[167]. The whole stanza as given on the last page, beginning with the line,—
“The Pellican, for to reuiue her younge,”
is quoted in Knight’s “Pictorial Shakspere” (vol. i. p. 154), in illustration of these lines from Hamlet concerning “the kind life-rendering pelican.” The woodcut which Knight gives is also copied from Whitney, and the following remark added,—“Amongst old books of emblems there is one on which Shakspere himself might have looked, containing the subjoined representation. It is entitled ‘A Choice of Emblemes and other Devices by Geffrey Whitney, 1586.’” Knight thus appears prepared to recognise what we contend for, that Emblem writers were known to Shakespeare.
[168]. Virgil’s Æneid (bk. xii. 412–414), thus expressed in Dryden’s rendering, will explain the passage; he is speaking of Venus,—
“A branch of healing dittany she brought:
Which in the Cretan fields with care she sought:
Rough is the stem, which wooly leafs surround;
The leafs with flow’rs, the flow’rs with purple crown’d.”
See also Joachim Camerarius, Ex Animalibus Quadrup. (ed. 1595, Emb. 69, p. 71).
[169]. In Haechtan’s Parvus Mundus (ed. 1579), Gerard de Jode represents the sleeping place as “sub tegmine fagi,”—but the results of the mistake as equally unfortunate with those in Bellay and Whitney.