“Labour in vain,”—pouring water into a sieve, is shown by Perriere in his 77th Emblem,—
Perriere, 1539.
where however it is a blind Cupid that holds the sieve, and lovers’ gifts are the waters with which the attempt is made to fill the vessel.
We have endeavoured to interpret the old French stanza into English rhyme,—
Shakespeare presents the very same thought and almost the identical expressions. To the Countess of Rousillon, Bertram’s mother, Helena confesses love for her son, All’s Well that Ends Well (act i. sc. 3, l. 182, vol. iii. p. 127),—
How probable do the turns of thought, “captious and intenible sieve,” “the waters of my love,” render the supposition that Perriere’s Emblem of Love and the Sieve had been seen by our dramatist. Cupid appears patient and passive, but the Lover in very evident surprise sees “the rings and rich array” flow through “le crible d’amours.” Cupid’s eyes, in the device, are bound, and the method of binding them corresponds with the lines, Romeo and Juliet(act i. sc. 4, l. 4, vol. vii. p. 23),—
Again, though not in reference to the same subject, there is in Much Ado About Nothing (act v. sc. 1, l. 1, vol. ii. p. 69), the comparison of the sieve to labour in vain. Antonio is giving advice to Leonato when overwhelmed with sorrows,—
By way of variation we consult Paradin’s treatment of the same thought (fol. 88v), in which he is followed by Whitney (p. 12), with the motto Frustrà.
Paradin, 1562.
“Every rose has its thorn,” or “No pleasure without pain,” receives exemplification from several sources. Perriere (Emb. 30) and Whitney (p. 165) present us with a motto implying No bitter without its sweet, but giving the gathering of a rose in illustration; thus the former writer,—
So Whitney (p. 165),—
Whitney, 1586.
In the Emblems of Otho Vænius (p. 160), Cupid is plucking a rose, to the motto from Claudian, “Armat spina rosas, mella tegunt apes,”—Englished, “No pleasure without payn.”
The pretty song from Love’s Labours Lost (act iv. sc. 3, l. 97, vol. ii. p. 144), alludes to the thorny rose,—
The scene in the Temple-garden; the contest in plucking roses between Richard Plantagenet and the Earls of Somerset, Suffolk, and Warwick (1 Henry VI., act ii. sc. 4, lines 30–75, vol. v. pp. 36, 37), continually alludes to the thorns that may be found. We may sum the whole “brawl,” as it is termed, into a brief space (l. 68),—
“True as the needle to the pole,” is a saying which of course must have originated since the invention of the mariner’s compass. Sambucus, in his Emblems (edition 1584, p. 84, or 1599, p. 79), makes the property of the loadstone his emblem for the motto, The mind remains unmoved.
Sambucus, 1584.
In the latter part of his elegiacs Sambucus introduces another subject, and gives a truly religious turn to the device,—
The magnet’s power alone is kept in view by Whitney (p. 43),—
The pole of heaven itself, rather than the magnetic needle, is in Shakespeare’s dramas the emblem of constancy. Thus in the Julius Cæsar (act iii. sc. 1, l. 58, vol. vii. p. 363), Metellus, Brutus, and Cassius are entreating pardon for Publius Cimber, but Cæsar replies, in words almost every one of which is an enforcement of the saying, “Mens immota manet,”—
The Midsummer Night’s Dream (act i. sc. I, l. 180, vol. ii. p. 205), introduces Hermia greeting her rival Helena,—
The scene changes, Helena is following Demetrius, but he turns to her and says (act ii. sc. 1, l. 194, vol. ii. p. 217),—
The averment of his fidelity is thus made by Troilus to Cressida (act iii. sc. 2, l. 169. vol. vi. p. 191),—
So Romeo avers of one of his followers (act ii. sc. 4, l. 187, vol. vii. p. 58),—
“Ex maximo minimvm,”—Out of the greatest the least,—is a saying adopted by Whitney (p. 229), from the “Picta Poesis” (p. 55) of Anulus,—
Aneau, 1555.
Both writers make the proverb the groundwork of reflexions on a human skull. According to Anulus, “the relics of the charnel house were once the living images of God,”—“that ruin of a dome was formerly the citadel of reason.” Whitney thus moralizes,—
The device and explanatory lines may well have given suggestion to the half-serious, half-cynical remarks by Hamlet in the celebrated grave-yard scene (Hamlet, act v. sc. 1, l. 73, vol. viii. p. 153). A skull is noticed which one of the callous grave-diggers had just thrown up upon the sod, and Hamlet says (l. 86),—
“That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder!”
And a little further on,—
“Here’s a fine revolution, an we had the trick to see’t. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with ’em? mine ache to think on’t.”[150]
And when Yorick’s skull is placed in his hand, how the Prince moralizes! (l. 177),—
“Here hung those lips, that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.”
And again (lines 191 and 200),—
Of the skull Anulus says, “Here reason held her citadel;” and the expression has its parallel in Edward’s lament (3 Henry VI., act ii. sc. 1, l. 68, vol. v. p. 252),—
when he adds (l. 74),—
to which the more modern description corresponds,—
A far nobler emblem could be made, and I believe has been made, though I cannot remember where, from those lines in Richard II. (act ii. sc. 1, l. 267, vol. iv. p. 145), which allude to the death’s head and the light of life within. Northumberland, Ross and Willoughby are discoursing respecting the sad state of the king’s affairs, when Ross remarks,—
And Northumberland replies in words of hope (l. 270),—
It is a noble comparison, and most suggestive,—but of a flight higher than the usual conceptions of the Emblem writers. Supplied to them they could easily enough work it out into device and picture, but possess scarcely power enough to give it origin.[151]
“A snake lies hidden in the grass,” is no unfrequent proverb; and Paradin’s “Devises Heroiqves” (41) set forth both the fact and the application.
