The allusion to the star of Julius in connection with the lady's name renders this device, in our opinion, rather neat and classical.
A still more startling sign of the times is exhibited by the device-loving bishop. He relates that one Mattei, a man of noble courage, when waiting with dissimulation and patience an opportunity to murder a person by whom he had been insulted, applied to him (Jovius) for an appropriate device; and the bishop, 'wishing to shew that a noble mind has power to digest, with time, every grievous injury,' designed an ostrich devouring a nail, with the motto, Spiritus durissima conquit. Mattei wore the device, and ultimately succeeded in assassinating his victim; and 'so much was this noble revenge commended,' that the pope promoted the ruffian to be captain of his guard—the family of the murdered man signing an agreement to cancel all future quarrels.
Great care was requisite, when framing a device, lest any part of it could be turned into ridicule by a witty or spiteful enemy. Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, bore a flint and steel, with the motto, Ante ferit quam flamma micet (As he strikes, the fire flashes); and when defeated, and slain at the battle of Nancy, the day being cold, with snow on the ground, his triumphant enemy, the Duke of Loreno, said: 'This poor man, though he has great need to warm himself, has not leisure to use his tinder-box.'
However puerile the 'art' may appear to us now, there can be little doubt, that the construction of devices, as an incentive to the acquisition of general knowledge, and as a kind of mental training, was not altogether useless in its day, and formed a link, were it ever so slender, in the development of the human mind. Estienne, a noted French device-author, observes, that 'to express the conceptions of our own mind in the most perfect device, there is nothing so proper, so gentile, so powerful, or so witty, as the similitudes we discover when walking in the spacious fields of Nature's wonderful secrets; for the grace of a device, as well as the skill of him who makes it, consists in discovering the correspondence of natural qualities and artificial uses with our own thoughts and intentions.'
The old scholastic logic was freely employed in the arguments by which the device-authors advanced their own opinions, or attacked those of their contemporaries. Ammirato condemns the unphilosophical definition of Jovius—that the emblem is the body, and the motto, the soul of a device. With long, and, we must acknowledge, to us at least, not very intelligible argument, he maintains, that 'the motto is the major part of a syllogism, and the emblem the minor; from the conjunction of which the conclusion is drawn.' Unprofitable and uninteresting are these discussions. We shall, in preference, mention the canons of device-criticism, which were of most general prevalence.
Comparison was considered an essential property of a perfect device. Thus the Pillars of Hercules, with the motto, Plus ultra (More beyond), adopted by Charles V., in allusion to the Spanish discoveries and conquests in America, and still to be seen on the coin of that nation, was, by the connoisseurs, termed a mere conceit. The scholar's two pens, with His ad aethera (By these fame), being also devoid of comparison, was equally inferior. Not more than three figures were permissible in the emblem, unless the greater number were of the same species. A device portraying an elephant, with a flock of sheep grazing quietly around, the motto, Infestus infestis (Hostile only to the wicked), was strictly correct, as the sheep, being all of one species, were recognised merely as one figure. Metaphor was not allowed in the motto: a device faulty in this respect, represented a ball of crystal, the motto, from Plautus, Intus et in cute (The same within and without); crystal being devoid of skin (cutis), the expression was metaphorical. The introduction of negatives into the motto was considered good: as a sundial, with Ne aspiciatur non aspicitur (Unless looked upon—by the sun—it is not esteemed, or is of no use), a good device for a king's favourite; a flame of fire, with Nunquam deorsum (Never downwards); a gourd floating on a stream, with Jactor non mergor (Abandoned, but not sunk.) When the motto was taken from a well-known classic, fewer words were required: thus in a device representing a flame blown upon by the wind, with Lenis alit flammas, grandior aura necat (A gentle wind nourishes flame, a stronger, extinguishes), the words, grandior necat (a stronger, extinguishes) would have been sufficient. Nice discrimination was required in selecting the most suitable language for a motto. According to Contile, the Spanish was most suitable for love-matters; the Italian, for pleasant conceits; the Greek, for fiction; and the Latin, for majesty. Household furniture, and implements of husbandry, were considered improper subjects for the emblem of a device; consequently, that of the Academia della Crusca was set down as decidedly vulgar, it being a sieve, with Il piu bel fior ne coglie (It collects the finest flour of it)—a play on the word crusca (bran), assumed as the title of the Academy, from its having been instituted for the express purpose of purifying (sifting) the Italian language.
Objects that were not recognisable unless painted in colours, were also inadmissible; thus the otherwise clever device of the Earl of Essex—a rough diamond, with the motto, Dum formas minuis (In fashioning, you diminish), came under the censure of the critics. In like manner, objects not easily distinguishable from others, were liable to the same condemnation. The celebrated device assumed by Mary Queen of Scots on the death of her first husband, Francis II., representing a liquorice-plant, with Dulce meum terra tegit (The earth covers my sweet), was pronounced faulty, because the liquorice-plant could not be readily distinguished from other shrubs, the roots of which wanted the property of sweetness so necessary to give point to the device. Unnatural or chimerical figures could not be admitted, excepting those to which tradition or classical authors had given fixed forms and attributes—as the mermaid, harpy, phœnix; consequently, a device representing a winged tortoise, the motto, Amor addidit (Love has added them), was improper. Qualities ascribed to animate or inanimate bodies by the ancients, were considered legitimate, though known by the moderns to be fictitious. Thus the dolphin, from the story of Arion, appears in devices as the friend of the distressed; the salamander, living in fire, typifies the strong passions, natural, yet destructive to their victim; the young stork, carrying the old one, illustrates filial piety; the crane, which, according to Pliny, holds a stone in its claw to avert sleep, is a fit emblem of watchfulness; the pomegranate, king of fruits, wears a regal crown; the crocodile, symbol of hypocrisy, sheds deceitful tears. In short, almost everything that was in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, was seized by the device-maker, and converted into a symbol of some virtue, vice, or other quality of the mind. Nor was there only one emblem taken from each object; by varying the circumstances, they were multiplied to an enormous amount. Menestrier gives no less than 514 different devices, founded upon the properties of the sun alone.
