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Notes
Whitney's "Choice of Emblemes" (London 1866; rpt. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1971); unless otherwise noted all references to Green are to this reprint. I am grateful to the University of Idaho Research Council for a research resource development grant and a summer grant in 1970 and to the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery and its director, James Thorpe, for letting me use its vast emblematic resources during 1971. I wish to thank the librarians of the Huntington Library, the Harvard College Library, and the Bodleian Library for permission to reproduce emblematic illustrations from their respective collections. The partial subvention of publication costs of this article from the Idaho Research Council is especially appreciated.
Second Edition Considerably Increased (Roma: 1964; first English edition: Vol. I, 1939; Vol. II, 1947), p. 46, n. 1.
"Whitney's A Choice of Emblemes and Three Commonplace Collections of Erasmus." One of the weaknesses of this interesting study is the author's lack of awareness that Alciati's various editions have divergent designs for the same emblems. Furthermore, from her ambiguous statement—"Since the publication of Green's edition of the Choice, the number of untraced emblems has been considerably reduced by the unexpected discovery of the sources of at least seven emblems in Georgette de Montenay's Emblèmes ou devises chrestiennes and the discovery of three additional sources in the collections of Alciati, Sambucus, and Aneau" (p. 3, n. 4) —it is difficult to determine whether or not she was herself the unexpected discoverer.
Pp. ix-xvii. Unfortunately, the addition of this introduction together with the "Table of Contents" between Green's "To the Reader" and "Introductory Dissertation" made it necessary to repaginate all of the preliminary materials up to p. xcviii. As a result, the "General Index" whose references to the preliminary still follow the old pagination becomes unusable. Moreover, the inexplicable dropping of catchwords in Choice, except those on pp. 81, 91, 99, 115, 123, renders this reprint defective and unfaithful to its original. This reissue is used only when Fieler's introduction is referred to.
Although there is another manuscript version of Choice, the Bod. Rawlinson MS Poetry 56, it is generally believed that it was copied, without the woodcuts, from the printed version. See Freeman, p. 237; Leisher, p. 404; and Fieler pp. x-xi.
Particularly regrettable is the uncritical reliance upon Green by the monumental (2196 columns) and encyclopaedic (numerous bibliographies and indices of motto, figure, subject, etc.) Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, eds. Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schöne (1967). Although the editors did correct two of Green's misattributions and properly traced them to Sambucus on cols. 638 & 1134, they followed Green in not assigning the first emblem in Whitney on p. 218 to Aneau (col. 1605) and in assigning the emblem on p. 1 to Paradin rather than to Junius (col. 1222), the first emblem on p. 188 to La Perrière (col. 428) rather than to Paradin, and the one on p. 221 to La Perrière (col. 296) rather than to Montenay (col. 306a). As Green had overlooked Montenay, so did Henkel and Schöne. See the list of misattributions by Green on p. 41 and for more omissions by the Handbuch see Appendix II of this essay. Despite these minor lapses, the Handbuch remains invaluable to students of emblem literature.
I am grateful to Mr. Rodney Dennis, Curator of Manuscripts of the Houghton Library, for making available a microfilm copy of MS. Typ 14 and for much of the information from an entry in the Bond-Faye Supplement to De Ricci's Census.
The foliation in MS. Typ 14, as Dennis has pointed out to me, was done in a late hand by a person who had obviously been unaware of the missing leaf. Of course the recto of this missing leaf need not contain the emblem "Nimium rebus ne fide secundis"; however, in view of the fact that the emblem "Feriunt summos fulmina montes" on fol. 78, which appears on p. 140 of Choice, took its motto from the end verse in "Nimium rebus ne fide secundis," it is highly improbable that this emblem did not exist in the MS and that it was added later to Choice.
Most of the details concerning the movements of Leicester, the Dousas, and Whitney are based on Leisher, pp. 362-376, who gleaned them from the "Journal of Robert, Earl Leicester," Retrospective Review, 2nd ser., I (1827), and from Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth (1925), III, passim, and on Fieler, p. xiii, who based his information on J. A. Van Dorsten's Poets, Patrons and Professors (1962) and Dorsten and R. C. Strong's Leicester's Triumph (1964).
