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AVING established the facts that Shakespeare invented and described Emblems of his own, and that he plainly and palpably adopted several which had been designed by earlier authors, we may now, with more consistency, enter on the further labour of endeavouring to trace to their original sources the various hints and allusions, be they more or less express, which his sonnets and dramas contain in reference to Emblem literature. And we may bear in mind that we are not now proceeding on mere conjecture; we have dug into the virgin soil and have found gold that can bear every test, and may reasonably expect, as we continue our industry, to find a nugget here and a nugget there to reward our toil.

But the correspondencies and parallelisms existing in Shakespeare between himself and the earlier Emblematists are so numerous, that it becomes requisite to adopt some system of arrangement, or of classification, lest a mere chaos. of confusion and not the symmetry of order should reign over our enterprise. And as "all Emblemes for the most part," says Whitney to his readers, "maie be reduced into these three kindes, which is Historicall, Naturall, & Morall,"

we shall make that division of his our foundation, and considering the various instances of imitation or of adaptation to be met with in Shakespeare, shall arrange them under the eight heads of-1, Historical Emblems; 2, Heraldic Emblems; 3, Emblems of Mythological Characters; 4, Emblems illustrative of Fables; 5, Emblems in connexion with Proverbs; 6, Emblems from Facts in Nature, and from the Properties of Animals; 7, Emblems for Poetic Ideas; and 8, Moral and Esthetic, and Miscellaneous Emblems.

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SECTION I.

HISTORICAL EMBLEMS.

S SOON as learning revived in Europe, the great models of ancient times were again set up on their pedestals for admiration and for guidance. Nearly all the Elizabethan authors, certainly those of highest fame, very frequently introduce, or expatiate upon, the worthies of Greece and Rome,-both those which are named in the epic poems of Homer and Virgil, and those which are within the limits of authentic history. It seemed enough to awaken interest, "to point a moral, or adorn a tale," that there existed a record of old.

Shakespeare, though cultivating, it may be, little direct acquaintance with the classical writers, followed the general practice. He has built up some of the finest of his Tragedies, if not with chorus, and semi-chorus, strophe, antistrophe, and epode, like the Athenian models, yet with a

wonderfully exact appreciation of the characters of antiquity, and with a delineating power surprisingly true to history and to the leading events and circumstances in the lives of the personages whom he introduces. From possessing full and adequate scholarship, Giovio, Domenichi, Claude Mignault, Whitney, and others of the Emblem schools, went immediately to the original sources of information. Shakespeare,

we may admit, could do this only in a limited degree, and generally availed himself of assistance from the learned translators of ancient authors. Most marvellously does he transcend them in the creative attributes of high genius: they supplied the rough marble, blocks of Parian perchance, and a few tools more or less suited to the work; but it was himself, his soul and intellect and good right arm, which have produced almost living and moving forms,—

"See, my lord,

Would you not deem it breath'd? and that those veins
Did verily bear blood?"

Winter's Tale, act v. sc. 3, l. 63.

For Medeia, one of the heroines of Euripides, and for Eneas and Anchises in their escape from Troy, Alciat (Emblem 54), and his close imitator Whitney (p. 33), give each an emblem.

To the first the motto is,

"Ei qui semel sua prodegerit, aliena crear non oportere,”—

"To that man who has once squandered his own, another person's ought not to be entrusted,"—

similar, as a counterpart, to the Saviour's words (Luke xvi. 12), "If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own."

The device is,

Which Whitney (p. 33) considerably amplifies,—

"MEDEA loe with infante in her arme,

Whoe kil'de her babes, shee shoulde haue loued beste:
The swallowe yet, whoe did suspect no harme,
Hir Image likes, and hatch'd vppon her breste:
And lifte her younge, vnto this tirauntes guide,
Whoe, peecemeale did her proper fruicte deuide.

Oh foolishe birde, think'ste thow, shee will haue care,
Vppon thy yonge? Whoe hathe her owne destroy'de,
And maie it bee, that shee thie birdes should spare?
Whoe slue her owne, in whome shee shoulde haue ioy'd.
Thow arte deceau'de, and arte a warninge good,
To put no truste, in them that hate theire blood."

"Swallows have built

In Cleopatra's sails their nests: the augurers
Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly
And dare not speak their knowledge."

Ant. & Cleop., act 4, sc. 12, 1. 3.

And to the same purport, from Alciat's 193rd Emblem, are Whitney's lines (p. 29),

"MEDEA nowe, and PROGNE, blusshe for shame :
By whome, are ment yow dames of cruell kinde
Whose infantes yonge, vnto your endlesse blame,
For mothers deare, do tyrauntes of yow finde :

Oh serpentes seede, each birde, and sauage brute,
Will those condempne, that tender not theire frute."

The stanza of his 194th Emblem is adapted by Alciat, and by Whitney after him (p. 163), to the motto,

"A

Alicat, 1581.

PER medios hofteis patriæ cùm ferret ab igne
Aeneas humeris dulce parentis onus :
Parcite, dicebat: vobis fene adorea rapto

Nulla erit, erepto fed patre fumma mihi.

ENEAS beares his father, out of Troye,

When that the Greekes, the same did spoile, and sacke:

His father might of suche a sonne haue ioye,

Who throughe his foes, did beare him on his backe:

No fier, nor sworde, his valiaunt harte coulde feare,

To flee awaye, without his father deare.