A sa grand’ gloiré̩[e/]̩ & salut des esleuz,
Et par iusticé̩[e/]̩, ainsi qu’ a decreté,
Dieu fait tout bien; que nul n’en doute plus.”
As we have mentioned before (pp. 242, 3), Ovid’s Metamorphoses are the chief source to which, from his time downwards, poets in general have applied for their most imaginative and popular mythic illustrations; and to him especially have Emblem writers been indebted. For a fact so well known a single instance will suffice; it is the description of Chaos and of the Creation of the World (bk. i. fab. 1),—
“Ante mare et terras, et quod tegit omnia, cœlum,
Unus erat toto naturæ vultus in orbe,
Quem dixêre Chaos: rudis indigestaque moles.”
An early Italian Emblematist, Gabriel Symeoni, in 1559, presents on this subject the following very simple device in his Vita et Metamorfoseo d’Ovidio (p. 12), accompanied on the next page by “The creation and confusion of the world,”—
Il Caos.