Chapter XX: Section VII: Emblems for Poetic Ideas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POETARVM GLORIA.

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

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

[Sidenote: _i.e._]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iuuenilia ſtudia cum prouectiori
ætate permutata.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eadem inter ſe. Sunt eadem uni tertia.

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

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

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

Vnica ſemper auis

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

Theophraſte.

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

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

Vnica ſemper auis
_EMBLEMA XXXVI._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_DE I MEDESIMI._

Novs scavons bien le temps

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

Nous ſauons bien le temps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The good bishop narrates as physiological history the following,—

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

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

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

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

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

Pro lege, & grege.
_EMBLEMA XIV._

And tells how,—

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

He adds this personification of the Pelican,—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D’VN AMORE.
INCVRABILE.

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

Eſto tiene ſu remedio, y non yo.

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

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

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

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

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

The following is the English version of that date,—

“_No help for the louer._”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“_De Morte, et Cupidine._”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Plate 14_

THEATRVM VITÆ
HVMANÆ.

CAPVT I.

_VITA HVMANA EST TANQVAM_

_Theatrum omnium miſeriarum._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Plate 15_

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

------------------------------------------------------------------------