Though devices previous to the reign of Henry VIII. were seldom worn in England, yet the insignia of the order of the Garter, instituted in 1350, in connection with its well-known motto and assumed origin, may be considered a genuine device. The next earliest we meet with was worn by Henry IV., and represented a blazing beacon, the motto, Une sans plus (One alone.) This motto has been termed inappropriate; but, considering that beacons were always placed at considerable distances from each other—one sufficing for a considerable district—we may conclude that the usurping Henry implied, that there was only one king in England, and that one was himself. Richard Duke of York, when he took up arms against Henry VI., assumed, as his device, a sun, partly visible only through thick clouds, with the motto, Invitis nubibus (Obscured by clouds.) After his death, his son Edward, in consequence of the success of the Yorkist cause, changed this device to a full sun unobscured. This was the sun of York so frequently alluded to by Shakspeare, and such a stumbling-block to his commentators. Henry VIII., on the occasion of his visiting Francis I. at the field of the Cloth of Gold, wore an English archer, dressed in Lincoln green, drawing his arrow to the head, the motto, Cui adhereo præest (He whom I aid, conquers); a very significant intimation to Charles V. and Francis, both of whom were anxious for Henry's alliance against each other. Ann Boleyn wore a white-crowned falcon standing on a golden stem, from which sprouted red and white roses, with the motto, Mihi et meae (To me and mine.) This device of the fair and unfortunate Ann has survived to the present day. Now, emblematical of her fall, as it was once of her high station, it is degraded to be the sign of an ale-house, and known to the village topers as the Magpie and Stump! 'The gentle Surrey of the deathless lay,' one of the last victims of the tyrant Henry, wore a broken pillar, with the motto, Sat super est (Enough remains.) One of the charges brought against him, when arraigned for high treason, was for wearing this very device. Mary, when she ascended the throne, wore a representation of Time drawing Truth out of a well, with the words, Veritas temporis filia (Truth is the daughter of Time); and Cardinal Pole wore a serpent surrounding the terrestrial globe, with the motto, Estote prudentes (Be ye cunning.) Both of those devices were very significant of the period and of their wearers.
The romantic amusements of Queen Elizabeth raised the device to the highest pinnacle of importance it ever possessed in this country, Hentzner, a German traveller, who visited the palace of Whitehall in 1598, says, that he saw in her majesty's bedroom 'a variety of devices on paper, cut in the shape of shields, with mottoes, used by the nobility at tilts and tournaments, hung up there for a memorial.' As to Elizabeth herself, Camden states, that the enumeration of the various devices worn by her would fill a large volume. The generality, however, of the devices of that reign were fulsome flatteries, allusive to the Maiden Queen; such as—the moon, with the words, Quid sine te cœlum? (What would Heaven be without thee?) or, Venus seated on a cloud, with, Salva, me Domina! (Save me, O lady!) The best of the time was worn by the impetuous and ill-starred Essex, to signify his grief on one of the occasions when he had lost the queen's favour. It represented merely a sable field, surrounded by the words. Par nulla figura dolori (Grief cannot be painted.) The 'English Bayard,' Sir Philip Sidney, does not appear to great advantage in his devices. One, we presume intended to shew the steadfastness of his purpose, represented the tideless Caspian Sea, the motto, Sine refluxa (Without ebb.) Another of 'that famous soldier, scholar, and poet,' throws a curious light on the manners of the age. Camden tells us that Sir Philip, 'who was a long time heir-apparent to the Earl of Leicester (his uncle), after the earl had a son born to him, used at the next tilt-day following the motto, Speravi (I had hoped), with a dash across the word, thereby signifying that his hope was dashed.' Would any gentleman now thus publicly express his disappointment at such an event?
The pedantry of the first James was almost as favourable to devices as the pageantry of Elizabeth; but the days of chivalry, the glories of the triumph and the tilt-yard, were fast passing away, while the new arts of wood and copper-plate engraving were rising into eminence; and consequently devices, instead of being worn singly on the shields and trappings of knights and maskers, were soon found collected, and seasoned with poetry on the pages of printed books. These books of emblems, as they were termed, are by no means uninteresting; haply, at a future time, we may have an opportunity of referring to them. The early printers, we should observe, were the first who used devices on paper, each having a distinguishing emblem and motto, which they displayed on the title-pages of their works. We read of only one device worn by James; it represented the Scottish thistle united with red and white roses, the motto, Rosas Henricus, regna Jacobus, implying that as Henry united roses, James united kingdoms. Though foreign to our subject, we may mention here, as it is not generally known, that it was James who removed the red dragon of the Tudors from the royal arms, placing as a supporter in its stead the unicorn of Scotland. We meet with only one device of the unfortunate Charles. It represented a snake that had just cast its skin, the motto, Paratior (More ready.) During the civil war, many mottoes and figures were adopted by both the royalist and parliamentary parties, but few of them can be termed regular devices. With the Restoration, a new description of court amusement came into fashion, and the device soon became a prey to 'dull forgetfulness.' Many emblems, however, were then and subsequently assumed as crests, and a great number of mottoes were taken to point the moral, if any, of heraldic blazonry. Though repudiated and unrecognised by the strict herald, they are now generally considered to be the particular property and distinguishing ensign of certain surnames and families, and as hereditary as the quaint and fanciful charges and quarterings of coat-armour itself.