“You must lay lime to tangle her desires
By wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes
Should be full-fraught with serviceable vows.
Duke. Ay,
Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.
Pro. Say that upon the altar of her beauty
You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart:
Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears
Moist it again; and frame some feeling line
That may discover such integrity:
For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poets’ sinews;
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones.
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.”
[135]
Again, in proof of Music’s power, consult Henry VIII. (act iii.
sc. 1, l. 1, vol. vi. p. 56), when Queen Katharine, in her sorrowfulness,
says to one of her women who were at work around her,—
“Take thy lute, wench: my soul grows sad with troubles;
Sing and disperse ’em if thou canst: leave working.”
The sweet simple song is raised,—
“Orpheus with his lute made trees
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung, as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing die.”
How splendidly does the dramatic poet’s genius here shine
forth! It pours light upon each Emblem, and calls into day
the hidden glories. His spirit breathes upon a dead picture,
and rivalling Orpheus himself, he makes the images breathe and
glance and live.
The mythic tale of Actæon transformed into a stag, and
hunted by hounds because of his rudeness to Diana and her
nymphs, was used to point the moral of widely different subjects.
Alciatus (Emb. 52, ed. 1551, p. 60) applies it “to the harbourers
of assassins” and makes it the occasion of a very true but very
severe reflection.
“Of thieves and robbers evil-omen’d bands the city through
Go thy companions; and a cohort girded with dreadful swords.
And so, O prodigal, thou thinkest thyself of generous mind,
Because thy cooking pot allures very many of the bad ones.
Lo, a new Actæon, who after he assumed the horns,
Himself gave himself a prey to his own dogs.”
The device is graphically drawn: Actæon is in part embruted;
he is fleeing with the dogs close upon him. Supposing
Shakespeare to have seen this print, it represents
to the life Pistol’s words in the Merry Wives of Windsor
(act ii. sc. 1, l. 106, vol. i. p. 186),—
“Prevent, or go thou,
Like Sir Actæon he, with Ringwood at thy heels.”
“Ex domino servus,”—The slave out of the master,—is
another saying which the tale of Actæon has illustrated.
The application is from Aneau’s “Picta Poesis,” fol. 41.
On the left hand of the tiny drawing are Diana and her
nymphs, busied in the bath, beneath the shelter of an
overhanging cliff,—on the right is Actæon, motionless, with
a stag’s head; dogs are around him. The verses translated
read thus,—
“Horns being bestowed upon Actæon when changed to a stag,
Member by member his own dogs tore him to pieces.
Alas! wretched the Master who feeds wasteful parasites;
A ready prepared prey he is for his fawning dogs!
It suggests, he is mocked by them and devoured,
And out of a master is made a slave, bearing horns.”
But Sambucus in his Emblems (edition 1564, p. 128), and
Whitney after him (p. 15)—making use of the same woodcut,
only with a different border—adapt the Actæon-tragedy to
another subject and moral, and take the words, Pleasure
purchased by anguish.
Qvi nimis exercet venatus, ac ſine fine
Haurit opes patrias, prodigit inque canes:
Tantus amor vani, tantus furor vſque recurſat,
Induat ut celeris cornua bina feræ.
Accidit Actæon tibi, qui cornutus ab ortu,
À canibus propriis dilaceratus eras.
Quàm multos hodie, quos paſcit odora canum vis.
Venandi ſtudium conficit, atque vorat.
Seria ne ludis poſtponas, commoda damnis,
Quod ſupereſt rerum ſic ut egenus habe.
Sæpe etiam propria qui interdum vxore relicta
Deperit externas corniger iſta luit.
Stanzas which may thus be rendered,—
“Whoever too eagerly hunting pursues, and without moderation
Drains paternal treasures and lavishes them on dogs:
So great the love of the folly, so strong does the passion return
That it clothes him in the twin horns of the swift stag.
It happened, Actæon, to thee, who though horned from thy birth,
By thy own dogs into pieces wast torn.
At this day how many, whom the dogs’ quick scent delights,
The strong passion for hunting wastes and devours.
Put not off serious things for sports,—advantages for losses:
As one in need so hold fast whatever things remain:
Often even the horn bearer, his own wife forsaken,
Loves desperately strangers, and pays penalties for crimes.”
We here see that Sambucus has adopted the theory of
the old grammarian or historian of Alexandria, Palæphatus,
who informs us,—
“Actæon by race was an Arcadian, very fond of dogs. Many of them he
kept, and hunted in the mountains. But he neglected his own affairs, for
men then were all self-workers; they had no servants, but themselves tilled
the earth; and that man was the richest, who tilled the earth and was the
most diligent workman. But Actæon being careless of domestic affairs,
and rather going about hunting with his dogs, his substance was wasted.
