When the great Talbot was released from imprisonment (_1 Henry VI._, act i. sc. 4, l. 49, vol. v. p. 20), his companions-in-arms on welcoming him back, inquired, “How wert thou entertained?” (l. 39)— “With scoffs and scorns and contumelious taunts. . . . . . . . . In iron walls they deem’d me not secure; So great fear of my name ’mongst them was spread That they supposed I could rend bars of steel And spurn in pieces posts of adamant.” The strong natural affection of the bear for its young obtained record nearly three thousand years ago (_2 Samuel_ xvii. 8),—“mighty men, chafed in their minds” are spoken of “as a bear robbed of her whelps in the field.”[153] Emblems delineated by Boissard and engraved by Theodore De Bry in 1596, at Emb. 43 present the bear licking her whelp, in sign that the inborn force of nature is to be brought into form and comeliness by instruction and good learning. At a little later period, the “TRONVS CVPIDINIS,” or “EMBLEMATA AMATORIA” (fol. 2), so beautifully adorned by Crispin de Passe, adopts the sentiment, _Perpolit incultum paulatim tempus amorem_,—that “by degrees time puts the finish, or perfectness to uncultivated love.” The device by which this is shown introduces a Cupid as well as the bear and her young one,— [Illustration: _De Passe, 1596._] and is accompanied by Latin and French stanzas,— _“Vrsa novum fertur lambendo fingere fœtum Paulatim & formam, quæ decet, ore dare; Sic dominam, vt valde sic cruda sit aspera Amator Blanditiis sensim mollet & obsequio._” _Peu à peu._ “Ceste masse de chair, que toute ourse faonne En la leschant se forme à son commencement. Par seruir: par flatter, par complaire en aymant, L’amour rude à l’abord, à la fin se façonne.” The sentiment of these lines finds a parallel in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act i. sc. 1. l. 232, vol. ii. p. 206),— “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.” Perchance, too, it receives illustration from the praise accorded to the young Dumain by Katharine, in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 56, vol. ii. p. 114),— “A well accomplish’d youth, Of all that virtue love for virtue loved: Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill; For he hath wit to make an ill shape good, And shape to win grace, though he had no wit.” To the denial of natural affection towards himself Gloucester (_3 Henry VI_., act iii. sc. 2, l. 153, vol. v. p. 284) deemed it almost a thing impossible for him to “make his heaven in a lady’s lap,”—