“In the battle of the Swiss, routed near Milan by King Francis, M. de Saint Valier, the old man, father of Madame the Duchess de Valentinois,[[97]] and captain of a hundred gentlemen of the king’s house, bore a standard, whereon was painted a lighted torch with the head downward, on which flowed so much wax as would extinguish it, with this motto ‘Qvi me alit, me extingvit,’ imitating the emblem of the king his master; that is, ‘Nvtrisco et extingvo.’ It is the nature of the wax, which is the cause of the torch burning when held upright, that with the head downward it should be extinguished. Thus he wished to signify, that as the beauty of a lady whom he loved nourished all his thoughts, so she put him in peril of his life. See still this standard in the church of the Celestins at Lyons.”[[98]]
Paradin, who confessedly copies from Symeoni, agrees very nearly with this account, but gives the name of the Duchess “Diane de Poitiers,” and omits mentioning “the emblem of the king.”
Qui me alit, me extinguit.
Paradin, 1562.
As stated in the fac-simile Reprint of Whitney’s Emblemes, p. 302, Douce in his Illustrations of Shakespeare, pp. 302, 393, advances the opinion that the translation of Paradin into English, 1591, by P. S., was the source of Shakespeare’s torch-emblem; “but it is very note-worthy that the torch in the English translation is not a torch ‘that’s turned upside down,’ but one held uninverted, with the flame naturally ascending. This contrariety to Shakespeare’s description seems fatal therefore to the translator’s claim.” P. S., however, renders the motto, “He that nourisheth me, killeth me;” and so may put in a claim to the suggestion of the line,—
“Which can as well inflame as it can kill.”
Let us next take Whitney’s stanza of six lines to the same motto and the same device, p. 183; premising that the very same wood-block appears to have been used for the Paradin in 1562, and for the Whitney in 1586.
“Even as the waxe dothe feede, and quenche the flame,