“Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;
Not separated with the racking clouds,
But sever’d in a pale clear-shining sky.
See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,
As if they vow’d some league inviolable:
Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun,
In this the heaven figures some event.”[99]
This fact is mentioned both by Hall and Holinshed; the latter says: “At which tyme the sun (as some write) appeared to the Earl of March like three sunnes, and sodainely joyned altogether in one, upon whiche sight hee tooke such courage, that he fiercely setting on his enemyes put them to flight.” We may note here that on Trinity Sunday three suns are supposed to be seen. In the “Mémoires de l’Académie Celtique” (iii. 447), it is stated that “Le jour de la fête de la Trinité, quelques personne vont de grand matin dans la campagne, pour y voir levre trois soleils à la fois.”
According to an old proverb, to quit a better for a worse situation was spoken of as to go “out of God’s blessing into the warm sun,” a reference to which we find in “King Lear” (ii. 2), where Kent says:
“Good king, that must approve the common saw,
Thou out of heaven’s benediction com’st
To the warm sun.”
Dr. Johnson thinks that Hamlet alludes to this saying (i. 2), for when the king says to him,
“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?”
he replies,
“Not so, my lord; I am too much i’ the sun,”
i. e., out of God’s blessing.
This expression, says Mr. Dyce,[100] is found in various authors from Heywood down to Swift. The former has: