Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

ix

THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN.

(See the Frontispiece.)

Before we describe this quaint Illustration of the progress of the Life of Man, it may be as well to say a few words of the Division of Man's Life into Stages, which appears to have been treated by various authors through a period of two thousand

years.

The subject has long occupied the thoughts of the physician, the moralist, the speculative philosopher, and the poet. Instances may be found in the literature and art of all countries, and from the earliest periods. In Rosellini's Monumenti dell' Egitto e della Nubia, a very curious instance occurs of a date far anterior to any previously mentioned.

The earliest instance which Mr. John Winter Jones could find of the division of human life into stages occurs in the Greek verses attributed to Solon, who flourished about six hundred years before Christ, and which are introduced by Philo-Judæus into his Liber de mundi opificio; wherein also occurs, "Hippocrates says that there are seven ages;" and we find this division in the Midrach or Ecclesiastes, written about the ninth century, where, in six stages, man is compared to some animal.

In a beautiful Hebrew poem of the twelfth century, we find man's life divided into ten stages. Mr. Winter Jones describes two curious illustrations in ten stages, from Germany and Holland.

Sir Thomas More, when a boy, designed for his father's house in London, a hanging of painted cloths, with Man's Life in nine pageants, and verses over.

The division into seven years is suspected to have been derived from the speculations of cabalistic philosophers upon the secret powers of numbers, and upon the climacterical year.

Lady Calcott described in the cathedral of Sienna, in one of the side chapels, seven figures, each in a compartment, inlaid in the pavement, representing the Seven Ages of Man, supposed to have been executed by Antonio Frederighi, in 1476.

Shakspeare's charming illustration of Man's Seven Ages in the mouth of the melancholy Jaques, in As you like it, have become familiar as 'household words."

We now come to the original of our Frontispiece-a coarse but spirited woodcut, of about the middle of the fifteenth century, and roughly coloured: it was found pasted inside what had been the covers of an old edition or manuscript of the Moralia super Bibliam, of N. de Lyra; and was purchased for the library of the British Museum by M. Panizzi.

The centre is occupied by a large wheel, on the inner circle of which are the words (in Latin), "The wheel of life, which is called fortune." Between this and the outer circle is the form of a naked man; the arms extended, and grasping two of the upper spokes, and the legs apart against two corresponding spokes below. (The several inscriptions are in Latin: we give only the English translation.) On the outer circle of the wheel are the words: "Thus adorned, they are born in this mortal life. decaying, they glide away like water."

Life

Around the wheel are the figures of a man in his seven stages. Commencing on the left side, and proceeding upward, there is a label with the word "Generation " upon it.

Immediately above this is a cradle, in or rather upon which lies an infant in swaddling clothes; and at the foot of the cradle stands a little naked boy clapping his hands.

Next in order is a naked child, holding a toy-windmill, such as amuses children to the present day: a rudely drawn dog, (more like a pig) stands on its hind feet, and rests against the child's leg. Underneath is a scroll, inscribed "An infant to seven years."

Immediately above is a label inscribed "Childhood to Fifteen years," illustrated by a youth holding a falcon on his right fist, and what appears to be a bag of money in his left hand-emblems of the love of pleasure and enjoyment natural to this stage of man's life. Above the head of this youth, and perhaps with reference to the same figure, there is another label, with the words, "Adolescence to twenty-five years."

This brings us to the top of the print, at the left-hand side. In the upper centre, and sitting astride upon the wheel, there is

The Frontispiece.

xi

a figure with a feather in his cap, and armed with spear and shield: on a label above him are the words, "Youth to thirtyfive years."

At the top of the right side of the print is a label inscribed "Manhood to fifty years:" beneath is a figure seated at a table, counting money,-evidently the worldly man, who, having passed through the stages of pleasure and war, is now occupied with the acquisition of wealth. Under his feet is a label with the words, "Old age to seventy years."

The next figure, descending, is that of an old man leaning on a staff, under which is a label inscribed "Decrepit until death.”. The dead body is next represented, lying in a coffin, under which is a label with the word " Corruption."

In the centre, at the foot of the print, is a winged figure with flowing drapery, the wings expanded, and the hands resting upon the two labels, bearing the inscriptions, "Generation" and “Corruption." Under the left hand of this figure is the name of the artist, "Clau;" with this punning device, three claws on a shield. At the bottom are eight lines in monkish verse, (omitted in the Frontispiece,) which may be thus rendered into plain prose: "The state of man is exemplified in a flower:

The flower falls and perishes, so shall man also become ashes. If thou couldst know who thou art, and whence thou comest, Thou wouldst never smile, but ever weep.

There are three things which often make me lament:

First, it is a hard thing to know that I must die;

Secondly, I fear because I do not know when I shall die; Thirdly, I weep because I do not know what will become of me hereafter."*

Such are the details of this curious print: the design is superior to the execution, and is a very interesting Illustration of Man's Progress from the Cradle to the Grave.

* See the paper by Mr. Thomas Winter Jones, of the British Museum, in Archæologia, vol.xxxv., pp. 167-189, 1853. The whole is extremely interesting.

A HYMN.

Oh, thou great Power! in whom I move:
For whom I live, to whom I die,
Behold me through thy beams of love,
Whilst on this couch of tears I lie;

And cleanse my sordid soul within,
By thy Christ's blood, the bath of sin.

No hallow'd oyls, no grains I need,
No rays of saints, no purging fire;
One rosie drop from David's seed
Was worlds of seas to quench thine ire :

O precious ransome! which once paid,
That Consummatum est was said.

And said by Him that said no more,
But seal'd it with his sacred breath:
Thou, then, that has dispong'd my score,
And dying wast the death of Death,

Be to me now, on thee I call,
My life, my strength, my joy, my all!

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

CONTENTS.

« ForrigeFortsæt »