“In the reproof of chance Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth, How many shallow bauble boats dare sail Upon her patient breast, making their way With those of nobler bulk! But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage The gentle Thetis, and anon behold The strong-ribb’d bark through liquid mountains cut, Bounding between the two moist elements, Like Perseus’ horse.” The last lines are descriptive of Alciat’s device, on p. 299. It is the same Nestor (act iv. sc. 5, l. 183), who so freely and generously compliments Hector, though his enemy,— “I have, thou gallant Trojan, seen thee oft, Labouring for destiny, make cruel way Through ranks of Greekish youth; and I have seen thee, As hot as Perseus, spur thy Phrygian steed, Despising many forfeits and subduements, When thou hast hung thy advanced sword i’ the air, Nor letting it decline on the declined, That I have said to some my standers by, ‘Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life!’” Young Harry’s praise, too, in _1 Henry IV._, act iv. sc. 1. l. 109, vol. iv. p. 318, is thus celebrated by Vernon,— “As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship.” For nearly all the personages and the tales contained in this section, authority may be found in Ovid, and in the various pictorially illustrated editions of the _Metamorphoses_ or of portions of them, which were numerous during the actively literary life of Shakespeare. It is, I confess, very questionable, whether for his classically mythic tales he was indeed indebted to the Emblematists; yet the many parallels in mythology between him and them justify the pleasant labour of setting both side by side, and, by this means, of facilitating to the reader the forming for himself an independent judgment. [Illustration: _David, ed. 1601._] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SECTION IV. _EMBLEMS ILLUSTRATIVE OF FABLES._