[62]. First printed at Lyons in 1498.
[63]. Since the above was written I have good reasons for concluding that the fact is very much understated. I am now employed, as time allows, in forming an Index to my various notes and references to Emblem writers and their works: the Index so far made comprises the letters A, B, C, D (very prolific letters indeed), and they present 330 writers and translators, and above 900 editions.
[64]. We select an instance common to both Holbein and Shakespeare; it is pointed out by Woltmann, in his Holbein and his Time, vol. ii. p. 23, where, speaking of the Holbein painting, The Death of Lucretia, the writer says,—“The costume is here, as ever, that of Holbein’s own time. The painter reminds us of Shakespeare, who also conceived the heroes of classic antiquity in the costume of his own days; in the Julius Cæsar the troops are drawn up by beat of drum, and Coriolanus comes forth like an English lord: but the historical signification of the subject nevertheless does in a degree become understood, which the later poetry, with every instrument of archæological learning, troubles itself in vain to reach.”
It may be noted that in other instances both Wornum, the English biographer of Holbein, and Woltmann, the German, compare Holbein and Shakespeare, or, rather, illustrate the one by the other.
[65]. As when Cooper, at the tomb of Shakespeare, describes it,—
“The scene then chang’d from this romantic land,
To a bleak waste by bound’ry unconfin’d,
Where three swart sisters of the weird band
Were mutt’ring curses to the troublous wind.”
[66]. Act v. sc. 3, lines 14–84, Cambridge edition, vol iii. pp. 422–25.