Section V Emblems in Connexion with Proverbs.
PROVERBS are nearly always suggestive of a little narrative, or of a picture, by which the sentiment might be more fully developed. The brief moral reflections appended to many fables partake very much of the nature of proverbs. Inasmuch, then, as there is this close alliance between them, we might consider the Proverbial Philosophy of Shakespeare only as a branch of the Philosophy of Fable; still, as there are in his dramas many instances of the use of the pure proverb, and instances too of the same kind in the Emblem writers, we prefer making a separate Section for the proverbs or wise sayings.
Occasionally, like the Sancho Panza of his renowned contemporary, Michael de Cervantes Saavedra, 1549–1616,[146] Shakespeare launches “a leash of proverbial philosophies at once;” but with this difference, that the dramatist’s application of them is usually suggestive either of an Emblem-book origin, or of an Emblem-book destination. The example immediately in view is from the scene (3 Henry VI., act i. sc. 4, l. 39, vol. v. p. 245) in which Clifford and Northumberland lay hands of violence on Richard Plantagenet, duke of York; the dialogue proceeds in the following way, York exclaiming,—
“Why come you not? what! multitudes, and fear?
Clif. So cowards fight, when they can fly no further.
So doves do peck the falcon’s piercing talons.”
The queen entreats Clifford, “for a thousand causes,” to withhold his arm, and Northumberland joins in the entreaty,—
“North. Hold, Clifford! do not honour him so much,
To prick thy finger, though to wound his heart:
What valour were it, when a cur doth grin,
For one to thrust his hand between his teeth,
When he might spurn him with his foot away?”
Clifford and Northumberland seize York, who struggles against them (l. 61),—
“Clif. Ay, ay, so strives the woodcock with the gin.[147]
North. So doth the cony struggle in the net.”
York is taken prisoner, as he says (l. 63),—
“So triumph thieves upon their conquer’d booty;
So true men yield, with robbers so o’ermatch’d.”
The four or five notions or sayings here enunciated a designer or engraver could easily translate into as many Emblematical devices, and the mind which uses them, as naturally as if he had invented them, must surely have had some familiarity with the kind of writing of which proverbs are the main source and foundation.
In this connection we will quote the proverb which “Clifford of Cumberland” (2 Henry VI., act v. sc. 2, l. 28, vol. vi. p. 217) utters in French at the very moment of death, and which agrees very closely with similar sayings in Emblem-books by French authors,—Perriere and Corrozet,—and still more in suitableness to the occasion on which it was spoken, the end of life.
York and Clifford,—it is the elder of that name,—engage in mortal combat (l. 26),—
“Clif. My soul and body on the action both!
York. A dreadful lay! address thee instantly.”
[They fight, and Clifford falls.
At the point of death Clifford uses the words (l. 28), La fin couronne les œuvres.[148]—“The end crowns the work.” It was, no doubt, a common proverb; but it is one which would suggest to the Emblem writer his artistic illustration, and, with a little change, from some such illustration it appears to have been borrowed. Whitney (p. 130) records a resemblance to it among the sayings of the Seven Sages, dedicated “to Sir Hvghe Cholmeley Knight,”—
“And Solon said, Remember still thy ende.”
The two French Emblems alluded to above are illustrative of the proverb, “The end makes us all equal,” and both use a very appropriate and curious device from the game of chess. Take, first, Emb. 27 from Perriere’s Theatre des Bons Engins: Paris, 1539,—
XXVII.
Le Roy d’eſchez, pendant que le ieu dure,
Sur ses ſubiectz ha grande preference,
Sy l’on le matté̩[e/]̩, il conuiẽt qu’il endure
Que l’on le metté̩[e/]̩ au ſac ſans difference.
Cecy nous faict notable demonſtrance,
Qu’ apres le ieu de vie tranſitoire,
Quãd mort nous a mis en ſõ repertoire,
Les roys ne ſõt pluſgrãs que les vaſſaulx;
Car dans le ſac (cõmé̩[e/]̩ à tous eſt notoire),
Roys & pyons en hõneur ſont eſgaulx.
The other, from Corrozet, is in his “Hecatomgraphie:” Paris, 1540,—
Svr l’eſchiquier ſont les eſchez aſſis,
Tous en leur rẽg par ordre biẽ raſſis,
Les roys en hault pour duyre les combatz,
Les roynes pres, les cheualiers plus bas,
Les folz deſſoubz, puis apres les pions,
Les rocz auſſy de ce ieu champions.
