“He used this merry comparison. The choice of a wife is full of hazard, not unlike to a man groping for one fish in a barrel full of serpents: if he escape harm of the snakes, and light on the fish, he may be thought fortunate; yet let him not boast, for perhaps it may be but an eel.” That “good woman” “to mend the lottery well,” that “one fish in a barrel full of serpents,” came, however, to the chance of one of Cæsar’s friends. Even when Antony (_Antony and Cleopatra_, act ii. sc. 2, l. 245, vol. ix. p. 40) was under the witchery of the “rare Egyptian queen,” that “did make defect, perfection,” the dramatist says,— “If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle The heart of Antony, Octavia is A blessed lottery to him.” The Emblems applicable to Shakespeare’s historical characters are only a few among the numbers that occur in the Emblem writers, as Alciat, Cousteau, Giovio, Symeoni, &c.: but our choice is limited, and there would be no pertinency in selecting devices to which in the dramas of our author there are no corresponding expressions of thought, though there may be parallelisms of subject. [Illustration: Virtati fortuna comes _Alciat’s Arms (Giovio, ed. 1562)._ ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SECTION II. _HERALDIC EMBLEMS, OR EMBLEMS APPLIED TO HERALDRY._ KNOTTED together as are Emblems and the very language of Heraldry, we must expect to find Emblem writers devoting some at least of their inventions to heraldic purposes. This has been done to a very considerable extent by the Italians, especially by Paolo Giovio, Domenichi, Ruscelli, and Symeoni; but in several other authors also there occur heraldic devices among their more general emblems. These are not full coats of arms and the complete emblazonnes of “the gentleman’s science,” but rather cognizances, or badges, by which persons and families of note may be distinguished. In this respect Shakespeare entirely agrees with the Emblem writers; neither he nor they give us the quarterings complete, but they single out for honourable mention some prominent mark or sign. I attempt not to arrange the subject according to the Rules of the Art, but to exhibit instances in which Shakespeare and the Emblematists agree, of Poetic Heraldry, the Heraldry of Reward for Heroic Achievements, and the Heraldry of Imaginative Devices. Of Poetic Heraldry the chief type is that bird of renown, which was a favourite with Shakespeare, and from which he has been named by general consent, “the Swan of Avon.” A white swan upon a shield occurs both in Alciat and in Whitney, and is expressly named _Insignia Poetarum_,—“The poets’ ensigns.” The swan, in fact, was sacred to Apollo and the Muses; and hence was supposed to be musical. Æschylus, in his _Agamemnon,_ makes Cassandra speak of the fable, when the Chorus bewail her sad destiny (vv. 1322, 3),—