With the addition of two friends in conversation seated beneath the elm and vine, Boissard and Messin (1588, pp. 64, 65) give the same device, to the mottoes, “AMICITIÆ IMMORTALI,”—_To immortal friendship:_ “Parfaite est l’Amitié qui vit après la mort.” Footnote 144: “Centvm Fabvlæ ex Antiqvis delectæ, et a Gabriele Faerno Cremonense carminibus explicatæ. Antuerpiæ ex officina Christoph. Plantini, M.D.LXXXIII.” 16mo. pp. 1–171. Footnote 145: See the French version of Æsop, with 150 beautiful vignettes, “LES FABLES ET LA VIE D’ESOPE:” “A Anvers En l’imprimerie Plantiniēne Chez la Vefue, & Jean Mourentorf, M.D.XCIII.” Here the bird is a jay (see p. 117, _Du Gay_, xxxi); and the peacocks are the avengers upon the base pretender to glories not his own. Footnote 146: Cervantes and Shakespeare died about the same time,—it may be, on the same day; for the _former_ received the sacrament of extreme unction at Madrid 18th of April, 1616, and died soon after; and the _latter_ died the 23rd of April, 1616. Footnote 147: Paralleled in Æsop’s _Fables_, Antwerp, 1593; by Fab. xxxviii., _De l Espriuier & du Rossignol_; lii., _De l Oyseleur & du Merle_; and lxxvii., _Du Laboureur & de la Cigoigne_. Footnote 148: Identical almost with “La fin covronne l’oevvre” in Messin’s version of Boissard’s _Emblematum Liber_ (4to, 1588), where (p. 20) we have the device of the letter Y as emblematical of human life; and at the end of the stanzas the lines,— “L’estroit est de vertu le sentier espineux, Qui couronne de vie en fin le vertueux: C’est ce que considere en ce lieu Pythagore.” Footnote 149: In the Emblems of Lebens-Batillius (4to, Francfort, 1596), human life is compared to a game with dice. The engraving by which it is illustrated represents three men at play with a backgammon-board before them. Footnote 150: The skeleton head on the shield in Death’s escutcheon by Holbein, may supply another pictorial illustration, but it is not sufficiently distinctive to be dwelt on at any length. The fac-simile reprints by Pickering, Bohn, Quaritch, or Brothers, render direct reference to the plate very easy. Footnote 151: A note of inquiry, from Mr. W. Aldis Wright, of Trinity College, Cambridge, asking me if Shakespeare’s thought may not have been derived from an emblematical picture, informs me that he has an impression of having “somewhere seen an allegorical picture of a child looking through the eyeholes of a skull.” Footnote 152: In Johnson’s and Steeven’s _Shakespeare_ (edition 1785, vol. x. p. 434) the passage is thus explained, “Sir John Suckling, in one of his letters, may possibly allude to this same story. ‘It is the story of the _jackanapes_ and the partridges; thou starest after a beauty till it is lost to thee, and then let’st out another, and starest after that till it is gone too.’” -----