FEBRVARIE. [Illustration: _Spenser, 1616._] In his _Shepheards Calender_, indeed, to each of the months Spenser appends what he names an “Emblem;” it is a motto, or device, from Greek, Latin, Italian, French, or English, expressive of the supposed leading idea of each Eclogue, and forming a moral to it. The folio edition of Spenser’s works, issued in 1616, gives woodcuts for each month, and so approaches very closely to the Emblematists of a former century. In the month “FEBRVARIE,” there is introduced a veritable word-picture of “the Oake and the Brier,” and also a pictorial illustration, with the sign of the Fishes in the clouds, to indicate the season of the year. The oak is described as “broughten to miserie:” l. 213,— “For nought mought they quitten him from decay, For fiercely the goodman at him did laye. The blocke oft groned under the blow, And sighed to see his neere overthrow. In fine, the steele had pierced his pith, Tho downe to the earth hee fell forthwith.” The Brier, “puffed up with pryde,” has his turn of adversity: l. 234,— “That nowe upright hee can stand no more; And, being downe, is trod in the durt Of cattel, and brouzed, and sorely hurt.” The whole Eclogue, or Fable, is rounded off by the curious Italian proverbs, to which Spenser gives the name of Emblems,— THENOTS EMBLEME. “Iddio, perche é vecchio, Fa suoi al suo essempio.” CUDDIES EMBLEME. “Niuno vecchio Spaventa Iddio.” _i.e._, “God, although he is very aged, makes his friends copies of himself,” makes them aged too; but the biting satire is added. “No old man is ever terrified by Jove.” IVNE [Illustration: _Spenser, 1616._] The Emblem for June represents a scene which the poet does not describe; it is the field of the haymakers, with the zodiacal sign of the Crab, and appropriate to the characters of Hobbinoll and Colin Clout,— but it certainly does not translate into pictures what the poet had delineated in words of great beauty: “Lo! Colin, here the place whose plesaunt syte From other shades hath weaned my wandring minde, Tell mee, what wants mee here to worke delyte? The simple ayre, the gentle warbling winde, So calme, so coole, as nowhere else I finde; The grassie grounde with daintie daysies dight, The bramble bush, where byrdes of every kinde To the waters fall their tunes attemper right.”