Green, pp. 243, 252. Since some of the editions of Whitney's sources used by Green were not available to me, it may be appropriate to list the particular editions which I have used in this essay. This listing can be found as Appendix I at the end of this article.
In the list of Whitney's emblems identical to those of Paradin, Green (p. 247) identifies the first emblem in Choice as from Paradin, fol. 43, though in fact only their mottoes are the same. Although he cites "H. Jun. E. 14" as a cross-reference, he does not include it among the list of Junius (p. 250). But in "Notes Literary and Biographical" he writes: "The device is from Hadrian Junius, but the motto from Claude Paradin" (p. 319). Similar cases are in assigning the mottoes in Whitney on pp. 74 and 144 to Reusner's Emblemata (pp. 243, 365).
Not counted among the 247 woodcuts is the naked emblem on p. 61, and since a naked emblem does not have a wooduct it would be erroneous to count it as one of the 248 woodcuts, an error made by Freeman (p. 56, n. 1) when she assumed that Green's term device was the same as woodcut—a confusion Green sometimes is prone to (see his definition of device on p. 233). Praz made the same slip on p. 535 of his "Bibliography of Emblem-Books."
It is probable that Whitney might have used the 1566 edition of Sambucus in which this emblem has the motto "Animi sub vulpe latentes." In this case, the MS motto merely expanded that of its model; see Henkel & Schöne's Handbuch, col. 974, and Appendix IV of this essay.
Although Wh 3, which is based on Jun (19), is without the monogram [G], the woodcut in the first edition of Junius' Emblemata (1565) and that in Pl. 26d of Green's edition have it. Cf. Handbuch, col. 668. Two other monograms may be noted. [A] appears in Wh 19 and Wh 77a whose woodcuts are identical to those in Alciati; no true identity of [A] has been established, although Antoine Van Leest and Assuerus Van Londerzeel were considered (Green, Andrea Alciati, pp. 84-87). The monogram [C] appears in Wh 31 and Wh 59 from Sambucus; it may denote Cornelis Muller, a fellow engraver working for Plantin along with Arnold Nicolai and Gerard Jansen Van Kampen. See the following note & cf. Handbuch, p. LXIV, under Sambucus.
Max Rooses records several entries from Plantin's journals to identify the engravers in question: ". . . cette même année [1563] et l'année suivante, il [Nicolai] fournit 82 figures des Emblèmes de Sambucus, et un grand nombre des Emblèmes d'Alciat et de Junius. . . . En 1565, il fit . . . le plus grand nombre . . . des planches . . . pour les Fables de Faërne (1567). Ces dernières furent encore employées dans les Fabellae Aesopicae, de 1586. . . . Les Fable de Faërne . . . parurent chez Plantin en 1567. Les cent compositions de Pierre Van der Borcht qui s'y trouvent sont gravées par Arnaud Nicolaï et Gérard Van Kampen. Le premier en fournit 82, le second 18" (Christophe Plantin imprimeur Anversois [1883], pp. 266, 275). See also Colin Clair, Christopher Plantin (1960), esp. Chap. XI, "The Artists Who Worked for Plantin," pp. 182ff.; e.g., Cornelis Muller; On 1 January 1564—28 March, 47 figures and 11 borders &c.mmat; 10 stuivers of Sambucus' Emblems (p. 186).
Although Inuidia in the 1551 Lyons edition (p. 79) holds a knotted and gnarled staff (see Handbuch, col. 1570b), the other details are so dissimilar that the conclusion is inevitable that the MS artist added the thorns to Envy's staff in his drawing entirely on the basis of Whitney's verse.
Not infrequently, throughout the numerous principal editions of Alciati's Emblemata—the Steyner's edition of 1531, the Wechel's of 1534, the Aldine of 1546, the Roville's and Bonhomme's of 1551, and the Plantin's of 1573 & 1577—many woodcuts do not conform with their verses. The locus classicus is the emblem on the three Graces, Alc (162), where they are pictured without wings on their feet ever since they first appeared in the 1546 Aldine edition even though Alciati's verse clearly specifies that they should be so portrayed in order to illustrate the moral: Addita cur nuper pedibus talaria? bis dat | Qui citò dat (Handbuch, col. 1783). Not until in the 1618 Padua edition was this strange omission finally corrected.
