“Ni ratis optatum varijs iactata procellis
Obtineat portum, tum perijsse puta.
Futilis est diuturnus amor, ni in fine triumphet,
Nam benè cœpit opus, qui benè finit opus.”
i.e.
“Unless the raft though tossed by various storms
The port desired obtains, think that it perishes;
Vain is the daily love if it no triumph forms,
For well he work begins, who well work finishes.”
Thus, however, rendered at the time into English and
Italian,—
“Where the end is good all is good.”
“The ship toste by the waues doth to no purpose saile,
Vnlesse the porte shee gayn whereto her cours doth tend.
Right so th’ euent of loue appeereth in the end,
For losse it is to loue and neuer to preuaile.”
“Il fine corona l’opere.”
“Inutile è la naue, che in mar vaga
Senza prender giamai l’amato porto:
Impiagato d’Amor quel cor’ è à torto,
Che con vano sperar mai non s’appaga.”
Messin in his translation of Boissard’s Emblems (edition 1588,
p. 24), takes the motto, “Av Navire agité semble le jour de
l’homme,” and dilates into four stanzas the neatly expressed
single stanza of the original.
“Vita hæc est tanquam pelago commissa carina,
Instanti semper proxima naufragio.
Optima res homini est non nasci: proxima, si te
Nasci fata velent, quàm citò posse mori.”
i.e.
“This life is as a keel entrusted to the sea,
Ever to threatening shipwreck nearest.
Not to be born for man is best; next, if to thee
The fates give birth, quick death is dearest.”
Shakespeare takes up these various ideas of which the
ship in storm and in calm is typical, and to some of them
undoubtedly gives utterance from the lips of the dauntless
Margaret of Anjou (3 Henry VI., act v. sc. 4, l. 1, vol. v.
p. 325),—
“Great lords, wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss,
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
What though the mast be now blown overboard,
The cable broke, our holding-anchor lost,
And half our sailors swallow’d in the flood?
Yet lives our pilot still: Is’t meet that he
Should leave the helm and like a fearful lad
With tearful eyes add water to the sea
And give more strength to that which hath too much;
Whiles, in his moan, the ship splits on the rock,
Which industry and courage might have saved?
Ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this!
Say, Warwick was our anchor; what of that?
And Montague our top-mast; what of him?
Our slaughter’d friends the tackles; what of these?
Why, is not Oxford here another anchor?
And Somerset another goodly mast?
The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings?
And, though unskilful, why not Ned and I
For once allow’d the skilful pilot’s charge?
We will not from the helm to sit and weep,
But keep our course, though the rough wind say,—no,
From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wreck.
As good to chide the waves as speak them fair.
And what is Edward but a ruthless sea?
What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit?
And Richard but a rugged fatal rock?
All these the enemies to our poor bark.
Say, you can swim; alas, ’tis but a while:
Tread on the sand; why, there you quickly sink:
Bestride the rock; the tide will wash you off,
Or else you famish; that’s a threefold death.
This speak I, lords, to let you understand,
If case some one of you would fly from us,
That there’s no hoped-for mercy with the brothers
More than with ruthless waves, with sands and rocks.
Why, courage then! what cannot be avoided
’Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.”
Well did the bold queen merit the outspoken praises of her
son,—
“Methinks, a woman of this valiant spirit
Should, if a coward heard her speak these words,
Infuse his breast with magnanimity,
And make him, naked, foil a man at arms.”
And in a like strain, when Agamemnon would show that
the difficulties of the ten years’ siege of Troy were (l. 20),—
“But the protractive trials of great Jove
To find persistive constancy in men;”
the venerable Nestor, in Troilus and Cressida (act i. sc. 3, l. 33,
vol. vi. p. 142), enforces the thought by adding,—
“In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth,
How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribb’d bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements
Like Perseus’ horse.
. . . . . . . .
