The Heroes, in bright antique habits, &c.
The front of a workmanship, proper to the fancy of the rest, adorned with brass figures of angels and devils, with several inscriptions; the title is an escutcheon, supported by an Angel and a Devil. Within the arch a continuing perspective of ruins, which is drawn still before the other scenes, whilst they are varied.
| THE INSCRIPTIONS. | |
| Hinc gloria. | Hinc pœna. |
| Appetitus boni. | Appetitus Mali.’ |
Antony Brewer’s Lingua (1607) is of the same cast. It is much longer as well as older than Microcosmus. It is also an allegory celebrating the contention of the Five Senses for the crown of superiority, and the pretensions of Lingua or the Tongue to be admitted as a sixth sense. It is full of child’s play, and old wives’ tales; but is not unadorned with passages displaying strong good sense, and powers of fantastic description.
Mr. Lamb has quoted two passages from it—the admirable enumeration of the characteristics of different languages, ‘The Chaldee wise, the Arabian physical,’ &c.; and the striking description of the ornaments and uses of tragedy and comedy. The dialogue between Memory, Common Sense, and Phantastes, is curious and worth considering.
‘Common Sense. Why, good father, why are you so late now-a-days?
Memory. Thus ’tis; the most customers I remember myself to have, are, as your lordship knows, scholars, and now-a-days the most of them are become critics, bringing me home such paltry things to lay up for them, that I can hardly find them again.
Phantastes. Jupiter, Jupiter, I had thought these flies had bit none but myself: do critics tickle you, i’faith?
Mem. Very familiarly: for they must know of me, forsooth, how every idle word is written in all the musty moth-eaten manuscripts, kept in all the old libraries in every city, betwixt England and Peru.
Common Sense. Indeed I have noted these times to affect antiquities more than is requisite.