Et quand le tout eſt aſſis en ſon lieu
Subtilement ou commence le ieu.
* Or vault le roy au ieu de l’eſchiquier,
Mieulx que la royné̩[e/]̩ & moins le cheualier.
Chaſcun pion de tous ceulx la moins vault,
Mais quand c’eſt faict & que le ieu deffault
Il n’ya roy, ne royne, ne le roc,
Qu’ enſemblement tout né̩[e/]̩ ſoit à vng bloc,
Mis dans vng ſac, ſans ordre ne degré,
Et ſans auoir l’ung plus que l’aultre à gré.
Ainſi eſt il de nous pauures humains,
Aulcuns ſont grands Empereurs des Romains,
Les aultres roys, les aultres ducz & comtes,
Aultres petis dont on ne faict grandz comptes.
Nous iouons tons aux eſchez en ce monde,
Entre les biens ou l’ung plusqu’ aultré̩[e/]̩ abonde,
Mais quand le iour de la vié eſt paſſe,
Tout corps humain eſt en terre muſſé,
Autant les grands que petis terre cœurre,
Tant ſeulement nous reſte la bonné̩[e/]̩ œuure.
Corrozet’s descriptive verses conclude with thoughts to which old Clifford’s dying words might well be appended: “When the game of life is over,[149] every human body is hidden in the earth; as well great as little the earth covers; what alone remains to us is the good deed.” “La fin couronne les œuvres.”
But Shakespeare uses the expression, “the end crowns all,” almost as Whitney (p. 230) does the allied proverb, “Time terminates all,”—
A sentiment this corresponding nearly with Hector’s words, in the Troilus and Cressida (act iv. sc. 5, l. 223, vol. vi. p. 230),—
“The fall of every Phrygian stone will cost
A drop of Grecian blood: the end crowns all,
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.”
Prince Henry (2 Henry IV., act ii. sc. 2, l. 41, vol. iv. p. 392), in reply to Poins, gives yet another turn to the proverb: “By this hand, thou thinkest me as far in the devil’s books as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency; let the end try the man.”
In Whitney’s address “to the Reader,” he speaks of having collected “sondrie deuises” against several great faults which he names, “bycause they are growẽ so mightie that one bloe will not beate them downe, but newe headdes springe vp like Hydra, that Hercules weare not able to subdue them.” “But,” he adds, using an old saying, “manie droppes pierce the stone, and with manie blowes the oke is ouerthrowen.”
Near Mortimer’s Cross, in Herefordshire, a messenger relates how “the noble Duke of York was slain” (3 Henry VI., act ii. sc. 1, l. 50, vol. v. p. 252), and employs a similar, almost an identical, proverb,—
“Environed he was with many foes,
And stood against them, as the hope of Troy
Against the Greeks that would have enter’d Troy.
But Hercules himself must yield to odds;
And many strokes, though with a little axe,
Hew down and fell the hardest-timber’d oak.”
This is almost the coincidence of the copyist, and but for the necessities of the metre, Whitney’s words might have been literally quoted.
“Manie droppes pierce the stone,” has its parallel in the half-bantering, half-serious, conversation between King Edward and Lady Grey (3 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2, l. 48, vol. v. p. 280). The lady prays the restoration of her children’s lands, and the king intimates he has a boon to ask in return,—
“King Edw. Ay, but thou canst do what I mean to ask.
Grey. Why then I will do what your grace commands.
Glou. [Aside to Clar.] He plies her hard; and much rain wears the marble.
Clar. [Aside to Glou.] As red as fire! nay, then her wax must melt.”
In Otho Vænius (p. 210), where Cupid is bravely working at felling a tree, to the motto, “By continuance,” we find the stanza,—
“Not with one stroke at first the great tree goes to grownd,
But it by manie strokes is made to fall at last,
The drop doth pierce the stone by falling long and fast,
So by enduring long long sought-for loue is found.”
“To clip the anvil of my sword,” is an expression in the Coriolanus (act iv. sc. 5, lines 100–112, vol. vi. p. 380) very difficult to be explained, unless we regard it as a proverb, denoting the breaking of the weapon and the laying aside of enmity. Aufidius makes use of it in his welcome to the banished Coriolanus,—
“O Marcius, Marcius!
Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart
A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter
Should from yond cloud speak divine things,
And say ‘’Tis true,’ I’d not believe them more
Than thee, all noble Marcius. Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained ash an hundred times hath broke,
And scarr’d the moon with splinters: here I clip
The anvil of my sword, and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with thy love
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour.”