Even so
Doth valour’s show and valour’s worth divide
In storms of fortune: for in her ray and brightness
The herd hath more annoyance by the breese
Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,
And flies fled under shade, why then the thing of courage
As roused with rage with rage doth sympathize,
And with an accent tuned in selfsame key
Retorts to chiding fortune.”
To the same great sentiments Georgette Montenay’s
“Emblemes Chrestiennes” (Rochelle edition, p. 11) supplies
a very suitable illustration; it is to the motto, Quem timebo?—“Whom
shall I fear?”—
“Du grand peril des vens & de la mer,
C’est homme a bien cognoissance très claire,
Et ne craind point de se voir abismer
Rusque son Dieu l’adresse et luy esclaire.”
The device itself is excellent,—a single mariner on a tempestuous
sea, undaunted in his little skiff; and the hand of
Providence, issuing from a cloud, holds out to him a beacon
light.
“On a student entangled in love,” is the subject of Alciat’s
108th Emblem. The lover appears to have been a jurisconsult,
whom Alciat, himself a jurisconsult, represents,—
“Immersed in studies, in oratory and right well skilled,
And great especially in all the processes of law,
Haliarina he loves; as much as ever loved
The Thracian prince his sister’s beauteous maid.
Why in Cyprus dost thou overcome Pallas by another judge?
Sufficient is it not to conquer at Mount Ida?”
The unfinished thoughts of Alciat are brought out more
completely by Whitney, who thus illustrates his subject
(p. 135),—
Jn ſtudioſum captum amore.
“A Reuerend sage, of wisedome most profounde,
Beganne to doate, and laye awaye his bookes:
For Cvpid then, his tender harte did wounde,
That onlie nowe, he lik’de his ladies lookes?
Oh Venvs staie? since once the price was thine,
Thou ought’st not still, at Pallas thus repine.”
Note, now, how the thoughts of the Emblematists, though
greatly excelled in the language which clothes them, are matched
by the avowals which the severe and grave Angelo made to
himself in Measure for Measure (act ii. sc. 4, l. 1, vol. i. p. 327).
He had been disposed to carry out against another the full
severity of the law, which he now felt himself inclined to infringe,
but confesses,—
“When I would pray and think, I think and pray
To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words:
Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,
As if I did but only chew his name;
And in my heart the strong and swelling evil
Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied,
Is like a good thing, being often read,
Grown fear’d and tedious; yea, my gravity,
Wherein—let no man hear me—I take pride,
Could I with boot change for an idle plume,
Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,
How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood:
Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horn;
’Tis not the devil’s crest.”
But the entire force of this parallelism in thought is scarcely
to be apprehended, unless we mark Angelo’s previous conflict of
desire and judgment. Isabel utters the wish, “Heaven keep
your honour safe!” And after a hearty “Amen,” the old man
confesses to himself (p. 324),—
“For I am that way going to temptation,
Where prayers cross.”
Act ii. sc. 2, l. 158.
“What’s this, what’s this? Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
Ha!
Not she; nor doth she tempt: but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman’s lightness.”
Act ii. sc. 2, l. 162.
“What, do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is’t I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue.”
Act ii. sc. 2, l. 177
There is an Emblem by Whitney (p. 131), which, though in
some respects similar to one at p. 178 of the “Pegma” by Costalius,
1555, entitled “Iron,” “on the misery of the human lot,” is
to a very great degree his own, and which makes it appear in a
stronger light than usual, that a close resemblance exists
between his ideas and even expressions and those of Shakespeare.
The subject is “Writings remain,” and the device the
overthrow of stately buildings, while books continue unharmed.
To Sir Arthvre Manwaringe Knight.
“If mightie Troie, with gates of steele, and brasse,
Bee worne awaie, with tracte of stealinge time:
If Carthage, raste: if Thebes be growne with grasse.
If Babel stoope: that to the cloudes did clime:
If Athens, and Nvmantia suffered spoile:
If Ægypt spires, be euened with the soile.
