(See Lactantii Opera, studio Gallæi, Leyden, 8vo. 1660, pp. 904–923.)
Besides Camerarius, there are at least five Emblematists from whom Shakespeare might have borrowed respecting the Phœnix. Horapollo, whose Hieroglyphics were edited in 1551; Claude Paradin and Gabriel Symeoni, whose Heroic Devises appeared in 1562; Arnold Freitag, in 1579; Nicholas Reusner, in 1581; Geffrey Whitney, in 1586, and Boissard, in 1588,—these all take the Phœnix for one of their emblems, and give a drawing of it in the act of self-sacrifice and self-renovation. They make it typical of many truths and doctrines,—of long duration for the soul, of devoted love to God, of special rarity of character, of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and of the resurrection of all mankind.
There is a singular application of the Phœnix emblem which existed before and during Shakespeare’s time, but of which I find no pictorial representation until 1633. It is in Henry Hawkins’ rare volume, “Η ΠΑΡΘΕΝΟΣ,”—The Virgin—“Symbolically set forth and enriched with piovs devises and emblemes for the entertainement of Devovt Sovles.” This peculiar emblem bestows upon the bird two hearts, which are united in closest sympathy and in entire oneness of affection and purpose; they are the hearts of the Virgin-Mother and her Son.
Hawkins’ Parthenos, 1633.
“Behold, how Death aymes with his mortal dart,
And wounds a Phœnix with a twin-like hart.
These are the harts of Jesus and his Mother
So linkt in one, that one without the other