Paradin, 1562.
En cueillant les Fleurs, & les Fraizes des champs, ſe faut d’autant garder du dangereus Serpent, qu’il nous peut enuenimer, & faire mourir nos corps. Et auſsi en colligeant les belles autoritez, & graues ſentences des liures, faut euiter d’autant les mauuaiſes opinions, qu’elles nous peuuent peruertir, damner, & perdre nos ames.
From the same motto and device Whitney (p. 24) makes the application to flatterers,—
According to the 2nd part of Henry VI. (act iii. sc. 1, l. 224, vol. v. p. 158), the king speaks favourably of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Margaret the queen declares to the attendant nobles,—
In Lady Macbeth’s unscrupulous advice to her husband (Macbeth, act i. sc. 5, l. 61, vol. vii. p. 438), the expressions occur,—
Romeo slays Tybalt, kinsman to Julia, and the nurse announces the deed to her (Romeo and Juliet, act iii. sc. 2, l. 69, vol. vii. p. 75),—
Though not illustrative of a Proverb, we will here conclude what has to be remarked respecting Serpents. An Emblem in Paradin’s “Devises Heroiqves” (112) and in Whitney (p. 166), represents a serpent that has fastened on a man’s finger, and that is being shaken off into a fire, while the man remains unharmed; the motto, “Who against us?”—
The scene described in the Acts of the Apostles, chap, xxviii. v. 3–6, Paradin thus narrates,—
“Saint Paul, en l’ iſle de Malte fut mordu d’vn Vipere: ce neantmoins (quoi que les Barbares du lieu le cuidaſſent autrement) ne valut pis de la morsure, secouant de sa main la Beste dans le feu: car veretablement à qui Dieu veut aider, il n’y a rien que puiſse nuire.”
Whitney, along with exactly the same device, gives the full motto,—
The action figured in this Emblem is spoken of in the Midsummer Night’s Dream (act iii. sc. 2, l, 254, vol. ii. p. 241). Puck has laid the “love-juice” on the wrong eyes, and in consequence Lysander avows his love for Helen instead of for Hermia; and the dialogue then proceeds,—
Cardinal Pandulph, the Pope’s legate, in King John (act iii. sc. 1, l. 258, vol. iv. p. 42), urges King Philip to be champion of the Church, and says to him,—
King Richard’s address to the “gentle earth,” when he landed in Wales (Richard II., act iii. sc. 2, l. 12, vol. iv. p. 164), calls us to the Emblem of the snake entwined about the flower,—
“The Engineer hoist with his own petar” may justly be regarded as a proverbial saying. It finds its exact correspondence in Beza’s 8th Emblem (edition 1580), in which for device is a cannon bursting, and with one of its fragments killing the cannonier.
Beza, 1580.
Thus rendered into French in 1581,—
The sentiment is the same as that of the proverb in the motto which Lebeus-Batillius prefixes to his 18th Emblem (edition 1596), “Qvibvs rebvs confidimvs, iis maxime evertimvs,”—To whatever things we trust, by them chiefly are we overthrown. The subject is Milo caught in the cleft of the tree which he had riven by his immense strength; he is held fast, and devoured by wolves.
The application of Beza’s Emblem is made by Hamlet (act iii. sc. 4, l. 205, vol. viii. p. 117), during the long interview with his mother, just after he had said,—
Then speaking of his plot and of the necessity which marshals him to knavery, he adds,—
Horapollo, ed. 1551.
EMBLEM writers make the Natural, one of the divisions of their subject, and understand by it, in Whitney’s words, the expressing of the natures of creatures, for example, “the loue of the yonge Storkes to the oulde, or of such like.” We shall extend a little the application of the term, taking in some facts of nature, as well as the natural properties and qualities of animals, but reserving in a great degree the Poetry, with which certain natural things are invested, for the next general heading, “Emblems for Poetic Ideas.”
There is no need to reproduce the Device of Prometheus bound, but simply to refer to it, and to note the allusions which Shakespeare makes to the mountain where the dire penalty was inflicted, “the frosty Caucasus.” From the Titus Andronicus we have already (p. 268) spoken of Tamora’s infatuated love,—
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, endeavours, in Richard II. (act i. sc. 3, lines 275, 294, vol. iv. pp. 130, 131), to reconcile his son Henry Bolingbroke to the banishment which was decreed against him, and urges,—
Bolingbroke,however, replies,—
The indestructibility of adamant by force or fire had for ages been a received truth.
“Whom no dangers terrify,” is a fitting motto for the Emblem that pertains to such as fear nor force nor fire.
Speaking of the precious gem that figures forth their character, it is the remark of Lebeus-Batillius (Emb. 29), “Duritia ineharrabilis est, simulque ignium victrix naturâ & nunquam incalescens,”—for which we obtain a good English expression from Holland’s Pliny (bk. xxxvii. c. 4): “Wonderfull and inenarrable is the hardnesse of a diamant; besides it hath a nature to conquer the fury of fire, nay, you shall never make it hote.”
The Latin stanzas in illustration close with the lines,—