“With terrors, and with furies, to the bounds And crystal wall of heaven; which, opening wide, Roll’d inward, and a spacious gap disclosed Into the wasteful deep: the monstrous sight Struck them with horror backward, but far worse Urged them behind: headlong themselves they threw Down from the verge of heaven.... Nine days they fell: confounded Chaos roar’d, And felt tenfold confusion in their fall Through his wild anarchy.”[81] That same _Theatre of Human Life_, p. 1 (see Plate XIV.), also contains a most apt picture of Shakespeare’s lines, _As You Like It_, act. ii. sc. 7, l. 139, vol. ii. p. 409,— “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.” The same notion is repeated in the _Merchant of Venice_, act. i. sc. 1, l. 77, vol. ii. p. 281, when Antonio says,— “I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.” In England, as elsewhere, emblematical carvings and writings preceded books of Emblems, that is, books in which the art of the engraver and the genius of the poet were both employed to illustrate one and the same motto, sentiment, or proverbial saying. Not to repeat what may be found in Chaucer and others, Spenser’s _Visions of Bellay_,[82] alluded to in the fac-simile reprint of Whitney, pp. xvi & xvii, needed only the designer and engraver to make them as perfectly Emblem-books as were the publications of Brant, Alciatus and Perriere. Those visions portray in words what an artist might express by a picture. For example, in Moxon’s edition, 1845, p. 438, iv.,— “I saw raisde vp on pillers of Iuorie, Wereof the bases were of richest golde, The chapters Alabaster, Christall frises, The double front of a triumphall arke. On eche side portraide was a Victorie, With golden wings, in habite of a nymph And set on hie vpon triumphing chaire; The auncient glorie of the Romane lordes. The worke did shew it selfe not wrought by man, But rather made by his owne skilfull hands That forgeth thunder dartes for Ioue his sire. Let me no more see faire thing vnder heauen, Sith I haue seene so faire a thing as this, With sodaine falling broken all to dust.” Now what artist’s skill would not suffice from this description to delineate “the pillers of Iuorie,” “the chapters of Alabaster,” “a Victorie with golden wings,” and “the triumphing chaire, the auncient glorie of the Romane lordes;” and to make the whole a lively and most cunning Emblem?