Homer and Virgil, of Ovid and Horace, have served the base uses of Emblem-effervescence, and in nearly all the languages of Europe have been forced to misrepresent the noble utterances of Greece and Rome. Many of the pictures, however, are very beautiful, finely conceived, and skilfully executed; we blame not the artists, but the false taste which must make little bits of verses where the originals existed as mighty poems.

Generally it is considered that the Ovids of the fifteenth century were without pictorial illustrations, and could not, therefore, be classed among books of Emblems; but the Blandford Catalogue, p. 21, records an edition, "Venetia, 1497," "cum figuris depictis," with figures portrayed. Without discussing the point, we will refer to an undoubted emblematized edition of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, "Figurato & abbreviato in forma d'Epigrammi da M. Gabriello Symeoni,”—figured and abbreviated in form of Epigrams by M. Gabriel Symeoni. The volume is a small 4to of 245 pages, of which 187 have each a title and device and Italian stanza, the whole surrounded by a richly figured border. The volume, dedicated to the celebrated "Diana di Poitiers, Dvchessa di Valentinois," was published "A Lione per Giouanni di Tornes nella via Resina, 1559." Example, p. 13, (see Plate III.,) will show the character of the work, of which another edition was issued in 1584. The Italian stanzas are all of eight lines each, and the passages of the original Latin on which they are founded are collected at the end of the volume. Thus, for "La Creatione & confusione del Mondo," the Latin lines are,

An

Of the devices several are very closely imitated in the woodcuts of Reusner's Emblems, published at Frankfort, in 1581.

The engravings in Symeoni's Ovid are the work of Solomon Bernard, "the little Bernard," a celebrated artist born at Lyons in 1512; who also produced a set of vignettes for a French translation of Virgil, L'Eneide de Virgile, Prince des Poetes latins, printed at Lyons in 1560.

"QVINTI HORATII FLACCI EMBLEMATA," as Otho Vænius names one of his choicest works, first published in 1607, is a similar adaptation of a classic author to the prevailing taste of the age for emblematical representation. The volume is a very fine 4to of 214 pages, of which 103 are plates; and a corresponding 103 contain extracts from Horace and other Latin authors, followed, in the edition of 1612, by stanzas in Spanish, Italian, French and Flemish. An example of the execution of the work will be found as a Photolith, Plate XVII., near the end of our volume; it is the "VOLAT IRREVOCABILE TEMPUS,”Irrevocable time is flying,-so full of emblematical meaning.

From the office of the no less celebrated Crispin de Passe, at Utrecht, in 1613, issued, in Latin and French verse, "SPECVLVM HEROICVM Principis omnium temporum Poëtarum HOMERI," The Heroic Mirror of Homer, the Prince of the Poets of all times. The various arguments of the twenty-four books of the Iliad have been taken and made the groundwork of twenty-four Emblems, with their devices most admirably executed. The Latin and French verses beneath each device unmistakeably impress a true emblem-character on the work. The author, "le Sieur J. Hillaire," appends to the Emblems, pp. 69-75, "Epitaphs on the Heroes who perished in the Trojan War," and also "La course d'Vlisses, son tragitte retour, & deffaicte des amans qui poursuivoient la chaste & vertueuse Penelope."

What might not in this way be included within the wideencompassing grasp of the determined Emblematist it is almost impossible to say; and therefore it ought to be no matter of

surprise to find there is practically a greater extent given to the Literature of Emblems than of absolute right belongs to it. We shall not go much astray if we take Custom for our guide, and keep to its decisions as recorded in the chief catalogues of Emblem works.

SECTION II.

EMBLEM WORKS AND EDITIONS DOWN TO THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

EAVING for the most part out of view the discussions which have taken place as to the exact time and the veritable originators of the arts of printing by fixed or moveable types, and of the embellishing of books by engravings on blocks of wood or plates of copper, we are yet-for the full development of the condition and extent of the Emblem Literature in the age of Shakespeare-required to notice the growth of that species of ornamental device in books which depends upon Emblems for its force and meaning. We say advisedly "ornamental device in books," for infinite almost are the applications of Symbol and Emblem to Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, as is testified by the Remains of Antiquity in all parts of the world, by the Pagan tombs and Christian catacombs of ancient Rome, by nearly every temple and church and stately building in the empires of the earth, and especially in those wonderful creations of human skill in which form and colour bring forth to sight nearly every thought and fancy of our souls.

Long before either block-printing or type-printing was practised, it is well known how extensively the limner's art was employed "to illuminate," as it is called, the Manuscripts that were to be found in the rich abbeys or convents, and in the mansions of the great and noble. For instance, the devices