Then, what maye laste, which time dothe not impeache,
Since that wee see, theise monumentes are gone:
Nothinge at all, but time doth ouer reache,
It eates the steele, and weares the marble stone:
But writinges laste, thoughe yt doe what it can,
And are preseru’d, euen since the worlde began.
And so they shall, while that they same dothe laste,
Which haue declar’d, and shall to future age:
What thinges before three thousande yeares haue paste,
What martiall knightes, haue march’d vppon this stage:
Whose actes, in bookes if writers did not saue,
Their fame had ceaste, and gone with them to graue.
Of Samsons strengthe, of worthie Iosvas might.
Of Davids actes, of Alexanders force.
Of Cæesar greate; and Scipio noble knight,
Howe shoulde we speake, but bookes thereof discourse:
Then fauour them, that learne within their youthe:
But loue them beste, that learne, and write the truthe.”
La vie de Memoire, and Vine ut viuas,—“Live that you
may live,”—emblematically set forth by pen, and book, and
obelisk, and ruined towers, in Boissard’s Emblems by Messin
(1588, pp. 40, 41), give the same sentiment, and in the Latin
by a few brief lines,—
“Non omnis vivit, vitâ qui spirat in istâ:
Sed qui post fati funera vivit adhuc:
Et cui posteritas famæ præconia servat
Æternum is, calamo vindice, nomen habet.”
Thus having the main idea taken up in the last of the four
French stanzas,—
“Mais qui de ses vertus la plume a pour garand:
Celuy centre le temps invincible se rend:
Car elle vainc du temps & l’effort, & l’injure.”
In various instances, only with greater strength and beauty,
Shakespeare gives utterance to the same sequences of thought.
When, in Love’s Labour’s Lost (act i. sc. 1, l. 1, vol. ii. p. 97),
fashioning his court to be,—
“A little Academe,
Still and contemplative in living art,”
Ferdinand, king of Navarre, proclaims,—
“Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register’d upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,
The endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge,
And make us heirs of all eternity.”
In his Sonnets, more especially, Shakespeare celebrates the
enduring glory of the mind’s treasures. Thus, the 55th Sonnet
(Works, vol. ix. p. 578) is written almost as Whitney wrote,—
“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents,
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish lime.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry.
Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity,
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.”
But the 65th Sonnet (p. 583) is still more in accordance with
Whitney’s ideas,—not a transcript of them, but an appropriation,—
“Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack!
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
No one, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.”
How closely, too, are these thoughts allied to some in that
Emblem (p. 197) in which Whitney, following Hadrian Junius,
so well celebrates “the eternal glory of the pen.”
He has been telling of Sidney’s praise, and in a well-turned
compliment to him and to his other friend, “Edwarde Dier,”
makes the award,—
“This Embleme lo, I did present, vnto this woorthie Knight.
Who, did the same refuse, as not his proper due:
And at the first, his sentence was, it did belonge to you.
Wherefore, lo, fame with trompe, that mountes vnto the skye:
And, farre aboue the highest spire, from pole, to pole dothe flye,
Heere houereth at your will, with pen adorn’d with baies:
Which for you bothe, shee hath prepar’d, vnto your endlesse praise.
The laurell leafe for you, for him, the goulden pen;
The honours that the Muses giue, vnto the rarest men.
Wherefore, proceede I praye, vnto your lasting fame;
For writinges last when wee bee gonne, and doe preserue our name.
And whilst wee tarrye heere, no treasure can procure,
The palme that waites vpon the pen, which euer doth indure.
Two thousand yeares, and more, Homervs wrat his books;
And yet, the same doth still remayne, and keepes his former looke.
Wheare Ægypte spires bee gonne, and Rome doth ruine feele,
Yet, both begonne since he was borne, thus time doth turne the wheele.