And when he had nothing left, people kept saying: the wretched Actæon
was eaten up by his own dogs.”
A very instructive tale this for some of our Nimrods, mighty
hunters and racers in the land; but it is not to be pressed too
strictly into the service of the parsimonious.
From the same motto Whitney (p. 15) keeps much closer to
the mythological narrative,[136]—
“Actæon heare, vnhappie man behoulde,
When in the well, hee sawe Diana brighte,
With greedie lookes, hee waxed ouer boulde,
That to a stagge hee was transformed righte,
Whereat amasde, hee thought to runne awaie,
But straighte his howndes did rente hym, for their praie.
By which is ment, That those whoe do pursue
Theire fancies fonde, and thinges vnlawfull craue,
Like brutishe beastes appeare vnto the viewe,
And shall at lengthe, Actæons guerdon haue:
And as his houndes, soe theire affections base,
Shall them deuowre, and all their deedes deface.”
Very beautifully, in Twelfth Night (act i. sc. 1, l. 9,
vol. iii. p. 223), is this idea applied by Orsino, duke of
Illyria,—
“O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute! so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
Cur. Will you go hunt, my lord?
Duke.What, Curio?
Cur. The hart.
Duke. Why, so I do, the noblest that I have:
O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence!
That instant was I turn’d into a hart;
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E’er since pursue me.”
The full force and meaning of the mythological tale is,
however, brought out in the Titus Andronicus (act ii. sc. 3,
l. 55, vol. vi. p. 459), that fearful history of passion and
revenge. Tamora is in the forest, and Bassianus and Lavinia
make their appearance,—
“Bass. Who have we here? Rome’s royal empress,
Unfurnish’d of her well-beseeming troop?
Or is it Dian, habited like her,
Who hath abandoned her holy groves,
To see the general hunting in this forest?
Tam. Saucy controller of my private steps!
Had I the power that some say Dian had,
Thy temples should be planted presently
With horns, as was Actæon’s, and the hounds
Should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs,
Unmannerly intruder as thou art!”
Arion rescued by the Dolphin is another mythic tale in which
poets may well delight. Alciatus (Emblem 89, edition 1581),
directs the moral, “against the avaricious, or those to whom a
better condition is offered by strangers.” Contrary to the French
writers of time and place, the emblem presents in the same
device the harpist both cast out of the ship and riding triumphantly
to the shore.
In auaros, vel quibus melior conditio ab
extraneis offertur.
Emblema LXXXIX.
Delphini inſidens vada cærula ſulcat Arion,
Hocʠ3 aures mulcet, frenat & ora ſono.
Quàm ſit auari hominis, non tam mens dira ſerarũ est;
Quiʠ3 viris rapimur, piſcibus eripimur.
i.e.
“On the dolphin sitting Arion ploughs cerulean seas,
With a sound he soothes the ears, with a sound curbs the mouth.
Of wild creatures not so dreadful is the mind, as of greedy man;
We who by men are pillaged, are by fishes rescued.”
With this thought before him Whitney (p. 144) at the
head of his stanzas has placed the strong expression, “Man
is a wolf to man.”[137] Cave canem,—“Beware of the dog,”—is
certainly a far more kindly warning; but the motto,
Homo homini lupus, tallies exactly with the conduct of the
mariners.
“No mortall foe so full of poysoned spite,
As man, to man, when mischiefe he pretendes:
The monsters huge, as diuers aucthors write,
Yea Lions wilde, and fishes weare his frendes:
And when their deathe, by frendes suppos’d was sought,
They kindnesse shew’d, and them from daunger brought.
Arion lo, who gained store of goulde,
In countries farre: with harpe, and pleasant voice:
Did shipping take, and to Corinthvs woulde,
And to his wishe, of pilottes made his choise:
Who rob’d the man, and threwe him to the sea,
A Dolphin, lo, did beare him safe awaie.”
A comment from St. Chrysostom, super Matth. xxii., is
added,—
“As a king is honoured in his image, so God is loved and hated in
man. He cannot hate man, who loves God, nor can he, who hates God,
love men.”