To clip, or cut, i.e., strike the anvil with a sword, is exhibited by more than one of the Emblem writers, whose stanzas are indeed to the same effect as those of Massinger in his play, The Duke of Florence (act ii. sc. 3),—
“Allegiance
Tempted too far is like the trial of
A good sword on an anvil; as that often
Flies in pieces without service to the owner;
So trust enforced too far proves treachery,
And is too late repented.”
In his 31st Emblem, Perriere gives the device, and stanzas which follow,—
But the meaning is, the putting of friendship to too severe a trial: “As he is in danger of breaking his sword who strikes it upon an anvil, so is love very soon cut in pieces when foolishly a man presses upon his friend.” So Whitney (p. 192), to the motto, Importunitas euitanda,—“Want of consideration to be avoided,”—
“Who that with force, his burnish’d blade doth trie
On anuill harde, to prooue if it be sure:
Doth Hazarde muche, it shoulde in peeces flie,
Aduentring that, which else mighte well indure:
For, there with strengthe he strikes vppon the stithe,
That men maye knowe, his youthfull armes have pithe.
Which warneth those, that louinge frendes inioye,
With care, to keepe, and frendlie them to treate,
And not to trye them still, with euerie toye,
Nor presse them doune, when causes be too greate,
Nor in requests importunate to bee:
For ouermuche, dothe tier the courser free?”
Touchstone, the clown, in As You Like It (act ii. sc. 4, l. 43, vol. ii. p. 400), names the various tokens of his affections for Jane Smile, and declares, “I remember, when I was in love I broke my sword upon a stone and bid him take that for coming a-night to Jane Smile: and I remember the kissing of her batlet and the cow’s-dugs that her pretty chopt hands had milked.”
It may, however, from the general inaccuracy of spelling in the early editions of Shakespeare, be allowed to suppose a typographical error, and that the phrase in question should read, not “anvil of my sword,” but “handle;”—I clip, or embrace the handle, grasp it firmly in token of affection.
The innocence of broken love-vows is intimated in Romeo and Juliet (act ii. sc. 2, l. 90, vol. vii. p. 42),—
“Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay,’
And I will take thy word: yet if thou swear’st,
Thou mayst prove false: at lovers’ perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs.”
And most closely is the sentiment represented in the design by Otho van Veen (p. 140), of Venus dispensing Cupid from his oaths, and of Jupiter in the clouds smiling benignantly on the two. The mottoes are, “Amoris ivsivrandvm pœnam non habet,”—Love excused from periurie,—and “Giuramento sparso al vento.”
In Callimachus occurs Juliet’s very expression, “at lovers’ perjuries Jove laughs,”—
“Nulla fides inerit: periuria ridet amantum
Juppiter, & ventis irrita ferre iubet:”
and from Tibullus we learn, that whatever silly love may have eagerly sworn, Jupiter has forbidden to hold good,—
“Gratia magna Ioui: vetuit pater ipse valere,
Iurasset cupidè quidquid ineptus Amor.”
The English lines in Otho van Veen are,—
“The louer freedome hath to take a louers oth,
Whith if it proue vntrue hee is to be excused,
For venus doth dispence in louers othes abused,
And loue no fault comitts in swearing more than troth.”
The thoughts are, as expressed in Italian,—
“Se ben l’amante assai promette, e giura,
Non si da pena à le sue voci infide,
Anzi Venere, e Giove se ne ride.
l’Amoroso spergiuro non si cura.”
To such unsound morality, however, Shakespeare offers strong objections in the Friar’s words (Romeo and Juliet, act iii. sc. 3, l. 126),—
“Thy noble shape is but a form of wax,
Digressing from the valour of a man;
Thy dear love sworn, but hollow perjury,
Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish.”
“Labour in vain,”—pouring water into a sieve, is shown by Perriere in his 77th Emblem,—
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.
LXXVII.
Qvi plus mettra dans le crible d’amours,
Plus y perdra, car choſe n’y profitte:
Le temps ſi pert, biens, bagues & atours,
Sa douleur eſt en tout amer confitte.
Folle ieuneſſé̩[e/]̩ & franc vouloir incite
A tel deſduict deſpendre groſſe ſomme:
Sur ce pẽser doibuent biẽ ieunes hõmes,
Que de ce fait meilleurs n’ẽ peuuẽt eſtre:
Et quãd naurõt le vaillãt de deux põmes,
Ne ſera temps leur erreur recognoiſtre.