Gabriele Simeoni, Le Sentenziose Imprese (1560); the cut has been reproduced in Praz, p. 75. In the 1591 translation of Symbola Heroica by P. S., the woodcut also shows the butterfly on top (p. 324). Green seems to have taken the unusual liberty of reversing the woodcut in Whitney's original edition, a feat not as alarming as it first appears because he has already altered the incorrect page number 76 to the correct one of 84. However, it is highly probable that his particular copy of Choice might belong to one of the several variant issues. For one thing the first marginal note on p. 121, on which the emblem "Festina lentè" appears, has the author Cicero only, whereas in the Huntington Library's Hoe copy as well as the Bodleian copy (Douce, W. Subt. 23; rpt. Amsterdam, 1969) and the Stirling-Maxwell copy (Glasgow University Library, SM 1667; rpt., 1969) all read "Cicero pro Rabir." If Green did not reverse the cut, then Whitney must have caught the printer's error after some copies had already been machined, and righted the picture and added "pro Rabir" for the remainder.
Hoe, p. 77-78; Praz, pp. 394-395. Leisher used a 1549 Lyons edition by de Tournes; see his Appendix F, pp. 502-508.
I wish to acknowledge my special debt to Professor Praz for his generosity and kindness in responding to my request and numerous other queries.
For other examples see Figs. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. Of especial interest are Figs. 20, 22 because the close resemblance between them further illustrates the fact that the Choice artist often copied directly from his model rather than from the MS. This is not the case however among Figs. 24, 25, 26; here because of the textual demands the Choice artist clearly modeled his woodcut after the MS drawing.
Cf. lists of school texts in Charles Hoole, A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching School (London, 1660, rpt. 1969); Kenneth Charlton, Education in Renaissance England (1965); William T. Costello, The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge (1958).
Quotations from Mignault are based on the undated copy of Alciati's Emblemata (1601?) in the Archive Library of Washington State University; see Appendix I.
Mignault's passage (p. 730) is taken from the letter addressed to his third wife by Ovid, who urges her to continue to support him in his exile:
Fac tu sustineas debile sola iugum.
Ad medicum specto venis fugientibus aeger,
Vltima pars vitae dum mihi restat, habes. (III, i, 67-70)
Fig. 31 is taken from E. Kimer and R. Johnson's The Baronetage of England (1781), Vol. I, p. 11. For a much larger crest with Drake's portrait from The World Encompassed (1628) see Hans P. Kraus, Sir Francis Drake, A Pictorial Biography (1970), p. 38.
That the transforming of a famous incident from Roman history into a new emblem is by no means unique with Whitney may be seen from a Dutch emblem "Loon na Werck" (Fig. 35) in a collection entitled Bellerophon of Lust tot Wysheyd by Dirck Pieterszoon Pers (1614). The copperplate was engraved by Joos de Vosscher, modeled obviously on Jost Amman's woodcut, and the verse account was based on Titus Livius' Historiarum ab urbe condita libri (V, xxvii).