Reference is also made to Aulus Gellius (bk. v. c. 14, vol. i.
p. 408), where the delightful story is narrated of the slave
Androclus and the huge lion whose wounded foot he had cured,
and with whom he lived familiarly for three years in the same
cave and on the same food. After a time the slave was taken
and condemned to furnish sport in the circus to the degraded
Romans. That same lion also had been taken, a beast of vast
size, and power and fierceness. The two were confronted in
the arena.
“When the lion saw the man at a distance,” says the narrator, “suddenly,
as if wondering, he stood still; and then gently and placidly as if recognising
drew near. With the manner and observance of fawning dogs, softly and
blandly he wagged his tail and placed himself close to the man’s body, and
lightly with his tongue licked the legs and hands of the slave almost
lifeless from fear. The man Androclus during these blandishments of the
fierce wild creature recovered his lost spirits; by degrees he directed his
eyes to behold the lion. Then, as if mutual recognition had been made, man
and lion appeared glad and rejoicing one with the other.”
Was it now, from having this tale in mind that, in the
Troilus and Cressida (act v. sc. 3, l. 37, vol. vi. p. 247), these
words were spoken to Hector?—
“Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,
Which better fits a lion than a man.”
Arion sauué par vn Dauphin, is also the subject of a well
executed device in the “ΜΙΚΡΟΚΟΣΜΟΣ” (edition Antwerp,
1592),[138] of which we give the French version (p. 64),—
“Arion retournant par mer en sa patrie
Chargé de quelque argẽt, vid que les mariniers
Animéz contre luy d’une auare furie
Pretendoyent luy oster sa vie & ses deniers.
Pour eschapper leurs mains & changer leur courage,
Sur la harpe il chanta vn chant melodieux
Mais il ne peut fleschir la nature sauuage
De ces cruels larrons & meurtriers furieux.
Estant par eux ietté deans la mere profonde,
Vn Dauphin attiré au son de l’instrument,
Le chargea sur son dos, & au trauers de l’onde
Le portant, le sauua miraculeusement.
Maintes fois l’innocent à qui on fait offense
Trouue plus de faueur es bestes qu’es humains:
Dieu qui aime les bons les prend en sa defense,
Les gardant de l’effort des hommes inhumains.”
To the Emblems we have under consideration we meet with
this coincidence in Twelfth Night (act i. sc. 2, l. 10, vol. iii.
p. 225); it is the Captain’s assurance to Viola,—
“When you and those poor number saved with you
Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother,
Most provident in peril, bind himself,
Courage and hope both teaching him the practice,
To a strong mast that lived upon the sea;
Where, like Arion on the dolphin’s back,
I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves
So long as I could see.”
As examples of a sentiment directly opposite, we will briefly
refer to Coustau’s Pegma (p. 323, edition Lyons, 1555), where
to the device of a Camel and his driver, the noble motto is
recorded and exemplified from Plutarch, Homo homini Deus,—“Man
is a God to man;” the reason being assigned,—
“As the world was created for sake of gods and men, so man was created
for man’s sake;” and, “that the grace we receive from the immortal God is
to be bestowed on man by man.”
Reusner, too, in his Emblemata (p. 142, Francfort, 1581),
though commenting on the contrary saying, Homo homini lupus,
declares,—
“Aut homini Deus est homo; si bonus: aut lupus hercle,
Si malus: ô quantum est esse hominem, atq. Deum.”
i.e.
“Or man to man is God; if good: or a wolf in truth,
If bad: O how great it is to be man and God!”
[139]
Was it in reference to these sentiments that Hamlet and
Cerimon speak? The one says (Hamlet, act iv. sc. 4,
l. 33. vol. viii. p. 127),—
“What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused.”
And again (act ii. sc. 2, l. 295, vol. viii. p. 63),—
“What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in
faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how
like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!”
So in the Pericles (act iii. sc. 2, l. 26, vol. ix. p. 366), the fine
thought is uttered,—
“I hold it ever,
Virtue and cunning were endowments greater
Than nobleness and riches: careless heirs
May the two latter darken and expend,
But immortality attends the former,
Making a man a god.”
The horses and chariot of Phœbus, and the presumptuous
charioteer Phaëton, who attempted to drive them, are celebrated
with great splendour of description in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
(bk. ii. fab. 1), that rich storehouse of Mythology. The palace
of the god has lofty columns bright with glittering gold; the
roof is covered with pure shining ivory; and the double gates
are of silver. Here Phœbus was throned, and clothed in
purple;—the days and months and years,—the seasons and the
ages were seated around him; Phaëton appears, claims to be
his son, and demands for one day to guide the glorious steeds.
