Count. Is this the scourge of France?
Is this the Talbot, so much fear’d abroad
That with his name the mothers still their babes?”
Whitney, 1586.
Five or six instances may be found in which Shakespeare introduces the word “lottery;” and, historically, the word is deserving of notice,—for it was in his boyhood that the first public lottery was set on foot in England; and judging from the nature of the prizes, he appears to have made allusion to them. There were 40,000 chances,—according to Bohn’s Standard Library Cyclopædia, vol. iii. p. 279,—sold at ten shillings each: “The prizes consisted of articles of plate, and the profit was employed for the repair of certain harbours.” The drawing took place at the west door of St. Paul’s Cathedral; it began “23rd January, 1569, and continued incessantly drawing, day and night, till the 6th of May following.”[[115]] How such an event should find its record in a Book of Emblems may at first be accounted strange; but in addition to her other mottoes, Queen Elizabeth had, on this occasion of the lottery, chosen a special motto, which Whitney (p. 61) attaches to the device,—
Silentium,—“Silence,”—
which, after six stanzas, he closes with the lines,—
“Th’ Ægyptians wise, and other nations farre,
Vnto this ende, Harpocrates deuis’de,