Yea, thoughe some Monarche greate some worke should take in hand,
Of marble, or of Adamant, that manie worldes shoulde stande,
Yet, should one only man, with labour of the braine,
Bequeathe the world a monument, that longer shoulde remaine,
And when that marble waules, with force of time should waste;
It should indure from age, to age, and yet no age should taste.”
“Ex malo bonum,”—Good out of evil,— contains a sentiment
which Shakespeare not unfrequently expresses. An instance
occurs in the Midsummer Nights Dream (act i. sc. 1,
l. 232, vol. ii. p. 206),—
“Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.”
Also more plainly in Henry V. (act iv. sc. 1, l. 3, vol. iv.
p. 555),—
“God Almighty!
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out.
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry:
Besides they are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus we may gather honey from the weed,
And make a moral of the devil himself!”
So in Georgette Montenay’s Christian Emblems we find the
stanzas,—
“On tire bien des epines poignantes
Rose tres bonné̩[e/]̩ & pleine de beauté.
Des reprouuer & leurs œuures meschantes
Dieu tiré̩[e/]̩ aussi du bien par sa bonté,
Faisant seruir leur fausse volonté
A sa grand’ gloiré̩[e/]̩ & salut des esleuz,
Et par iusticé̩[e/]̩, ainsi qu’ a decreté,
Dieu fait tout bien; que nul n’en doute plus.”
As we have mentioned before (pp. 242, 3), Ovid’s Metamorphoses
are the chief source to which, from his time downwards,
poets in general have applied for their most imaginative and
popular mythic illustrations; and to him especially have Emblem
writers been indebted. For a fact so well known a single
instance will suffice; it is the description of Chaos and of the
Creation of the World (bk. i. fab. 1),—
“Ante mare et terras, et quod tegit omnia, cœlum,
Unus erat toto naturæ vultus in orbe,
Quem dixêre Chaos: rudis indigestaque moles.”
An early Italian Emblematist, Gabriel Symeoni, in 1559,
presents on this subject the following very simple device in his
Vita et Metamorfoseo d’Ovidio (p. 12), accompanied on the next
page by “The creation and confusion of the world,”—
“Prima fuit rerum confusa sine ordine moles,
Vnaq. erat facies sydera, terra, fretum.”
i.e.
“First was there a confused mass of things without order,
And one appearance was stars, earth, sea.”
But Ovid’s lines are applied in a highly figurative sense, to
show the many evils and disorders of injustice. A wild state
where wrong triumphs and right is unknown,—that is the Chaos
which Anulus sets forth in his “Picta Poesis” (p. 49);
Without justice, confusion.
Si terrae Cœlum ſemiſceat: & mare cœlo.
Sol Erebo. Tenebris lumina, Terra Polo.
Quattuor & Mundi mixtim primordia pugnent.
Arida cum ſiccis, algida cum calidis.
In Chaos antiquum omnia denique confundantur:
Vt cùm ignotus adhuc mens Deus orbis erat.
Eſt Mundanarum talis confuſio rerum.
Quo Regina latet Tempore Iuſtitia.
i.e.
“If with earth heaven should mingle and the sea with heaven,
The sun with Erebus, light with darkness, the earth with the pole,
Should the four elements of the world in commixture fight,
Dry things with the moist and cold things with the hot,
Into ancient chaos at last all things would be confounded
As when God as yet unknown was the soul of the globe.
Such is the confusion of all mundane affairs,
At what time soever Justice the queen lies concealed.”
Whitney (p. 122), borrowing this idea and extending it,
works it out with more than his usual force and skill, and
dedicates his stanzas to Windham and Flowerdewe, two eminent
judges of Elizabeth’s reign,—but his amplification of the
thought is to a great degree peculiar to himself. Ovid, indeed,
is his authority for representing the elements in wild disorder,
and the peace and the beauty which ensued,—
“When they weare dispos’d, eache one into his roome.”
The motto, dedication, and device, are these,—
Sine iuſtitia, confuſio.
Ad eoſdem Iudices.