At this point we take up the narrative which Alciat has written
(Emb. 56), and inscribed, “To the rash.”[140]
“You behold Phaëton the driver of his father’s chariot,—
Who dared to guide the fire breathing horses of the sun.
After over the lands mightiest burnings he scattered,
Wretched he fell from the chariot where rashly he sat.
So many kings, whom youthful ambition excites,
On the wheels of Fortune are borne to the stars.
After great slaughter of the human race and their own,
For all their crimes at last the penalties they pay.”
Shakespeare’s notices of the attempted feat and its failure
are frequent. First, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona (act iii.
sc. 1, l. 153, vol. i. p. 121), the Duke of Milan discovers the
letter addressed to his daughter Silvia, with the promise,—
“Silvia, this night will I enfranchise thee,”—
and with true classic force denounces the folly of the attempt,—
“Why, Phaethon,—for thou art Merops’ son,—
Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car,
And with thy daring folly burn the world?
Wilt thou reach stars because they shine on thee?”
In her impatience for the meeting with Romeo (Romeo and
Juliet, act iii. sc. 2, l. 1, vol. vii. p. 72), Juliet exclaims,—
“Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phœbus’ lodging: such a waggoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west
And bring in cloudy night immediately.”
The unfortunate Richard II. (act iii. sc. 3, l. 178, vol. iv. p.
179), when desired by Northumberland to meet Bolingbroke in
the courtyard (“may’t please you to come down”), replies,—
“Down, down, I come; like glistering Phaeton
Wanting the manage of unruly jades.”
And he too, in 3 Henry VI. (act i. sc. 4, l. 16, vol. v. p. 244),
Richard, Duke of York, whose son cried,—
“A crown, or else a glorious tomb!
A sceptre or an earthly sepulchre!”—
when urged by Northumberland (l. 30),—
“Yield to our mercy, proud Plantagenet;”
had this answer given for him by the faithful Clifford,—
“Ay, to such mercy, as his ruthless arm,
With downright payment, shew’d unto my father.
Now Phaethon hath tumbled from his car,
And made an evening at the noontide prick.”
That same Clifford (act ii. sc. 6, l. 10, vol. v. p. 271), when wounded
and about to die for the Lancastrian cause, makes use of the
allusion,—
“And who shines now but Henry’s enemy?
O Phœbus! hadst thou never given consent
That Phaëthon should check thy fiery steeds,
Thy burning car had never scorch’d the earth!
And, Henry, hadst thou sway’d as kings should do,
Or as thy father and his father did,
Giving no ground unto the house of York,
They never then had sprung like summer flies;
I and ten thousand in this luckless realm
Had left no mourning widows for our death;
And thou this day hadst kept thy chair in peace.”
In the early heroic age, when Minos reigned in Crete and
Theseus at Athens, just as Mythology was ripening into history,
the most celebrated for mechanical contrivance and for excellence
in the arts of sculpture and architecture were Dædalus
and his sons Talus and Icarus. To them is attributed the
invention of the saw, the axe, the plumb-line, the auger, the
gimlet, and glue; they contrived masts and sailyards for ships;
and they discovered various methods of giving to statues
expression and the appearance of life. Chiefly, however, are
Dædalus and Icarus now known for fitting wings to the human
arms, and for attempting to fly across the sea from Crete to the
shore of Greece. Dædalus, hovering just above the waves,
accomplished the aërial voyage in safety; but Icarus, too
ambitiously soaring aloft, had his wings injured by the heat of
the sun, and fell into the waters, which from his death there were
named the Icarian sea.
From the edition of Alciat’s Emblems, 1581, we select a
drawing which represents the fall of Icarus; it is dedicated “To
Astrologers,” or fortune tellers. The warning in the last two
lines is all we need to translate,—
“Let the Astrologer take heed what he foretells; for headlong
The impostor will fall though he fly the stars above.”
Emblema ciii.
Icare, per ſuperos qui raptus & aëra, donec
In mare præcipitem cera liquata daret,
Nunc te cera eadem, feruensq́₃que reſuſcitat ignis,
Exemplo vt doceas dogmata certa tuo.
Aſtrologus caueat quicquam prædicere: præceps
Nam cadet impoſtor dum ſuper aſtra volat.
Whitney, however (p. 28), will supply the whole,—
“Heare, Icarvs with mountinge vp alofte,
Came headlonge downe, and fell into the Sea:
His waxed winges, the sonne did make so softe,
They melted straighte, and feathers fell awaie:
So, whilste he flewe, and of no dowbte did care,
He moou’de his armes, but loe, the same were bare.
