“And the device he bears upon his shield
Is a black Ethiope reaching at the sun;
The word, Lux tua vita mihi.”
Act ii. sc. 2, lines 19–21.
A motto almost identical belongs to an old family of Worcestershire, the Blounts, of Soddington, of which Sir Edward Blount, Bart., is, or was the representative; their motto is, Lux tua vita mea,—“Thy light, my life;”—but their crest is an armed foot in the sun, not a black Ethiop reaching towards him. There was a Sir Walter Blount slain on the king’s side at the battle of Shrewsbury, and whom, previous to the battle, Shakespeare represents as sent by Henry IV. with offers of pardon to Percy. (Henry IV. Pt. 1. act. iv. sc. 3, l. 30, vol. iv. p. 323.) A Sir James Blount is also briefly introduced in Richard III. act. v. sc. 2, l. 615. The name being familiar to Shakespeare, the motto also might be;—and by a very slight alteration he has ascribed it to the Knight of Sparta.
I have consulted a considerable number of books of Emblems published before the Pericles was written, but have not discovered either the device or “the word” exactly in the form given in the play. There is a near approach to the device in Reusner’s Emblems, printed at Francfort in 1581 (Emb. 7, lib. i. p. 9). A man is represented stretching forth his hand towards the meridian sun, and the device is surmounted by the motto, Sol animi virtus,—“Virtue the sun of the soul.” The elegiac verses which follow carry out the thought with considerable clearness,—
“Sol, oculus cœli, radijs illuminat orbem:
Et Phœbe noctem disjicit alba nigram.
Sol animi virtus sensus illuminat ægros:
Et tenebras mentis discutit alma fides.