586), “haue bande dogges to dryue them (the swine) out of
the corne with byting, and leade them out by the ears;” and Spenser, in
_Virgil’s Gnat_ (l. 539), speaks of—
“greedie Scilla, under whom there lay
Manie great bandogs, which her gird about.”
These dogs were mastiffs, and their banning was barking or braying; but
the dogs entitled bandogs in Whitney, though also mastiffs, were
fastened by a band to a small cart, and trained to draw it. A large
species of dog may be seen at this day in the towns of Belgium
performing the very same service to which their ancestors had been
accustomed above three centuries ago. Sambucus heads his description of
the bandog’s strength and labours with the sentence,—“ The dog complains
that he is greatly wronged.”
Canis queritur nimium nocere.
[Illustration: _Sambucus_, 1584.]
_Non ego furaces nec apros inſector & vrſos,
Applaudit nec hero blandula cauda dolo:
Sub iuga ſed mittor validus, traho & eſſeda collo,
Quæque leuant alios viribus vſque premor.
Per vicos ductum me alij latratibus vrgent,
Miratur caſus libera turba meos.
Quàm fueram charus dominæ, ſi paruulus eſſem,
Non menſsa, lecto nec caruiſſe velim.
Sic multis vires, & opes nocuere ſuperbæ:
Contentum modico & profuit eſſe ſtatu._
Seated near the toiling mastiff is a lady with two or three pet curs,
and the large dog complains,—
“Were I a little whelp, to my lady how dear I should be; Of board
and of bed I never the want should see.”[183]
Whitney, using the woodcut which adorns the editions of Sambucus both in
1564 and 1599, prefixes a loftier motto (p. 140),—_Feriunt summos
fulmina montes_,—“Thunderbolts strike highest mountains;” and thus
expatiates he,—
“The bandogge, fitte to matche the bull, or beare,
With burthens greate, is loden euery daye:
Or drawes the carte, and forc’d the yoke to weare:
Where littell dogges doe passe their time in playe:
And ofte, are bould to barke, and eeke to bite,
When as before, they trembled at his sighte.
Yet, when in bondes they see his thrauled state,
Eache bragginge curre, beginnes to square, and brall:
The freër sorte, doe wonder at his fate,
And thinke them beste, that are of stature small:
For they maie sleepe vppon their mistris bedde,
And on their lappes, with daynties still bee fedde.
The loftie pine, with axe is ouerthrowne,
And is prepar’d, to serue the shipmans turne:
When bushes stande, till stormes bee ouerblowne,
And lightninges flashe, the mountaine toppes doth burne.
All which doe shewe that pompe, and worldlie power,
Makes monarches, markes: when varrijnge fate doth lower.”
The mastiff is almost the only dog to which Shakespeare assigns any
epithet of praise. In _Henry V._ (act iii. sc. 7, l. 130, vol. iv. p.
552), one of the French lords, Rambures, acknowleges “that island of
England breeds very valiant creatures; their mastiffs are of unmatchable
courage.” It is the same quality in Achilles and Ajax on which Ulysses
and Nestor count when “the old man eloquent,” in _Troilus and Cressida_
(act i. sc. 3, l. 391, vol. vi. p. 155), says of the two warriors,—
“Two curs shall tame each other: pride alone
Must tarre[184] the mastiffs on, as ’twere their bone.”
It is, however, only in a passing allusion that Shakespeare introduces
any mention of the bandog. He is describing the night “when Troy was set
on fire” (_2 Henry VI._, act i. sc. 4, l. 16, vol. v. p. 129), and thus
speaks of it,—
“The time when scritch-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl,
When spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves.”
We are all familiar with the expression “motley’s the only wear,” and
probably we are disposed simply to refer it to the way in which that
important personage was arrayed who exercised his fun and nonsense and
shrewd wit in the courts of the kings and in the mansions of the nobles
of the middle ages. The pictorial type exists in the Emblems both of
Sambucus and of his copyist Whitney (p. 81), by whom the sage advice is
imparted,—“Give trifles in charge to fools.”
_Fatuis leuia commitito._
[Illustration: _Whitney, 1586._]
“The little childe, is pleas’de with cockhorse gaie,
Althoughe he aske a courser of the beste:
The ideot likes, with bables for to plaie,
And is disgrac’de, when he is brauelie dreste:
A motley coate, a cockescombe, or a bell,
Hee better likes, then Iewelles that excell.
