1. Review of Sources
In the "Epistle Dedicatorie" to Leicester, Whitney reveals the nature
of his collection: ". . . most humblie presente theise my gatheringes, and
gleaninges out of other mens haruestes, vnto your honour. . . ." The
printed title-page also announces that Choice is "For the most
parte gathered out of sundrie writers." The extent of his acknowledged
sources may be deduced from his references to them in the letter "To the
Reader" and from his annotations in both the MS and Choice.
Apologizing for having dedicated his emblems to his friends, he cites the
practices of Reusner, Junius, and Sambucus; and in referring his readers to
further discussion on the meaning of the word emblem, he
lists those by "And. Alciatus, Guiliel. Perrerius [i.e., La Perrière],
Achilles Bocchius" (sigs. **2v-**3). Annotations on some of his
sources further show his use of Alciati's Emblemata,
especially the Plantin editions (after 1573) with copious commentaries by
Claude
Mignault (or Minos), Barthélemy Aneau's (or
Anulus')
Picta Poesis, and Gabriel Faernus'
Fabulae
Centum. With these clues as to Whitney's possible sources, and
anxious to show Whitney's familiarity with as many contemporary
emblem-books as possible, Green establishes three categories of emblem
according to their sources; those untraced which he classifies as Whitney's
"original" or "newly devised"; those identical to their sources because they
were struck off from the same woodblocks used in printing their source
emblem-books; and those similar to and suggested by their sources. To
quote from his summaries: "Thus the devices in
Whitney,
which are
similar to those of other emblem writers of his own
era, and which might be suggested by them, are 103—to be thus
distributed: to Brant, 7; Perrière, 13; Corrozet, 11; Horapollo, 9;
Aneau, 12; Coustau, 8; Giovio and Symeoni, 13; Freitag, 13; Beza, 4; and
Reusner, 13. Probably, however, he did not borrow from these sources
above 23 emblems"; and "Now,
ascertaining the results of inquiry after the devices in
Whitney, struck off from the same wood-blocks, and
therefore
identical with those of other emblem writers, we
count up—for Alciat 86 instances, Paradin 32, Sambucus 48, Junius 20,
and Faerni 16; in all, 202. In Whitney's work there are 248 devices [i.e.,
emblems], and we have accounted for the whole; 23 were original, 23
suggested, and 202 are identical with those of the five emblematists last
named. Thus in 'The Choice of Emblemes' 225 have been 'gathered out of
sundrie writers,' and 23 is the number of the 'divers newly
devised.'"
[11] Green's method
generates two types of confusion. First, in tracing sources of device and
motto together, Green identified one source for the motto of an emblem,
though without so specifying, and explained in the notes that for device
(i.e., wooduct) another source was used.
[12] Secondly, in distinguishing the 23
"suggested" sources from the 80 merely "similar" by italicizing the emblem
descriptions of the former group, Green neglected to italicize five
descriptions so that only 18 were "suggested." Moreover, after going
through the separate lists and 103 emblems, a reader then is told that
Whitney did not use them as models except in 23 instances; he feels cheated
and frustrated.
In reviewing Green's source attributions, Leisher rightly criticizes the
artificial distinction between "similar" and "suggested." "It should be
noted," he writes, "that the other source-books listed by Green—Brant,
Corrozet, Horapollo, Coustau, Giovio, Freitag, Beza, and Reusner—do
not, despite careful study, yield a single design which can for any reason
be
considered a source-device" (p. 394). He goes too far, however, in
combining the "suggested" with the "identical" into a single "actual source"
category. For him the emblems in
Choice have either "actual"
or "untraced" sources. This failure to recognize the 25 emblems that are
"copied" and "recopied" from other emblem-books causes Leisher to be
inconsistent. Those emblems from Aneau that are copied by Whitney's
artists, regardless of the minor differences in design, are listed under the
"actual" category, whereas the two emblems copied from La Perrière
and Montenay admittedly with greater differences in design are put under
the "untraced" category. For instance, in the text of his dissertation he lists
Whitney's emblem on p. 225 as having an actual source in Montenay's No.
63. However, in Appendix F, "The Sources of the Devices," he omits it
from the list under Montenay, adds it instead to the "untraced" list, and at
the same time notes parenthetically that it may be
modeled in part on Montenay's No. 12. Similarly, assigning Whitney's
emblem on p. 108 to the "untraced" list, he notes in parentheses that it may
be based on La Perrière's first emblem (p. 393, n. 18; cf. pp. 506,
508). The truth of the matter is that both were copied from their respective
sources with considerable modifications, so much so, especially of
Whitney's emblem on p. 225, that it should properly be considered as a
"newly devised," having been modeled partially on more than two emblems
from Montenay (see Section 6 below). The only other serious lapse in
Leisher's revision is in identifying Whitney's emblem on p. 62 as from
Alciati's No. XXIV and Whitney's emblem on p. 133 as from Alciati's No.
CLIX. These pairings are incorrect because Leisher followed the woodcuts
alone and paid no attention to the mottoes and the verses. He had based his
comparison on the 1577 Plantin edition of Alciati's
Emblemata, without noticing that the woodcuts for these two
emblems were
switched in printing by mistake (Figs. 1 & 2). The correct pairings
should be: Whitney, p. 62, "Withered elm and fruitful vine" with Alciati's
No. CLIX, "Amicitia, etiam post mortem durans," and Whitney, p. 133,
"The vine and the olive" with Alciati, No. XXIV, "Prudentes vino
abstinent." The MS artist and Green were both misled by the same printing
error; however, Whitney made the right switching in
Choice.
(More on this in Section 3 below.)