A separate study is needed to determine the ways in which emblematists used Aesop's fables in general and Whitney used them in particular. There are no fewer than 46 emblems in Choice that are in one way or another based on Aesopic fables or their analogues. Space here permits only some bibliographical notes on these three figures. Fig. 36 is from The Fables of Aesop . . . Translated into English Verse, and Moralized. And also Emblematically Illustrated with Pictures. By W. B. [William Barret] (1639). This edition is particularly interesting to emblem students because of its emblematic nature. The only difference with a bona fide emblem-book is its lack of a motto; in place of a motto it has a subject title which was used at the very inception of illustrated fable literature. (See Ulrich Boner, Der Edelstein, 1461; Rinucius, Fabulae et Vita, 1474; Heinrich Steinhöwell, Gesalmelt Fabeln, 1477; Accii Zuchi, Aesopi Fabulas, 1479; Bonus Accursius, Fabulae et vitae, [1480].) Despite its late date (1639), its woodcut is closer to that in Choice than to those represented by the other two figures. The possibility certainly exists that both artists might have based their design on a common model. Fig. 37 is from Fables Diverses Tirées D'Esope . . . avec vne explication nouuelle faite par R. D. F. A Paris, . . . M.DC.LIX. The large etchings are identical to those in Freitag's Mythologia Ethica, Antverpiae, Plantini, 1579, which were traced by Colin Clair (pp. 195-196) to Edewaerd de Dene's De warachtighe fabulen der dieren, Bruges, Pieter de Clerck, 1567. The 108 etchings were the work of Marc Gheeraerts, and the plates were acquired by Plantin and Philip Galle. The dissimilarities between Whitney's woodcut and this large etching are sufficient to dismiss Green's suggestion that the former might have been based on the latter. Fig. 38 is from Caxton's The Fables of Aesop, 1483, which is based on the French translation of Steinhöwell's Gesalmelt Fabeln by Julien Macho (Les Subtiles Fables d'Esope, Lyon, 1480). Because of their outdoor setting Figs. 37 & 38 are closer in design to each other than to that of Fig. 36, despite the striking difference between two oxen in Caxton and one ox in de Dene.
Jeannette Fellheimer, "Hellowes' and Fenton's Translation of Guevara's Epistolas Familiares," SP, 45 (1947), 142. I have searched for this particular letter through the following: Epistolas familiares de Don Antonio de Guevara in Epistoralio Español, Vol. 13, ed. by D. Eugenio de Ochoa (Madrid, 1924); Delle lettere dell' illustre signor Don Antonio Di Gvevara . . . Nuouamente tradotto dal S. Alfonso Ulloa, In Venetia, Appresso gli heredi di Vincenzo Valgrisi, DMLXXV; Spanish Letters: Historical, Satyrical, and Moral; Of the Famous Don Antonio de Guevara . . . Recommended by Sir R. L's, and made English from the best Original by Mr. Savage. London, 1697?; Epistolas familiares de Don Antonio de Guevara, Brusselas, por Francisco Foppens, MDCCII. The letter is not in the first three editions of Hellowes' Familiar Epistles (1574, enlarged 1575?, and 1577), but it is in the 1584 edition (STC 12435). Since all the editions of both Fenton's Golden Epistles and Hellowes' Familiar Epistles were printed by Rafe Newbery, it comes as no surprise to discover that the headlines in the 1584 Familiar Epistles on both leaves are "Golden Epistles," rather than those in the earlier editions, "The familiar Epistles | of Sir Antonie of Gueuara." It seems obvious to me that the 1584 edition of Hellowes' Familiar Epistles was printed from the sheets used for printing the 1582 Fenton's Golden Epistles (STC 10796), a fact that has escaped Fellheimer.
[Colophon] Extant Antverpiae apud Gerardum de Iode, 1579, second edition, 1584; I used the edition printed at Arnheim, Apud Ioannem Iansonium . . . Symptibus Theodori Petri, [1609], No. 36, "Sapiens Parvo cententvs vivit", sig. K2v.
De bello punico, Impressum Lugduni expensis Bartholomei Troth, M.D.XIII, liber VI, [ll. 539-544].
I found two 15th-century illustrations of Boccaccio, both showing Attilius put to death by nail-studded wooden planks. See Henry Martin, Le Boccace de Jean Sans Peur, Des Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes, Reproduction des Cent Cinquante Miniatures Du MS 5193 de la Bibliothèque de L'Arsenal, Paris & Bruxelles, 1911, fol. 118v, No. 87; and L'Imprimeur Colard Mansion et 'Le Boccace' De la Bibliothèque D'Amiens, par Henri Michel . . . Paris, 1925, Pl. VI (rpt. from the original edition, Boccace, De la Ruyne des Nobles Hommes et Femmes, Bruges: Colard Mansion, 1476, fol. 135).
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