So fondelinges vaine, that doe for honor sue,
And seeke for roomes, that worthie men deserue:
The prudent Prince, dothe give hem ofte their due,
Whiche is faire wordes, that right their humors serue:
For infantes hande, the rasor is vnfitte,
And fooles vnmeete, in wisedomes seate to sitte.”
The word “motley” is often made use of in Shakespeare’s plays. Jaques,
in _As You Like It_ (act ii. sc. 7, lines 12 and 42, vol. ii. pp. 405,
406), describes the “motley fool” “in a motley coat,”—
“I met a fool i’ the forest,
A motley fool; a miserable world!
As I do live by food, I met a fool;
Who laid him down and bask’d him in the sun,
And rail’d on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.
. . . . . .
O that I were a fool!
I am ambitious for a motley coat.”
The Prologue to _Henry VIII._ (l. 15) alludes to the dress of the
buffoons that were often introduced into the plays of the time,—
“a fellow
In a long motley coat, guarded with yellow.”
The fool in _King Lear_ (act i. sc. 4, 1. 93, vol. viii. p. 280) seems
to have been dressed according to Whitney’s pattern, for, on giving his
cap to Kent, he says,—
“Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.
_Kent._ Why, fool?
_Fool._ Why, for taking one’s part that’s out of favour: nay, an
thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou’lt catch cold shortly:
there, take my coxcomb: why, this fellow hath banished two on’s
daughters, and done the third a blessing against his will; if thou
follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb.”
Drant’s translations[185] from Horace, published in 1567, convey to us a
pretty accurate idea of the fool’s attire,—
“Well geue him cloth and let the fool
Goe like a cockescome still.”
Perchance we know the lines in the “FAERIE QUEENE” (vi. c. 7, 49, 1.
6),—
“And other whiles with bitter mockes and mowes
He would him scorne, that to his gentle mynd
Was much more grievous then the others blowes:
Words sharpely wound, but greatest griefe of scorning growes.”
But probably we are not prepared to trace some of the expressions in
these lines to an Emblem-book origin. The graphic “mockes and mowes,”
indeed, no Latin nor French can express; but our old friend Paradin, in
the “DEVISES HEROIQVES” (leaf 174), names an occasion on which very
amusing “mockes and mowes” were exhibited; it was, moreover, an example
that,—
“_Things badly obtained are badly scattered._” As he narrates the
tale,— “One day it happened that a huge ape, nourished in the house of a
miser who found pleasure only in his crowns, after seeing through a hole
his master playing with his crowns upon a table, obtained means of
entering within by an open window, while the miser was at dinner. The
ape took a stool, as his master did, but soon began to throw the silver
out of the window into the street. How much the passers by kept laughing
and the miser was vexed, I shall not attempt to say. I will not mock him
among his neighbours who were picking up his bright crowns either for a
nestegg, or for a son or a brother,—for a gamester, a driveller or a
drunkard,—for I cannot but remember that fine and true saying which
affirms, ‘_Things badly gained are badly scattered_.’”
This tale, derived by Paradin from Gabriel Symeoni’s _Imprese Heroiche
et Morali_, is assumed by Whitney as the groundwork of his very lively
narrative (p. 169), _Against Userers_, of which we venture to give the
whole.
_Malè parta malè dilabuntur.
In fæneratores._
[Illustration: _Whitney, 1586._]
“An vserer, whose Idol was his goulde,
Within his house, a peeuishe ape retain’d:
A seruaunt fitte, for suche a miser oulde,
Of whome both mockes, and apishe mowes, he gain’d.
Thus, euerie daie he made his master sporte,
And to his clogge, was chained in the courte.
At lengthe it hap’d? while greedie graundsir din’de?
The ape got loose, and founde a windowe ope:
Where in he leap’de, and all about did finde,
The GOD, wherein the Miser put his hope?
Which soone he broch’d, and forthe with speede did flinge,
And did delighte on stones to heare it ringe?
The sighte, righte well the passers by did please,
Who did reioyce to finde these goulden crommes:
That all their life, their pouertie did ease.
Of goodes ill got, loe heere the fruicte that commes.
