Calestes Genios perfecta luce creatos
Peccatum horrendo perdidit exitio.
Sub Phlegethonte Satan Cocyti mergitur undis:
Pana eadem reliquis addita dæmonibus.

C 2

Fall of Satan from Boussard's "Theatrum Vita Humane, 1596

the coincidence with Milton's Fall of the rebel Angels. We have here pictured and described the Fall of Satan (see Plate XI.) almost as in modern days Turner depicted it, and as Milton has narrated the terrible overthrow (Paradise Lost, bk. vi.), when they were pursued

With terrors, and with furies, to the bounds

And crystal wall of heaven; which, opening wide,

Roll'd inward, and a spacious gap disclosed

Into the wasteful deep: the monstrous sight

Struck them with horror backward, but far worse

Urged them behind: headlong themselves they threw

Down from the verge of heaven.

Nine days they fell: confounded Chaos roar'd,

And felt tenfold confusion in their fall

Through his wild anarchy."*

That same Theatre of Human Life, p. 1 (see Plate XIV.), also contains a most apt picture of Shakespeare's lines, As You Like It, act. ii. sc. 7, 1. 139, vol. ii. p. 409,

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."

The same notion is repeated in the Merchant of Venice, act. i. sc. I, 1. 77, vol. ii. p. 281, when Antonio says,

"I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;

A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one."

In England, as elsewhere, emblematical carvings and writings preceded books of Emblems, that is, books in which the art of

* In some of the more elaborate of Plantin's devices, the action of "the omnific word" seems pictured, though in very humble degree,—

"In his hand

He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe

This universe, and all created things:

One foot he centred, and the other turn'd

Round through the vast profundity obscure."-Par. Lost, bk. vii.

the engraver and the genius of the poet were both employed to illustrate one and the same motto, sentiment, or proverbial saying. Not to repeat what may be found in Chaucer and others, Spenser's Visions of Bellay,* alluded to in the fac-simile reprint of Whitney, pp. xvi & xvii, needed only the designer and engraver to make them as perfectly Emblem-books as were the publications of Brant, Alciatus and Perriere. Those visions portray in words what an artist might express by a picture. For example, in Moxon's edition, 1845, p. 438, iv.,—

"I saw raisde vp on pillers of Iuorie,
Wereof the bases were of richest golde,
The chapters Alabaster, Christall frises,
The double front of a triumphall arke.
On eche side portraide was a Victorie,
With golden wings, in habite of a nymph
And set on hie vpon triumphing chaire ;
The auncient glorie of the Romane lordes.
The worke did shew it selfe not wrought by man,
But rather made by his owne skilfull hands
That forgeth thunder dartes for Ioue his sire.
Let me no more see faire thing vnder heauen,
Sith I haue seene so faire a thing as this,
With sodaine falling broken all to dust."

Now what artist's skill would not suffice from this description to delineate "the pillers of Iuorie," "the chapters of Alabaster," "a Victorie with golden wings," and "the triumphing chaire, the auncient glorie of the Romane lordes ;" and to make the whole a lively and most cunning Emblem ?

In his Shepheards Calender, indeed, to each of the months Spenser appends what he names an "Emblem;" it is a motto, or device, from Greek, Latin, Italian, French, or English, expressive of the supposed leading idea of each Eclogue, and forming

* Derived from Joachim du Bellay (who died in 1560 at the age of thirty-seven), the excellence of whose poetry entitled him to be named the Ovid of France. There is good evidence to show that Du Bellay was well acquainted with the Emblematists, who in his time were rising into fame.