Marragonice pfectionis nung fatis laudata Nauis:per Sebaftianu Brant: vernaculo valgariq fermone & rhythmo/ p cuctor mortalin fatuitatis femitas effugere cupiētiú directione/fpeculo/comodoq & falute:proq inertis ignauęq ftultitię ppetua infamia/exe= cratione & confutatione/nup fabricata: Atq iampridem per Iacobum Locher/cognomēto Philomufum: Suçuū:in latínu traducta eloquiu: & per Sebastianu Brant denuo feduloq reuifa/&noua qda exacta emendatõe elimata: atq fupadditis qbufdá nouis/admirădifq fatuor generis bus fuppleta :fœlici exorditur príncípio. For an account of Lydgate's Dance of Macaber, and indeed for his version in English, we should do well to consult the remarks by Francis Douce, in Wenceslaus Hollar's Dance of Death, published about the year 1790, and more particularly the remarks in Douce's Dissertation, edition 1833. The earliest known edition of La Danse Macabre, originally composed in German, is dated at Paris, 1484, but before the completion of the century there were seven or eight other reprints, some with alterations and others with additions. It was a most popular work, issued at least eight or ten times during the sixteenth century, and still exciting interest.* At p. 39 may be seen copies of some of the devices as used by Verard. The chief Emblem deviser and writer towards the end of the century was Sebastian Brandt, born at Strasburg in 1458, and after a life of great usefulness and honour dying at Bâle in 1520. The publication in German Iambic verse of his "Narren Schyff,” Bâle, Nuremberg, Rüttlingen, and Augsburg, A.D. 1494, forms quite an epoch in Emblem-book literature. Previous to A.D. 1500, Locher, crowned poet laureate by the Emperor Maximilian I., translated the German into Latin verse, with the title "Stultifera Nauis" (see Plate IX.); Riviere of Poitiers, the Latin into French verse, "La Nef des Folz du Monde;" and Droyn of Amiens, into French prose, "La grāt Nef des Folz du Monde." Early in the next century, 1504, or even in 1500, there was a Flemish version; and in 1509 two English versions, -one translated out of French, "THE SHYPPE OF FOOLES," by Henry Watson, and printed by "Wynkyn de Worde, MCCCCCIX." (see Dibdin's Tour, ii. p. 103); the other, "STULTIFERA NAUIS," or "The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde;"" Inprentyd in the Cyte of London, by Richard Pynson, M.D.IX." (Dibdin's Langlois in his Essai, pp. 331–340, names thirty-two editions previous to A. D. 1730. 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, hàd 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 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 |