We have endeavoured to interpret the old French stanza into English rhyme,—
“Who in love’s tempting sieve shall place his store,
Since nothing profits there, will lose the more;
Lost are his time, goods, rings and rich array,
Till grief in bitterness complete his day.
Folly of youth and free desire incite
Great sums to lavish on each brief delight.
Surely young men on this ought well to ponder,
That better cannot be, if thus they wander;
And when remains two apples’ worth alone,
’Twill not the time be their mistake to own.”
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),—
“Then, I confess,
Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,
That before you, and next unto high heaven,
I love your son.
My friends were poor, but honest; so’s my love:
Be not offended; for it hurts not him
That he is loved of me: I follow him not
By any token of presumptuous suit;
Nor would I have him till I do deserve him;
Yet never know how that desert should be.
I know I love in vain, strive against hope;
Yet, in this captious and intenible sieve,
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still: thus, Indian-like,
Religious in my error, I adore
The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more.”
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),—
“We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper.”
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,—
“Ant. If you go on thus you will kill yourself;
And ’tis not wisdom thus to second grief
Against yourself.
Leon. I pray thee, cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless
As water in a sieve: give not me counsel;
Nor let no comforter delight mine ear
But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine.”
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.
“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,—
“Post amara dulcia.”
“Qvi veult la rosé̩[e/]̩ au vert buysson saisir
Esmerueiller ne se doibt s’il se poinct.
Grãd biẽ na’uõs, sãs quelque desplaisir,
Plaisir ne vient sans douleur, si apoint.
Conclusion sommaire, c’est le point,
Qu’ apres douleur, on ha plaisir: souuẽt
Beau tẽps se voit, tost apres le grãt vẽt,
Grãd biẽ suruiẽt apres quelque maleur.
Parquoy pẽser doibt tout hõme scauãt,
Que volupté n’est iamais sans douleur.”
So Whitney (p. 165),—
“Sharpe prickes preserue the Rose, on euerie parte,
That who in haste to pull the same intendes,
Is like to pricke his fingers, till they smarte?
But being gotte, it makes him straight amendes
It is so freshe, and pleasant to the smell,
Thoughe he was prick’d, he thinkes he ventur’d well.
And he that faine woulde get the gallant rose,
And will not reache, for feare his fingers bleede;
A nettle, is more fitter for his nose?
Or hemblocke meete his appetite to feede?
None merites sweete, who tasted not the sower,
Who feares to climbe, deserues no fruicte, nor flower.”
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.”
“In plucking of the rose is pricking of the thorne,
In the attayning sweet, is tasting of the sowre,
With ioy of loue is mixt the sharp of manie a showre,
But at the last obtayned, no labor is forlorne.”
The pretty song from Love’s Labours Lost (act iv. sc. 3, l. 97, vol. ii. p. 144), alludes to the thorny rose,—
“On a day—alack the day!
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind.
All unseen, can passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish himself the heaven’s breath.
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alack, my hand is sworn
Ne’er to pluck thee from thy thorn.”
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),—
“Plan. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?
Som. Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?
Plan. Ay, sharp and piercing, to maintain his truth;
Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.”
“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.
In the latter part of his elegiacs Sambucus introduces another subject, and gives a truly religious turn to the device,—
“Gather’d one fold, O Christ, let peace abound,
Be vanquish’d by thy word, our jarring strife;
Then thirsting souls seek towers on heavenly ground,
As pants the stag for gushing streams of life.”
The magnet’s power alone is kept in view by Whitney (p. 43),—
“By vertue hidde, behoulde, the Iron harde,
The loadestone drawes, to poynte vnto the starre:
Whereby, wee knowe the Seaman keepes his carde,
And rightlie shapes, his course to countries farre:
And on the pole, dothe euer keepe his eie,
And withe the same, his compasse makes agree.
Which shewes to vs, our inward vertues shoulde,
Still drawe our hartes, althoughe the iron weare:
The hauenlie starre, at all times to behoulde,
To shape our course, so right while wee bee heare:
That Scylla, and Charybdis, wee maie misse,
And winne at lengthe, the porte of endlesse blisse.”
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,”—
“I could be well moved, if I were as you;
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber’d sparks;
They are all fire and every one doth shine;
But there’s but one in all doth hold his place:
So in the world; ’tis furnish’d well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank.
Unshak’d of motion: and that I am he,
Let me a little show it, even in this;
That I was constant Cimber should be banish’d,
And constant do remain to keep him so.”
