A sentence or two from the comment may serve for explanation; “The seeds and grains of fruits and herbs are thrown upon the earth, and as it were entrusted to it; after a certain time they spring up again and produce manifold. So also our bodies, although already dead, and destined to burial in the earth, yet at the last day shall arise, the good to life, the wicked to judgment.”... “Elsewhere it is said, ONE HOPE SURVIVES, doubtless beyond the grave.”[107] “MORT VIVIFIANTE,” of Messin, _In Morte Vita_, of Boissard, edition 1588, pp. 38, 39, also receive their emblematical representation, from wheat growing among the signs of death. “En vain nous attendons la moisson, si le grain Ne se pourrit au creux de la terre beschée. Sans la corruption, la nature empeschée Retient toute semence au ventre soubterrain.” At present we must be content to say that the source of the motto and device of the sixth knight has not been discovered. It remains for us to conjecture, what is very far from being an improbability, that Shakespeare had read Spenser’s _Shepherd’s Calendar_, published in 1579, and from the line, on page 364 of Moxon’s edition, for January (l. 54),— “Ah, God! that love should breed both ioy and paine!”— and from the Emblem, as Spenser names it, _Anchora speme_,—“Hope is my anchor,”—did invent for himself the sixth knight’s device, and its motto, _In hac spe vivo_,—“In this hope I live.” The step from applying so suitably the Emblems of other writers to the construction of new ones would not be great; and from what he has actually done in the invention of Emblems in the _Merchant of Venice_ he would experience very little trouble in contriving any Emblem that he needed for the completion of his dramatic plans. The _Casket_ Scene and the _Triumph_ Scene then justify our conclusion that the correspondencies between Shakespeare and the Emblem writers which preceded him are very direct and complete. It is to be accepted as a fact that he was acquainted with their works, and profited so much from them, as to be able, whenever the occasion demanded, to invent and most fittingly illustrate devices of his own. The spirit of Alciat was upon him, and in the power of that spirit he pictured forth the ideas to which his fancy had given birth. [Illustration: _Horapollo, ed. 1551._] ----- Footnote 93: Thus to be rendered into symmetrical lines of English,—