Looke herevppon, you that have MIDAS minte,
And bee posseste with hartes as harde as flinte.
Shut windowes close, leste apes doe enter in,
And doe disperse your goulde, you doe adore.
But woulde you learne to keepe, that you do winne?
Then get it well, and hourde it not in store.
If not: no boultes, nor brasen barres will serve,
For GOD will waste your stocke, and make you sterue.”
Poor Caliban, in the _Tempest_ (act ii. sc. 2, l. 7, vol. i. p. 36),
complains of Prospero’s spirits that,—
“For every trifle are they set upon me;
Sometimes like apes, that mow and chatter at me,
And after bite me.”
And Helena, to her rival Hermia (_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, act iii. sc.
2, l. 237, vol. ii. p. 240), urges a very similar charge,—
“Ay, do, persever, counterfeit sad looks,
Make mouths upon me when I turn my back;
Wink each at other; hold the sweet jest up.”
There is not, indeed, any imitation of the jocose tale about the
ape[186] and the miser’s gold, and it is simply in “the mockes and
apishe mowes” that any similarity exists. These, however, enter into the
dialogue between Imogen and Iachimo (_Cymbeline_, act i. sc. 6, l. 30,
vol. ix. p. 184); she bids him welcome, and he replies,—
“_Iach._ Thanks, fairest lady.
What, are men mad? Hath nature given them eyes
To see this vaulted arch and the rich crop
Of sea and land, which can distinguish ’twixt
The fiery orbs above and the twinn’d stones
Upon the number’d beach, and can we not
Partition make with spectacles so precious
’Twixt fair and foul?
_Imo._ What makes your admiration?
_Iach._ It cannot be i’ the eye; for apes and monkeys,
’Twixt two such shes, would chatter this way and
Contemn with mows the other.”
There is a fine thought in Furmer’s _Use and Abuse of Wealth_, first
published in Latin in 1575, and afterwards, in 1585, translated into
Dutch by Coornhert; it is respecting the distribution of poverty and
riches by the Supreme wisdom. The subject (at p. 6) is _Undeserved
Poverty_,—“The Lord maketh poor, and enriches.” (See Plate XVI.)
“The riches which Job had as God bestows,
So giver of poverty doth God appear.
Who thinks each good because from God each flows,
Shall always each with bravest spirit bear.”
_Plate 16_
IIII.
PAVPERTAS IMMERITA.
Dominus pauperem facit & ditat.
1. _Regum_ 2, 7.
[Illustration]
_Vt Deus auctor opum quas olim Iobus habebat,
Sic paupertatis tum Deus auctor erat.
Qui bonum vtrumque putat, Dominus quia donat vtrumque,
In animo forti ſemper vtrumque feret._
_Providence making Rich and making Poor Coörnhert, 1585._
In the device, the clouds are opened to bestow fulness upon the poor
man, and emptiness upon the rich. By brief allusion chiefly does
Shakespeare express either of these acts; but in the _Tempest_ (act iii.
sc. 2, l. 135, vol. i. p. 48), Caliban, after informing Stephano that
“the isle is full of noises,” and that “sometimes a thousand twangling
instruments will hum about mine ears,” adds,—
“And then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.”
A very similar picture and sentiment to those in Coornhert are presented
by Gloucester’s words in _King Lear_ (act iv. sc. 1, l. 64, vol. viii.
p. 366),—
“Here, take this purse, thou whom the heavens’ plagues
Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched
Makes thee the happier. Heavens, deal so still!
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly;
So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough.”
Coornhert’s title, “~Recht Ghebruyck ende Misbruyck vantydlycke
have~,”—_The right use and misuse of worldly wealth_,—and, indeed,
his work, have their purport well carried out by the king in _2 Henry
IV._ (act iv. sc. 4, l. 103, vol iv. p. 450),—
“Will Fortune never come with both hands full,
But write her fair words still in foulest letters?
She either gives a stomach and no food;
Such are the poor, in health; or else a feast
And takes away the stomach; such are the rich.
That have abundance and enjoy it not.”
The fine thoughts of Ulysses, too, in _Troilus and Cressida_ (act iii.
sc. 3, l. 196, vol. vi. p. 201), have right and propriety here to be
quoted,—
“The providence that’s in a watchful state
Knows almost every grain of Plutus’ gold,
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps,
Keeps place with thought and almost like the gods
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
There is a mystery, with whom relation
Durst never meddle, in the soul of state;
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath or pen can give expressure to.”
