And to the same purport, from Alciat’s 193rd Emblem, are Whitney’s lines (p. 29),— “MEDEA nowe, and PROGNE, blusshe for shame: By whome, are ment yow dames of cruell kinde Whose infantes yonge, vnto your endlesse blame, For mothers deare, do tyrauntes of yow finde: Oh serpentes seede, each birde, and sauage brute, Will those condempne, that tender not theire frute.” The stanza of his 194th Emblem is adapted by Alciat, and by Whitney after him (p. 163), to the motto,— _Pietas filiorum in parentes_,— “The reverence of sons towards their parents.” [Illustration: _Alicat, 1581._] PER _medios hoſteis patriæ cùm ferret ab igne Aeneas humeris dulce parentis onus: Parcite, dicebat: vobis ſene adorea rapto Nulla erit, erepto ſed patre ſumma mihi._ “AENEAS beares his father, out of Troye, When that the Greekes, the same did spoile, and sacke: His father might of suche a sonne haue ioye, Who throughe his foes, did beare him on his backe: No fier, nor sworde, his valiaunt harte coulde feare, To flee awaye, without his father deare. Which showes, that sonnes must carefull bee, and kinde, For to releeue their parentes in distresse: And duringe life, that dutie shoulde them binde, To reuerence them, that God their daies maie blesse: And reprehendes tenne thowsande to their shame, Who ofte dispise the stocke whereof they came.” The two emblems of Medeia and of Æneas and Anchises, Shakespeare, in _2 Henry VI._ (act. v. sc. 2, l. 45, vol. v. p. 218), brings into close juxta-position, and unites by a single description; it is, when young Clifford comes upon the dead body of his valiant father, stretched on the field of St. Albans, and bears it lovingly on his shoulders. With strong filial affection he addresses the mangled corpse,— “Wast thou ordain’d, dear father, To lose thy youth in peace, and to atchieve The silver livery of advised age; And, in thy reverence, and thy chair-days, thus To die in ruffian battle?” On the instant the purpose of vengeance enters his mind, and fiercely he declares,— “Even at this sight, My heart is turn’d to stone; and, while ’tis mine, It shall be stony. York not our old men spares; No more will I their babes: tears virginal Shall be to me even as the dew to fire; And beauty, that the tyrant oft reclaims, Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax. Henceforth I will not have to do with pity: Meet I an infant of the house of York, Into as many gobbets will I cut it, As wild Medea young Absyrtus did: In cruelty will I seek out my fame.”