“When Fire, and Aire, and Earthe, and Water, all weare one:
Before that worke deuine was wroughte, which nowe wee looke vppon.
There was no forme of thinges, but a confused masse:
A lumpe, which Chaos men did call: wherein no order was.
The Coulde, and Heate, did striue: the Heauie thinges, and Lighte.
The Harde, and Softe, the Wette, and Drye, for none had shape arighte.
But when they weare dispos’d, eache one into his roome:
The Fire, had Heate: the Aire, had Lighte: the Earthe, with fruites did bloome.
The Sea, had his increase: which thinges, to passe thus broughte:
Behoulde, of this vnperfecte masse, the goodly worlde was wroughte.”
Whitney then celebrates “The goulden worlde that Poëttes
praised moste;” next, “the siluer age;” and afterwards, “the
age of brasse.”
“The Iron age was laste, a fearefull cursed tyme:
Then, armies came of mischiefes in: and fil’d the worlde with cryme.
Then rigor, and reuenge, did springe in euell hower:
And men of mighte, did manadge all, and poore opprest with power.
And hee, that mightie was, his worde, did stand for lawe:
And what the poore did ploughe, and sowe: the ritch away did drawe.
None mighte their wiues inioye, their daughters, or their goodes,
No, not their liues: such tyraunts broode, did seeke to spill their bloodes.
Then vertues weare defac’d, and dim’d with vices vile,
Then wronge, did maske in cloke of righte: then bad, did good exile.
Then falshood, shadowed truthe: and hate, laugh’d loue to skorne:
Then pitie, and compassion died: and bloodshed fowle was borne.
So that no vertues then, their proper shapes did beare:
Nor coulde from vices bee decern’d, so straunge they mixed weare.
That nowe, into the worlde, an other Chaos came:
But God, that of the former heape: the heauen and earthe did frame.
And all thinges plac’d therein, his glorye to declare:
Sente Ivstice downe vnto the earthe: such loue to man hee bare.
Who, so suruay’d the world, with such an heauenly vewe:
That quickley vertues shee aduanc’d: and vices did subdue.
And, of that worlde did make, a paradice, of blisse:
By which wee doo inferre: That where this sacred Goddes is.
That land doth florishe still, and gladnes, their doth growe:
Bicause that all, to God, and Prince, by her their dewties knowe.
And where her presence wantes, there ruine raignes, and wracke:
And kingdomes can not longe indure, that doe this ladie lacke.
Then happie England most, where Ivstice is embrac’d:
And eeke so many famous men, within her chaire are plac’d.”
With the description thus given we may with utmost
appropriateness compare Shakespeare’s noble commendation
of order and good government, into which, by way of contrast,
he introduces the evils and miseries of lawless power.
The argument is assigned to Ulysses, in the Troilus and
Cressida (act i. sc. 3, l. 75, vol. vi. p. 144), when the great
chieftains, Agamemnon, Nestor, Menelaus, and others are
discussing the state and prospects of their Grecian confederacy
against Troy. With great force of reasoning, as
of eloquence, he contends,—
“Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master.
But for these instances.
bloodes.
The specialty of rule hath been neglected:
And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive,
To whom the foragers shall all repair,
What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre,
Observe degree, priority and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order:
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other;
. . . . . .
but when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels.
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf.
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is
That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general’s disdain’d
By him one step below; he, by the next;
That next by him beneath: so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation:
And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.”
At a hasty glance the two passages may appear to have
little more connection than that of similarity of subject,
leading to several coincidences of expression; but the Emblem
of Chaos, given by Whitney, represents the winds,
the waters, the stars of heaven, all in confusion mingling,
and certainly is very suggestive of the exact words which
the dramatic poet uses,—
“What raging of the sea? shaking of earth?
Commotion in the winds?
. . . . . .
The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe.”
Discord as one of the great causes of confusion is also
spoken of with much force (1 Henry VI., act iv. sc. 1,
l. 188, vol. v. p. 68),—