‘Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life!’”
Young Harry’s praise, too, in 1 Henry IV., act iv. sc. 1. l. 109, vol. iv. p. 318, is thus celebrated by Vernon,—
“As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.”
For nearly all the personages and the tales contained in this section, authority may be found in Ovid, and in the various pictorially illustrated editions of the Metamorphoses or of portions of them, which were numerous during the actively literary life of Shakespeare. It is, I confess, very questionable, whether for his classically mythic tales he was indeed indebted to the Emblematists; yet the many parallels in mythology between him and them justify the pleasant labour of setting both side by side, and, by this means, of facilitating to the reader the forming for himself an independent judgment.
David, ed. 1601.