Cebes, the Theban, the disciple of Socrates, though mentioned at pp. 12, 13, must again be introduced, for an edition of his little work in Latin had appeared at Boulogne in 1497, and at Venice in 1500; also at Francfort, “by the honest men Lamperter and Murrer,” in 1507, with the letter of John Æsticampianus; the Greek was printed by Aldus in 1503, and several other editions followed up to the end of the century;—indeed there were translations into Arabic, French, Italian, German, and English.[[48]]

Plate 1b

Tableau of Human Life from Cebes. B.C. 390.

II.—Andrew Alciat, the celebrated jurisconsult, remarkable, as some testify, for serious defects, as for his surpassing knowledge and power of mind, is characterized by Erasmus as “the orator best skilled in law,” and “the lawyer most eloquent of speech;”—of his composition there was published in 1522, at Milan, an Emblematum Libellus, or “Little Book of Emblems.”[[49]] It established, if it did not introduce, a new style for Emblem Literature, the classical in the place of the simply grotesque and humorous, or of the heraldic and mythic. It is by no means certain that the change should be named an unmixed gain. Stately and artificial, the school of Alciat and his followers indicates at every stanza its full acquaintance with mythologies Greek and Roman, but it is deficient in the easy expression which distinguishes the poet of nature above him whom learning chiefly guides: it seldom betrays either enthusiasm of genius or depth of imaginative power.

Nevertheless the style chimed in with the taste of the age, and the little book,—at least that edition of it which is the earliest we have seen, Augsburg, A.D. 1531,[[50]] contained in eighty-eight pages, small 8vo, with ninety-seven Emblems and as many woodcuts,—won its way from being a tiny volume of 11.5 square inches of letterpress on each of eighty-eight pages, until with notes and comments it was comprised only in a large 4to of 1004 pages with thirty-seven square inches of letter-press on each page. Thus the little one that had in it only 1012 square inches of text and picture became a mountain, a monument in Alciat’s honour, numbering up 37,128 square inches of text, picture, and comment. The little book of Augsburg, 1531, may be read and digested, but only an immortal patience could labour through the entire of the great book of Padua, 1621. In that interval of ninety years, however, edition after edition of the favourite emblematist appeared; with translations into French 1536, into German 1542, into Spanish and Italian in 1549, and, if we may credit Ames’ Antiquities of Printing, Herbert’s edition, p. 1570, into English in 1551. The total number of the editions during that period was certainly not less than 130, of seventy of which a pretty close examination has been made by the writer of this sketch. The list of editions, as far as completed, numbers up about 150, and manifests a persistence in popularity that has seldom been attained.

The earliest French translator was John Lefevre, an ecclesiastic, born at Dijon in 1493,—Les Emblemes de Maistre Andre Alciat: Paris, 1536. He was secretary to Cardinal Givry, whose protection he enjoyed, and died in 1565. Bartholomew Aneau, himself an emblematist, was the next translator into French, 1549; and a third, Claude Mignault, appeared in 1583. Wolfgang Hunger, a Bavarian, in 1542,[[51]] and Jeremiah Held of Nördlingen, were the German translators; Bernardino Daza Pinciano, in 1549, Los Emblemas de Alciato, was the Spanish; and Giovanni Marquale, in 1547, the Italian,—Diverse Imprese.

The notes and comments upon Alciat’s Emblems manifest great research and very extensive learning. Sebastian Stockhamer supplied commentariola, short comments, to the Lyons edition of 1556. Francis Sanctius, or Sanchez, one of the restorers of literature in Spain, born in 1523, also added commentaria to the Lyons edition of 1573. Above all we must name Claude Mignault, whose praise is that “to a varied learning he joined a rare integrity.” He was born near Dijon about 1536, and died in 1606. His comments in full appeared in Plantin’s[[52]] Antwerp edition, 8vo, of 1573, and may be appealed to in proof of much patient research and extensive erudition. Lorenzo Pignoria, born at Padua in 1571, and celebrated for his study of Egyptian antiquities, also compiled notes on Alciat’s Emblems in MDCXIIX.[[53]] The results of the labours of the three, Sanchez, Mignault, and Pignorius, were collected in the Padua editions of 1621 and 1661. It is scarcely possible that so many editions should have issued from the press, and so much learning have been bestowed, without the knowledge of Alciat’s Emblems having penetrated every nook and corner of the literary world.

With a glance only at the “Prognosticatio,” of Theophrastus Paracelsus, the alchemist and enthusiast, written in 1536, and expressed in thirty-two copperplates, we pass at once to the Dance of Death, by Hans Holbein, which Bewick, 1789, and Douce, 1833, in London, and Schlotthauer and Fortoul, 1832, in Munich and Paris, have made familiar to English, German, and French readers. Of Holbein himself, it is sufficient here to say that he was born at Bâle in 1495, and died in London in 1543.