In Le Moine’s Devises Heroiqves et Morales (4to, Paris, 1649, p. 8) we read, “Du courage & du conseil au Roy des abeilles,”—and the creature is spoken of as a male.
[158]. To mention only Joachim Camerarius, edition 1596, Ex Volatilibus (Emb. 29–34); here are no less than five separate devices connected with Hawking or Falconry.
[159]. Take an example from the Paraphrase in an old Psalter: “The arne,” i.e. the eagle, “when he is greved with grete elde, his neb waxis so gretely, that he may nogt open his mouth and take mete: hot then he smytes his neb to the stane, and has away the slogh, and then he gaes til mete, and he commes yong a gayne. Swa Crist duse a way fra us oure elde of syn and mortalite, that settes us to ete oure brede in hevene, and newes us in hym.”
[160]. The Virgin, in Brucioli’s Signs of the Zodiac, as given in our [Plate XIII.], has a unicorn kneeling by her side, to be fondled.
[161]. The wonderful curative and other powers of the horn are set forth in his Emblems by Joachim Camerarius, Ex Animalibus Quadrupedibus (Emb. 12, 13 and 14). He informs us that “Bartholomew Alvianus, a Venetian general, caused to be inscribed on his banner, I drive away poisons, intimating that himself, like a unicorn putting to flight noxious and poisonous animals, would by his own warlike valour extirpate his enemies of the contrary factions.”
[162]. See the fable of the Wolf and the Ass from the Dialogues of Creatures (pp. 53–55 of this volume).
[163]. See p. 11 of J. Payne Collier’s admirably executed Reprint of “The Phœnix Nest,” from the original edition of 1593.
[164]. There are similar thoughts in Shakespeare’s Phœnix and Turtle (Works, lines 25 and 37, vol. ix. p. 671),—
“So they loved, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;