Typ. Ant. ii. p. 431.) This latter was "translated out of Latin, French, and Duch into Englishe, by Alexander Barclay, Priest;" and reprinted in 1570, during Shakespeare's childhood by the "Printer to the Queenes Maiestie." At the same time, 1570, another work by Barclay was published, which, although without devices, partakes of an allegorical or even of an emblematical character; it is The Mirrour of good Maners; "conteining the foure Cardinal Vertues." Dibdin, in his Bibliographical Antiquarian, iii. p. 101, mentions "a pretty little volume-as fresh as a daisy,' the Hortulus Rosarum de Valle Lachrymarum, 'A little Garden of Roses from the Valley of Tears' (to which a Latin ode by S. Brandt is prefixed), printed by J. de Olpe in 1499,"-but he gives no intimation of its character; conjecturing from its title and from the woodcuts with which it is adorned, it will probably on further inquiry be found to bear an emblematical meaning. Dibdin also, in the same work, iii. p. 294, names “a German version of the HORTULUS ANIME' of S. Brant," in manuscript; "undoubtedly," he says, "among the loveliest books in the Imperial Library." The Latin edition was printed at Strasburg in 1498, and is ornamented with figures on wood; many of these are mere pictures, without any symbolical meaning, but it often is the case that the illuminated manuscripts, especially if devotional, and the early printed books of every kind that have pictorial illustrations in them; present various examples of symbolical and emblematical devices. The last works we shall name of the period antecedent to A.D. 1501, are due to the industry and skill of John Sicile, herald at arms to Alphonso King of Aragon, who died in 1458. Sicile, it seems, prepared two manuscripts, one the Blazonry of Arms, the other, the Blazonry of Colours. Of the former there was an edition printed at Paris in 1495, Le BLASON de toutes Armes et Ecutz, &c.—and of the latter at Lyons early in the sixteenth century, Le Blason des Couleurs en Armes, Liurees et deuises. Within an hundred years, ending with 1595, above sixteen editions of the two works were issued. Several other authors there are belonging to the period of which we treat, but enough have been named to show to what an extent Emblem devices and Emblem-books had been adopted, and with what an impetus the invention of moveable types and greater skill in engraving had acted to multiply the departments of the Emblem Literature. It was an impetus which gathered new strength in its course, and which, previous to Shakespeare's youth and maturity, had made an entrance into almost every European nation. Already in 1500, from Sweden to Italy and from Poland to Spain, the touch was felt which was to awaken nearly every city to the west of Constantinople, to share in the supposed honours of adding to the number of Emblem volumes. Picta Poesis, 1552. SECTION III. OTHER EMBLEM WORKS AND EDITIONS BETWEEN IS ABORIOUS in some degree is the enterprise which the title of this Section will indicate before it shall be ended. Perchance we shall have no myths to perplex us, but the demands of sober history are often more inexorable than those flexible boundaries within which the imagination may disport amid facts and fictions. Better, as I trust, to set this period of sixty-three years before the mind, it may be well to take it in three divisions: 1st, the twenty-one years before Alciatus appeared, to conquer for himself a kingdom, and to reign king of Emblematists for about a century and a half; 2nd, the twenty-one years from the appearance of the first edition of Alciat's Emblems in 1522 at Milan, until Hans Holbein the younger had introduced the Images and Epigrams of Death, and La Perriere and Corrozet, the one his Theatre of good Contrivances in one hundred Emblems, and the other his Hecatomgraphie, or descriptions of one hundred figures; 3rd, the twentyone years up to Shakespeare's birth, distinguished towards its close chiefly by the Italian writers on Imprese, Paolo Giovio, Vincenzo Cartari, Girolamo Ruscelli, and Gabriel Symeoni. I.-A Fool-freighted Ship was the title of almost the last book of the fifteenth century,-by a similar title is the Emblem-book called which was launched at the beginning of the sixteenth century; it is, "Jodoci Badii afcesii Stultiferę nauiculę seu scaphę Fatuarum mulierum: circa sensus quinq exteriores fraude nauigantium,"-The Fool-freighted little ships of Fosse Badius ascensius, or the skiffs of Silly women in delusion sailing about the five outward senses,-"printed by honest John Prusz, a citizen of Strasburg, in the year of Salvation M.CCCCC.II." There was an earlier edition in 1500,-but almost exactly the same. From that before us we give a specimen of the work, The Skiff of Foolish Tasting. A discourse follows, with quotations from Aulus Gellius, Saint Jerome, Virgil, Ezekiel, Epicurus, Seneca, Horace, and Juvenal; and the discourse is crowned by twentyfour lines of Latin elegiacs, entitled "Celeufma Guftationis fatue,"-The Oarsman's cry for silly Tasting,-thus exhorting "Slothful chieftains of the gullet! In sweet sleep no longer lull it,— Waft to regions soft and slow; How our palates burn and glow! Ancient faith! nor plate of veal; And so on, until in the concluding stanza Badius declares "If great Jove himself invited At our feasting takes his seat, Where kingdoms blessed bid us stay."* The same work was published in another form, "La nef des folles, selon les cinq sens de nature, composé selon levangile de monseigneur saint Mathieu, des cinq vierges qui ne prindrent point duylle avec eulx pour mectre en leurs lampes :" Paris 4to, about 1501. * Be lenient, gentle Reader, if you chance to compare the above translation with the original; for even should you have learned by heart the two very large 4to volumes of Forcellini's Lexicon of all Latinity, I believe you will find some nuts you cannot crack in the Latin verses of Jodocus Badius. |