Let suche beware, which paste theire reache doe mounte,
Whoe seeke the thinges, to mortall men deny’de,
And searche the Heauens, and all the starres accoumpte,
And tell therebie, what after shall betyde:
With blusshinge nowe, theire weakenesse rightlie weye,
Least as they clime, they fall to theire decaye.”
Fol Icarus que t’eſt il aduenu?
Tu as treſmal le conſeil retenu
De Dedalus ton pere qui t’apprint
L’art de voler, lequel il entreprint
Pour eſchapper de Minos la priſon
Ou vous eſtiez enfermez, pour raiſon
Qu’il auoit faict & baſty vne vache
D’ung boys leger ou Paſiphe ſe cache.
Ce Dedalus nature ſurmonta
A toy & luy des ælles adiouſta
Aux bras & piedz, tant que pouiez voler
Et en volant il ſe print à parler
A toy diſant: mon filz qui veulx pretendre
De te ſauluer, vng cas tu doibs entendre
Que ſi tu veulx à bon port arriuer
Il ne te fault vers le ciel eſleuer.
Car le Soleil la cire fonderoit,
Et par ainſi ta plume tomberoit,
Sy tu vas bas l’humidité des eaulx
Te priuera du pouoir des oyſeaulx,
Mais ſi tu vas ne hault ne bas, adoncques
La voyé̩[e/]̩ eſt ſeuré̩[e/]̩ & ſans dangers quelzconques:
O pauure ſot le hault chemin tu prins
Trop hault pour toy car mal il t’en eſt prins
La cire fond, & ton plumage tumbe
Et toy auſſi preſt à mettre ſoubz tumbe.
We use this opportunity to present two consecutive pages of
Corrozet’s “Hecatomgraphie” (Emb. 67), that the nature of his
devices, and of their explanations may be seen. There is a
motto,—“To take the middle way,”—and these lines follow—
“Who too much exalts himself too much values himself,
Who too much abases himself, he undervalues himself,
But that man who wills to do well,
He governs himself the medium way.”
In the page of metrical explanation subjoined, the usual mythic
narrative is closely followed.
The full idea is carried out in 3 Henry VI. (act v. sc. 6,
l. 18, vol. v. p. 332), Gloucester and King Henry being the
speakers,—
“Glou. Why, what a peevish fool was that of Crete,
That taught his son the office of a fowl!
And yet for all his wings, the fool was drown’d.
K. Hen. I, Dædalus; my poor boy, Icarus;
Thy father, Minos, that denied our course;
The sun that sear’d the wings of my sweet boy
Thy brother Edward, and thyself the sea
Whose envious gulf did swallow up his life.
Ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words!
My breast can better brook thy dagger’s point
Than can my ears that tragic history.”
In the 1st part also of the same dramatic series (act iv. sc. 6,
l. 46, vol. v. p. 78), John Talbot, the son, is hemmed about in
the battle near Bourdeaux. Rescued by his father, he is urged
to escape, but the young hero replies,—
“Before young Talbot from old Talbot fly,
The coward horse that bears me fall and die!
And like me to the peasant boys of France,
To be shame’s scorn and subject of mischance!
Surely, by all the glory you have won,
An if I fly, I am not Talbot’s son:
Then talk no more of flight, it is no boot;
If son to Talbot, die at Talbot’s foot.
Tal. Then follow thou thy desperate sire of Crete,
Thou Icarus; thy life to me is sweet:
If thou wilt fight, fight by thy father’s side;
And, commendable proved, let’s die in pride.”
The tearful tale of Niobe, who that has read Ovid’s Metamorphoses
(bk. vi. fab. 5) could not weep over it! Seven
stalwart sons and seven fair daughters clustered round the
haughty dame, and she gloried in their attendance upon her;
but at an evil hour she dared to match herself with Latona, and
at a public festival in honour of the goddess to be the only one
refusing to offer incense and prayers. The goddess called her
own children to avenge the affront and the impiety; and Apollo
and Diana, from the clouds, slew the seven sons as they were
exercising on the plain near Thebes. Yet the pride of Niobe
did not abate, and Diana in like manner slew also the seven
daughters. The mother’s heart was utterly broken; she wept
herself to death, and was changed to stone. Yet, says the poet,
Flet tamen,—“ Yet she weeps,”—
Liquitur, et lacrymas etiam nunc marmora manant,—
i.e.
“It melts, and even now the marble trickles down tears.”
Alciat adopts the tale as a warning; Pride he names his
67th Emblem.