Never lack’d gold, and yet went never gay,
Fled from her wish, and yet said, now I may;
. . . . . .
She was a wight, if ever such wight were,—
Des. To do what?
Iago. To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer.”
We thus return, by a wandering path indeed, to the paradoxical saying with which we set out,—concerning “fleeing what we follow;” for Iago’s paragon of a woman,—
“Fled from her wish, and yet said, now I may.”
Taken by itself, the coincidence of a few words in the dedications of works by different authors is of trifling importance; but when we notice how brief are the lines in which Shakespeare commends his “Venus and Adonis” to the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, it is remarkable that he has adopted an expression almost singular, which Whitney had beforehand employed in the long dedication of his Emblems to the Earl of Leycester. “Being abashed,” says Whitney, “that my habillitie can not affoorde them such, as are fit to be offred vp to so honorable a suruaighe” (p. xi); and Shakespeare, “I leave it to your honourable survey, and your Honour to your heart’s content.” Whitney then declares, “yet if it shall like your honour to allowe of anie of them, I shall thinke my pen set to the booke in happie hour; and it shall incourage mee, to assay some matter of more momente, as soon as leasure will further my desire in that behalfe;” and Shakespeare, adopting the same idea, also affirms, “only if your Honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour.” Comparing these passages together, the inference appears not unwarranted, that Whitney’s dedication had been read by Shakespeare, and that the tenor of it abided in his memory, and so was made use of by him.
From the well-known lines of Horace (Ode ii. 10),—