To date, the tabulation of sources has always been made in separate
lists according to emblem-writers, not infrequently resulting in
inconsistencies, as in the case of Leisher's tables, and discrepancies as in
the case of Green's more than fifteen lists. As a remedy a master list of the
sources for the emblems with their mottoes is constructed here as Appendix
II. (Henceforth references to Whitney's emblems and to those of his sources
will follow the format as explained in the headnotes to that appendix.) At
a glance, the preponderance of emblems whose woodcuts are identical to
those of their sources can now be better appreciated. Even more significant
are those "copied" from their sources and those "newly devised"; for
despite their small number, 40 in all, they are more revealing of Whitney's
method of collecting and devising emblems. But because of the inaccuracies
in the previous source attributions, their exact number cannot until now be
established. Green's misattributions may first be summarized:
|
Wh
|
Source Assigned by Green
|
Revised Source
|
| 1 |
Par 72 |
Jun (14) |
| 31 |
Newly Devised |
Sam [249] |
| 131 |
Horapollo 124 or Coustau 178 |
Newly Devised |
| 133 |
Newly Devised |
Alc (24) |
| 166a |
Newly Devised |
Mon (72) |
| 184 |
Freitag, 69 |
Newly Devised |
| 186 |
Reusner, III, 21 |
Sam [234] |
| 188a |
Per (47) or Reusner, II, 12 |
Par 226 |
| 189a |
Freitag, 177 or Reusner, II, 22 |
Sam [269] |
| 216a |
Newly Devised |
Mon (42) |
| 216b |
Newly Devised |
Mon (70) |
| 218a |
Newly Devised |
Ane 91 |
| 221 |
Per (19) |
Mon (39) |
| 223 |
Newly Devised |
Mon (56) |
| 224a |
Newly Devised |
Mon (67) |
| 224b |
Newly Devised |
Mon (90) |
| 228 |
Newly Devised |
Mon (61) |
| 229a |
Newly Devised |
Mon (65) |
It must be noted that the total misattribution made by Green is remarkably
small; eight instances are real, one is the result of confusing motto with
woodcut sources, and the remaining nine are due to his overlooking
Montenay's emblem-book, even though he referred to it later in his
Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers (1870). Coincidentally,
Montenay was not available to Whitney when the MS was being composed.
In addition, Faernus'
Fabulae Centum was not among those
emblem-books that Whitney owned or had access to during that time. For
in the printed edition, Whitney found the woodblocks used to print the
Plantin edition of Faernus and chose from them thirteen new emblems.
Furthermore, he replaced three drawings in the MS—one based on Sam
[216], one on Ane 80, and the third on one as yet untraced source—with
three identical woodcuts from Faernus (more on this later). Besides these
25 emblems from Faernus and Montenay, Whitney added 40 more emblems
that are not in the
MS, but excluded 13 emblems in the MS from the printed edition. It may
be instructive to parallel the frequency of source uses in the MS with that
in
Choice so as to epitomize the process of converting from
one to the other:
|
Source
|
MS
|
Choice
|
| Alc |
78 |
87 |
| Sam |
44 |
51 |
| Par |
22 |
32 |
| Jun |
17 |
21 |
| Fae |
0 |
16 |
| Per |
9 |
8 |
| Ane |
7 |
8 |
| Mon |
0 |
9 |
| Newly Devised |
20 |
15 |
|
___ |
____ |
| Total |
197 |
247[13]
|
All except one in the MS from Alciati are used in
Choice, to
which 10 more from the same source are added. All except one from
Sambucus are used in, and 8 more are added to,
Choice. Ten
more are added to all of Paradin, whereas all except one from Junius with
5 more added. All except one from La Perrière are used in
Choice, while all except one from Aneau and two more
added. Ten "newly devised" are used in the printed edition with five new
ones added.
The order of emblems in both the MS and Choice
seems to follow neither topic nor subject. The order in the MS seems to
have been based on the desire to space the sources, permitting no more than
three consecutive emblems from the same one source, with only two
exceptions in the second part. If the order of Choice was in
some way based on that of the MS, Whitney took great pains to shuffle it
thoroughly. For a visual demonstration of Whitney's intentional shuffling
of the order of emblems in the MS so that (with the exception of the
beginning three emblems in the first part and the first emblem in the second
part) the order in Choice little resembles that of the MS, a list
of MS emblems, their sources (a few of them have never before been
identified), and their corresponding emblems in Choice is
provided here as Appendix III. Even to a cursory eye, the repetitive cycle
of placing the MS emblems in a widely scattered order in
Choice is immediately
apparent. The rationale of the order in Choice may thus be
Whitney's desire to present a different appearance from that of the MS.
Such a desire is not hard to appreciate, for as a result of the shuffling, the
MS version would maintain its uniqueness, hence a worthy gift for a noble
patron. Also as a result of the shuffling, another pattern emerges in terms
of the distribution of sources in the two parts of Choice. Not
only the new additions copied from Montenay and the "newly devised" (all
but one) are found in the second part, but those emblems that are recopied
from La Perrière and Aneau also are now collected in this part, leaving
the first part with all but one emblem struck off from identical woodblocks
(see Appendix II). By contrast, there are in the MS four "newly devised"
emblems, five emblems copied from La Perrière, and five from Aneau
in the first part, while six "newly devised," four from La Perrière, and
five from Aneau are in the second part. It
seems as though in reassigning the MS emblems to Choice
Whitney wanted to start the first part quickly with blocks chosen from the
Plantin stock and put in the second part the woodcuts that had to be copied
from the three sources (i.e., La Perrière, Aneau, and Montenay) and the
"newly devised" from the MS—a task obviously requiring much longer
time. Be that as it may, this review of sources has produced a series of new
totals: there are in Choice 207 identical emblems, 25 copied
from their sources, and 15 "newly devised"
emblems. With this new count, the study of the component parts of these
emblems—motto, woodcut, and verse—may now begin.
