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),—

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

And then, as adding (l. 92),—

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,—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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),—

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 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),—

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,—

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,—

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),—

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,”—

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,”—

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),—

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 sentim?t.” 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 espouu?tement 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),—

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

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

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

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

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),—

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,—

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,—

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),—

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,—

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,—

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,—

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),—

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,—

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,—

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,—

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,—

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,—

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),—

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),—

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—

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.”

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 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,—

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,—

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.”

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,”—

The Prologue to Henry VIII. (l. 15) alludes to the dress of the buffoons that were often introduced into the plays of the time,—

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,—

Perchance we know the lines in the “Faerie Queene” (vi. c. 7, 49, 1. 6),—

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.

Poor Caliban, in the Tempest (act ii. sc. 2, l. 7, vol. i. p. 36), complains of Prospero’s spirits that,—

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,—

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,—

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.)