“My Lady Bona of Savoy,” as Paradin (ed. 1562, fol. 165) names her, “the mother of Ian Galeaz, Duke of Milan, finding herself a widow, made a device on her small coins of a Phœnix in the midst of a fire, with these words, ‘Being made lonely, I follow God alone.’ Wishing to signify that, as there is in the world but one Phœnix, even so being left by herself, she wished only to love conformably to the only God, in order to live eternally.”[125] The “TETRASTICHI MORALI” presents the same Emblem, as indeed do Giovio’s “DIALOGO DELL’ IMPRESE,” &c., ed. Lyons, 1574, and “DIALOGVE DES DEVISES,” &c., ed. Lyons, 1561; _DI MADAMA BONA_ DI SAVIOA. [Illustration: _Giovio, 1574 (diminished)._] with the same motto, and the invariable Italian Quatrain,— Sola facta solũ Deũ sequor. _Perduto ch’ hebbe il fido ſuo conſorte La nobil Donna, qual Fenice ſola, A Dio volſe ogni priego, ogni parola, Dando vita al penſier con l’ altrui morte._ In English,— “Lost had she her faithful consort, The noble Lady, as a Phœnix lonely, To God wills every prayer, every word Giving life to consider death with others.” The full description and characteristics of the Phœnix we reserve for the section which treats of Emblems for Poetic Ideas; but the loneliness, or if I may use the term, the oneliness of this fabulous bird Shakespeare occasionally dwells upon. In the _Cymbeline_ (act i. sc. 6, l. 12, vol. ix. p. 183), Posthumus and Iachimo had made a wager as to the superior qualities and beauties of their respective ladies, and Iachimo takes from Leonatus an introduction to Imogen; the Dialogue thus proceeds,— “_Iach._ The worthy Leonatus is in safety, And greets your highness dearly. @span 6: [_Presents a letter._@ _Imo._ Thanks, good sir: You're kindly welcome. _Iach._ [_Aside._] All of her that is out of door most rich! If she be furnish’d with a mind so rare, She is alone the Arabian bird, and I Have lost the wager.” Rosalind, in _As You Like It_ (act iv. sc. 3, l. 15, vol. ii. p. 442), thus speaks of the letter which Phebe, the shepherdess, had sent her,— “She says I am not fair, that I lack manners; She calls me proud, and that she could not love me, Were man as rare as phœnix.” The oneliness of the bird is, too, well set forth in the _Tempest_ (act iii. sc. 3, l. 22, vol. i. p. 50),— “In Arabia There is one tree, the phœnix' throne; one phœnix At this hour reigning there.”