“Why didst thou send me forth, brave Cassius?
Did I not meet thy friends? and did not they
Put on my brows this wreath of victory,
And bid me give it thee? Didst thou not hear their shouts?
Alas, thou hast misconstrued every thing!
But, hold thee, take this garland on thy brow;
Thy Brutus bid me give it thee, and I
Will do his bidding.”
The heraldry of honours from sovereign princes, as testified to, both by Paradin in his “Devises Heroiqves,” edition Antwerp, 1562, folio 12v, and 25, 26, and by Shakespeare, embraces but two or three instances, and is comprised in the magniloquent lines (1 Henry VI., act iv. sc. 7, l. 60, vol. v. p. 80) in which Sir William Lucy inquires,—
“But where’s the great Alcides of the field,