Petruchio’s thought, perchance, may be mentioned in this connection
(_Taming of the Shrew_, act iv. sc. 3, l. 165, vol. iii. p. 78), when he
declares his will to go to Kate’s father,—
“Even in these honest mean habiliments:
Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor;
For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich:
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,
So honour peereth in the meanest habit.”
_Plate 17._
[Illustration: _Time Flying from “Emblemata” by Otho Vænius p 206 ed
1612_]
The Horatian thought, “Time flies irrevocable.” so well depicted by Otho
Vænius in his _Emblemata_ (edition 1612, p. 206), has only general
parallels in Shakespeare; and yet it is a thought with which our various
dissertations on Shakespeare and the Emblematists may find no unfitting
end. The Christian artist far excels the Heathen poet. Horace, in his
_Odes_ (bk. iv. carmen 7), declares,—
“_Immortalia ne speres, monet annus & almum
Quæ rapit hora diem:
Frigora mitescunt Zephyris: Ver proterit Æstas
Interitura, simul
Pomifer Autumnus fruges effuderit: & mox
Bruma recurrit iners._”
_i.e._ “Not to hope immortal things, the year admonishes, and the hour
which steals the genial day. By western winds the frosts grow mild; the
summer soon to perish supplants the spring, then fruitful autumn pours
forth
his stores, and soon sluggish winter comes again.”
These, however, the artist makes (_Henry V._, act iv. sc. 1, l. 9, vol.
v. p. 555),—
“Preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.”
Youthful Time (see Plate XVII.) is leading on the seasons,—a childlike
spring, a matured summer wreathed with corn, an autumn crowned with
vines, and a decrepid winter,—and yet the emblem of immortality lies at
their feet; and the lesson is taught, as our Dramatist expresses it
(_Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2, l. 71, vol. viii. p. 14),—
“All that lives must die
Passing through nature to eternity.”
The irrevocable time flies on, and surely it has its comment in
_Macbeth_ (act v. sc. 5, l. 19, vol. vii. p. 512),—
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.”
Or, in Hotspur’s words (_1 Henry IV._, act v. sc. 2, l. 82, vol. iv. p.
337),—
“O gentlemen, the time of life is short!
To spend that shortness basely were too long,
If life did ride upon a dial’s point,
Still ending at the arrival of an hour.”
And for eternity’s Emblem,[187] the Egyptians, we are told (Horapollo,
i. 1), made golden figures of the Basilisk, with its tail covered by the
rest of its body; so Otho Vænius presents the device to us. But
Shakespeare, without symbol, names the desire, the feeling, the fact
itself; he makes Cleopatra exclaim (_Antony and Cleopatra_, act v. sc.
2, l. 277, vol. ix. p. 150), “I have immortal longings in me,” “I am
fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life.”
When Romeo asks (_Romeo and Juliet_, act v. sc. 1, l. 15, vol. vii. p.
117),—
“How fares my Juliet? that I ask again;
For nothing can be ill, if she be well;”
with the force of entire faith the answer is conceived which Balthasar
returns,—
“Then she is well, and nothing can be ill:
Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument,
And her immortal part with angels lives.”
We thus know in what sense to understand the words from _Macbeth_ (act
iii. sc. 2, l. 22, vol. vii. p. 467),—
“Duncan is in his grave;
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.”
Therefore, in spite of quickly fading years, in spite of age
irrevocable, and (_Love’s Labours Lost_, act i. sc. 1, l. 4, vol. ii. p.
97),—
“In spite of cormorant devouring Time,
The endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge,
And make us heirs of all eternity.”
A brief _resumé_, or recapitulation, will now place the nature of our
argument more clearly in review.
When writing and its kindred arts of designing and colouring were the
only means in use for the making and illustrating of books, drawings of
an emblematical character were frequently executed both for the
ornamenting and for the fuller explanation of various works.
From the origin of printing, books of an emblematical character, as the
_Bibles of the Poor_ and other block-books, were generally known in the
civilised portions of Europe; they constituted, to a considerable
degree, the illustrated literature of their age, and enjoyed wide fame
and popularity.
