“Here Nemesis, and Hope: our deedes doe rightlie trie,

Which warnes vs, not to hope for that, which justice doth denie.”

Yet the sixth device and motto need not remain without illustration. Hope is a theme which Emblematists could not possibly omit. Alciatus gives a series of four Emblems on this virtue,—Emblems 43, 44, 45, and 46; Sambucus, three, with the mottoes “Spes certa,” “In spe fortitudo,” and “Spes aulica;” and Whitney, three from Alciatus (pp. 53, 137, and 139); but none of these can be accepted as a proper illustration of the In hac spe vivo. Their inapplicability may be judged of from Alciat’s 46th Emblem, very closely followed by Whitney (p. 139).

In the spirit, however, if not in the words of the sixth knight’s device, the Emblem writers have fashioned their thoughts. From Paradin’s “Devises Heroiqves,” so often quoted, we select two devices (fol. 30 and 152) illustrative of our subject. The one, an arrow issuing from a tomb, on which is the sign of the cross, and having verdant shoots twined around it, was the emblem which Madame Diana of Poitiers adopted to express her strong hope of a resurrection from the dead;[[106]] and the same hope is also shadowed forth by ears of corn growing out of a collection of dry bones, and ripening and shedding their seed.

Paradin, 1562.

The first, Sola viuit in illo,—“Alone on that,” i.e., on the cross, “she lives,”—we now offer with Paradin’s explanation; “L’esperance que Madame Diane de Poitiers Illustre Duchesse de Valentinois, a de la resurrection, & que son noble esprit, contemplant les cieus en cette view, paruiendra en l’autre après la mort: est possible signifié par sa Deuise, qui est d’vn Sercueil, ou tombeau, duquel sort vn trait, acompagné de certains syons verdoyans.” i.e.,—“The hope which Madame Diana of Poitiers, the illustrious Duchess de Valentinois, has of the resurrection, and which her noble spirit, contemplating the heavens in this life, will arrive at in the other, after death: it is really signified by her Device, which is a Sepulchre or tomb, from which issues an arrow, accompanied by certain verdant shoots.”

The motto of the second is more directly to the purpose, Spes altera vitæ,—“Another hope of life,” or “The hope of another life,”—and its application is thus explained by Paradin (leaf 151 reverso),—“Les grains des Bleds, & autres herbages, semées & mortifiées en terre, se reuerdoyent, & prennent nouuel accroissement: aussi les corps humains tombãs par Mort, seront relevés en gloire, par generale resurrection.”—i.e., “The seeds of wheat, and other herbs, sown and dying in the ground, become green again, and take new growth: so human bodies cast down by Death will be raised again in glory, by the general resurrection.”

We omit the woodcut which Paradin gives, and substitute for it the 100th Emblem, part i. p. 102, from Joachim Camerarius, edition, 1595, which bears the very same motto and device.