In your 185th Number, two or three Queries are proposed by the Rev. Mr. Corser in
connexion with that interesting branch of literature called Books of Emblems. To these it shall be my endeavour to reply.
First. Some years ago I made particular inquiry from the surviving relatives of the late Rev. William Beloe, whether among his manuscripts there had been found any "Treatise on Emblems," or any notices which had a bearing on the subject? They informed me that they had made search, but without success.
Second. Of Thomas Combe, mentioned by Meres in his Palladis Tamia, I have been unable to learn anything.
Third. It appears certain that Bunyan never published any Book of Emblems, whatever may have been hawked under his name; nor can I find, in the Account of his Life and Writings just published in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London, or in any preceding edition of his works, that such a production was ever contemplated by him.
Fourth. In the extensive and valuable "English Books of Emblems" furnished (chiefly from his own library) by Mr. Corser, he mentions R. Burton's Choice Emblems, Divine and Moral; or Delights for the Ingenious, &c., 12mo. 1721. Perhaps my learned and accomplished friend may not be aware that Burton is an assumed name, placed in the title-pages of several cheap books which appeared at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, but which were thought to have been written by a Mr. Nathaniel Crouch, a bookseller, who sold them. I have a sixth edition of these "choice emblems," dated 1732, which was then sold for "two shillings bound." The work is merely a collection of fifty emblems, taken, without acknowledgment, from George Wither, the copper-plate engravings being poor copies from those of Depasse. To this sixth edition there is prefixed a portrait of K. Charles I., with eight pages of sympathising verses.
Mr. Corser's list of English works is very complete. I possess, however, an unpublished manuscript translation of Alciato into English verse. It is of the time of James I., and possesses much merit; but it has unfortunately been mutilated.
I also possess the following:
"Amorum Emblemata figuris æneis incisa studio Othonis Væni, Batavo-Lugdunensis. Emblemes of Love, with verses in Latin, English, and Italian, obl. 4to.: Antverpiæ, 1608."
Prefixed is an English dedication "to the most Honourable and Worthy Brothers William, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip, Earl of Montgomerie, Patrons of Learning and Chevalrie," whose coat of arms also is given.