A la chandelle qui reluyct.
Tel veult à la bataillé̩[e/]̩ aller
Qui ne ſcaict combien guerre nuyct.
“The Butterflies themselves are about to burn,
In the candle which still shines on and warms;
Such foolish, wish to battle fields to turn,
Who know not of the war, how much it harms.”
This device, in fact, was one extremely popular with the Emblem literati. Boissard and Messin’s Emblems, 1588, pp. 58, 59, present it to the mottoes, “Temerité dangereuse,” or Temere ac Pericvlose,—“rashly and dangerously.” Joachim Camerarius, in his Emblems Ex Volatilibus et Insectis (Nuremberg, 4to, 1596), uses it, with the motto, Brevis et damnosa Voluptas—“A short and destructive pleasure,”—and fortifies himself in adopting it by no less authorities than Æschylus and Aristotle. Emblemes of Love, with Verses in Latin, English, and Italian, by Otho Vænius, 4to, Antwerp, 1608, present Cupid to us, at p. 102, as watching the moths and the flames with great earnestness, the mottoes being, Brevis et damnosa voluptas,—“For one pleasure a thousand paynes,”—and Breue gioia,—“Brief the gladness.”
There is, too, on the same subject, the elegant device which Symeoni gives at p. 25 of his “Distichi Morali,” and which we repeat on the next page.
The subject is, Of Love too much; and the motto, “Too much pleasure leads to death,” is thus set forth, almost literally, by English rhymes:—