Not many years after printing with moveable types had been invented,
Emblem works as a distinct species of literature appeared; and of these
some of the earliest were soon translated into English.
It is on undoubted record that the use of Emblems, derived from German,
Latin, French, and Italian sources, prevailed in England for purposes of
ornamentation of various kinds; that the works of Brandt, Giovio,
Symeoni, and Paradin were translated into English; and that there were
several English writers or collectors of Emblems within Shakespeare’s
lifetime,—as Daniell, Whitney, Willet, Combe, and Peacham.
Shakespeare possessed great artistic powers, so as to appreciate and
graphically describe the beauties and qualities of excellence in
painting, sculpture, and music. His attainments, too, in the languages
enabled him to make use of the Emblem-books that had been published in
Latin, Italian, and French, and possibly in Spanish.
In everything, except in the actual pictorial device, Shakespeare
exhibited himself as a skilled designer,—indeed, a writer of Emblems; he
followed the very methods on which this species of literary composition
was conducted, and needed only the engraver’s aid to make perfect
designs.
Freest among mortals were the Emblem writers in borrowing one from the
other, and from any source which might serve the construction of their
ingenious devices; and they generally did this without acknowledgment.
An Emblem once launched into the world of letters was treated as a fable
or a proverb,—it became for the time and the occasion the property of
whoever chose to take it. In using Emblems, therefore, Shakespeare is no
more to be regarded as a copyist than his contemporaries are, but simply
as one who exercised a recognised right to appropriate what he needed of
the general stock of Emblem notions.
There are several direct References in Shakespeare, at least six, in
which, by the closest description and by express quotation, he
identifies himself with the Emblem writers who preceded him.
But besides these direct References, there are several collateral ones,
in which ideas and expressions are employed similar to those of
Emblematists, and which indicate a knowledge of Emblem art.
And, finally, the parallelisms and correspondencies are very numerous
between devices and turns of thought, and even between the words of the
Emblem writers and passages in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Dramas; and
these receive their most appropriate _rationale_ on the supposition that
they were suggested to his mind through reading the Emblem-books, or
through familiarity with the Emblem literature.
Now, such References and Coincidences are not to be regarded as purely
accidental, neither can all of them be urged with entire confidence.
Some persons even may be disposed to class them among the similarities
which of necessity arise when writers of genius and learning take up the
same themes, and call to their aid all the resources of their memory and
research.
I presume not, however, to say that my arguments and statements are
absolute proofs, except in a few instances. What I maintain is this:
that the Emblem writers, and our own Whitney especially, do supply many
curious and highly interesting illustrations of the Shakespearean
dramas, and that several of them, probably, were in the mind of the
Dramatist as he wrote.
To show that the theory carried out in these pages is neither singular
nor unsupported by high authorities, it should not be forgotten that the
very celebrated critic, Francis Douce, in his _Illustrations of
Shakespeare_ (pp. 302, 392), maintains that Paradin was the source of
the torch-emblem in the _Pericles_ (act ii. sc. 2, l. 32): the “wreath
of victory,” and “gold on the touchstone,” have also the same source. To
Holbein’s _Simulachres_ Noel Humphreys assigns the origin of the
expression in _Othello_, “Put out the light—and then, put out the
light;” and in the same work, Dr. Alfred Woltmann, in _Holbein and his
Times_ (vol. ii. p. 121), finds the origin of Death’s fool in _Measure
for Measure_: and Shakespeare’s comparisons of “Death and Sleep” may be
traced to Jean de Vauzelle, who wrote the Dissertations for _Les
Simulachres_. Charles Knight, also, in his _Pictorial Shakspere_ (vol.
i. p. 154), to illustrate the lines in _Hamlet_ (act iv. sc. 5, l. 142)
respecting “the kind life-rendering pelican,” quotes Whitney’s stanza,
and copies his woodcut, as stated _ante_, p. 396, note.
Though not a learned man, as Erasmus or Beza was, Shakespeare, as every
page of his wonderful writings shows, must have been a reading man, and
well acquainted with the current literature of his age and country.
Whitney’s _Emblemes_ were well known in 1612 to the author of “MINERVA
BRITANNA,” and boasted of in 1598 by Thomas Meres, in his _Wit’s
Commonwealth_, as fit to be compared with any of the most eminent Latin
writers of Emblems, and dedicated to many of the distinguished men of
Elizabeth’s reign; and they could scarcely have been unknown to
Shakespeare even had there been no similarities of thought and
expression established between the two writers.
