The unfortunate Richard II. (act iii. sc. 3, l. 178, vol. iv. p. 179), when desired by Northumberland to meet Bolingbroke in the courtyard (“may’t please you to come down”), replies,— “Down, down, I come; like glistering Phaeton Wanting the manage of unruly jades.” And he too, in _3 Henry VI._ (act i. sc. 4, l. 16, vol. v. p. 244), Richard, Duke of York, whose son cried,— “A crown, or else a glorious tomb! A sceptre or an earthly sepulchre!”— when urged by Northumberland (l. 30),— “Yield to our mercy, proud Plantagenet;” had this answer given for him by the faithful Clifford,— “Ay, to such mercy, as his ruthless arm, With downright payment, shew’d unto my father. Now Phaethon hath tumbled from his car, And made an evening at the noontide prick.” That same Clifford (act ii. sc. 6, l. 10, vol. v. p. 271), when wounded and about to die for the Lancastrian cause, makes use of the allusion,— “And who shines now but Henry’s enemy? O Phœbus! hadst thou never given consent That Phaëthon should check thy fiery steeds, Thy burning car had never scorch’d the earth! And, Henry, hadst thou sway’d as kings should do, Or as thy father and his father did, Giving no ground unto the house of York, They never then had sprung like summer flies; I and ten thousand in this luckless realm Had left no mourning widows for our death; And thou this day hadst kept thy chair in peace.” In the early heroic age, when Minos reigned in Crete and Theseus at Athens, just as Mythology was ripening into history, the most celebrated for mechanical contrivance and for excellence in the arts of sculpture and architecture were Dædalus and his sons Talus and Icarus. To them is attributed the invention of the saw, the axe, the plumb-line, the auger, the gimlet, and glue; they contrived masts and sailyards for ships; and they discovered various methods of giving to statues expression and the appearance of life. Chiefly, however, are Dædalus and Icarus now known for fitting wings to the human arms, and for attempting to fly across the sea from Crete to the shore of Greece. Dædalus, hovering just above the waves, accomplished the aërial voyage in safety; but Icarus, too ambitiously soaring aloft, had his wings injured by the heat of the sun, and fell into the waters, which from his death there were named the Icarian sea. From the edition of Alciat’s _Emblems_, 1581, we select a drawing which represents the fall of Icarus; it is dedicated “To Astrologers,” or fortune tellers. The warning in the last two lines is all we need to translate,— “Let the Astrologer take heed what he foretells; for headlong The impostor will fall though he fly the stars above.” In aſtrologos. _EMBLEMA CIII._