The Midsummer Night’s Dream (act i. sc. I, l. 180, vol. ii. p. 205), introduces Hermia greeting her rival Helena,—
“Her. God speed fair Helena! whither away?
Hel. Call you me fair? that fair again unsay.
Demetrius loves you fair: O happy fair!
Your eyes are lode-stars.”
The scene changes, Helena is following Demetrius, but he turns to her and says (act ii. sc. 1, l. 194, vol. ii. p. 217),—
“Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.
Hel. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;
But yet you draw not iron, for my heart
Is true as steel: leave but your power to draw,
And I shall have no power to follow you.”
The averment of his fidelity is thus made by Troilus to Cressida (act iii. sc. 2, l. 169. vol. vi. p. 191),—
“As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as earth to the centre.
Yet after all comparisons of truth,
As truth’s authentic author to be cited,
‘As true as Troilus’ shall crown up the verse
And sanctify the numbers.”
So Romeo avers of one of his followers (act ii. sc. 4, l. 187, vol. vii. p. 58),—
“I warrant thee, my man’s as true as steel.”
“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,—
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,—
“Where liuely once, Gods image was expreste,
Wherin, sometime was sacred reason plac’de,
The head, I meane, that is so ritchly bleste,
With sighte, with smell, with hearinge, and with taste.
Lo, nowe a skull, both rotten, bare, and drye,
A relike meete in charnell house to lye.”
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),—
“To what base uses we may return. Horatio!
.......
Imperial Cæsar, dead, and turn’d to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
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),—
“Sweet Duke of York, our prop to lean upon;”
when he adds (l. 74),—
“Now my soul’s palace is become a prison;”
to which the more modern description corresponds,—
“The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.”
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,—
“We see the very wreck that we must suffer:
And unavoided is the danger now,
For suffering so the causes of our wreck.”
And Northumberland replies in words of hope (l. 270),—
“Not so; even through the hollow eyes of death
I spy life peering.”
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.
From the same motto and device Whitney (p. 24) makes the application to flatterers,—
“Of flattringe speeche, with sugred wordes beware,
Suspect the harte, whose face doth fawne, and smile,
With trusting theise, the worlde is clog’de with care,
And fewe there bee can scape theise vipers vile:
With pleasinge speeche they promise, and proteste,
When hatefull hartes lie hidd within their brest.”
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,—
“Henry my lord is cold in great affairs,
Too full of foolish pity, and Gloucester’s show
Beguiles him as the mournful crocodile
With sorrow snares relenting passengers,
Or as the snake roll’d in a flowering bank,
With shining checker’d slough, doth sting a child,
That for the beauty thinks it excellent.”
In Lady Macbeth’s unscrupulous advice to her husband (Macbeth, act i. sc. 5, l. 61, vol. vii. p. 438), the expressions occur,—
“Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t.”
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),—
“Nurse. Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished;
Romeo that kill’d him, he is banished.
Jul. O God! did Romeo’s hand shed Tybalt’s blood?
Nurse. It did, it did; alas the day, it did!
Jul. O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather’d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!”
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,—
“Si Deus nobiscum, quis contra nos?”
“His seruantes God preserues, thoughe they in danger fall:
Euen as from vipers deadlie bite, he kept th’ Appostle Paule.”
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,—
Dem. I say I love thee more than he can do.
Lys. If thou say so, withdraw, and prove it too.
Dem. Quick, come!
Her. Lysander, whereto tends all this?
Lys. Away, you Ethiope!
Dem. No, no; he’ll...
Seem to break loose; take on as you would follow,
But yet come not: you are a tame man, go!
Lys. Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! vile thing, let loose,
Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent!”
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,—
“France, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue,
A chafed lion by the mortal paw,
A fasting tiger safer by the tooth,
Than keep in peace that hand which thou dost hold.”
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,—
“Feed not thy sovereign’s foe, my gentle earth,
Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense;
But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom,
And heavy-gaited toads lie in their way,
Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet
Which with usurping steps do trample thee:
Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies;
And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower,
Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder
Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch
Throw death upon thy sovereign’s enemies.”
“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.
Thus rendered into French in 1581,—
“Vois tu pas le canon braqué contre les cieux,
En se creuant creuer celui la qui le tire?
Le mesme t’aduiendra, cruel malicieux,
Qui lasches sur les bons les balles de ton ire.”
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,—
“No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,[152]
Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep,
And break your own neck down.”
Then speaking of his plot and of the necessity which marshals him to knavery, he adds,—
“Let it work;
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar: and ’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: O, ’tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.”