Nor after the testimonies which have been adduced, and comparing the
picture-emblems submitted for consideration with the passages from
Shakespeare which are their parallels, as far as words can be to
drawings, are we required to treat it as nothing but a conjecture that
Shakespeare, like others of his countrymen, possessed at least a general
acquaintance with the popular Emblem-books of his own generation and of
that which went before.
The study of the old Emblem-books certainly possesses little of the
charm which the unsurpassed natural power of Shakespeare has infused
into his dramas, and which time does not diminish; yet that study is no
barren pursuit for such as will seek for “virtue’s fair form and graces
excellent,” or who desire to note how the learning of the age disported
itself at its hours of recreation, and how, with few exceptions, it held
firm its allegiance to purity of thought, and reverenced the spirit of
religion. Should there be any whom these pages incite to gain a fuller
knowledge of the Emblem literature, I would say in the words of Arthur
Bourchier, Whitney’s steady friend,—
“_Goe forwarde then in happie time, and thou shalt surely finde,
With coste, and labour well set out, a banquet for thy minde,
A storehouse for thy wise conceiptes, a whetstone for thy witte:
Where, eache man maye with daintie choice his fancies finely fitte._”
So much for the early cultivators of Emblematical mottoes, devices, and
poesies, and for him whom Hugh Holland, and Ben Jonson, and “The
friendly Admirer of his Endowments,” salute as “The Famous Scenicke
Poet,” “The Sweet Swan of Avon,” “The Starre of Poets,”—
“_Soule of the Age!_
The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!”
“TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED, THE AUTHOR, ~Mr. William
Shakespeare~: _and what he has left us_;”—such the dedication when
Jonson declared,—
“_Thou art a Moniment without a tombe._
. . . . . .
_And art aliue still, while thy Booke doth liue_
And we haue wits to read, and praise to giue.”
[Illustration: _Giovio, ed. 1556._]
-----
Footnote 180:
Can this be an allusion to Holbein’s _Last Judgment_ and _Escutcheon
of Death_ in his _Simulachres de la Mort_, ed. 1538?
Footnote 181:
“Cicero dict que Alcidamus vng Rheteur antique escripuit les louanges
de la Mort, en les quelles estoient cõtenuz les nombres des maulx des
humains, & ce pour leur faire desirer la Mort. Car si le dernier iour
n’amaine extinction, mais commutation de lieu, Quest il plus a
desirer? Et s’il estainct & efface tout, Quest il rien meilleur, que
de s’ endormir au milieu des labeurs de ceste vie & ainsi reposer en
vng sempiternel sommeil.”
Footnote 182:
For many other instances of similarities in the use of old words, see
the APPENDIX, I. p. 497.
Footnote 183:
Were it only for the elegance and neat turn of the lines, we insert an
epigram on a dog, by Joachim du Bellay, given in his Latin Poems,
printed at Paris in 1569,—
“Latratu fures excepi;—mutus amantes;
Sic placui domino, sic placui dominæ.”
[Sidenote: _i.e._]
“With barking the thieves I awaited,—in silence the lovers;
So pleased I the master,—so pleased I the mistress.”
Footnote 184:
“Tarre,” _i.e._ provoke or urge; see Johnson and Steevens’
_Shakespeare_, vol. ix. p. 48, note.
Footnote 185:
See “Horace his Arte of Poetrie, pistles, and satyres, englished” by
Thomas Drant, 410, 1567.
Footnote 186:
The character, however, of the animal is named in _Midsummer Night’s
Dream_ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 181), where Titania may look—
“On meddling monkey, or on busy ape.”
Footnote 187:
See woodcut in this volume, p. 37.
-----
------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX
I.
COINCIDENCES BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND WHITNEY IN THE USE AND APPLICATION
OF WORDS NOW OBSOLETE, OR OF OLD FORM.
N.B. After the words the References are to the pages and lines of
Whitney’s Emblems; in the Dramas to the act, scene, and line, according
to the Cambridge Edition, 8vo, in 9 vols. 1866.
Accidentes p. vi. line 2 yet they set them selues a
worke in handlinge suche
accidentes, as haue bin done
in times paste.