The description of the wounded stag, rehearsed to the banished duke by one of his attendants, is as touching a narrative, as full of tenderness, as any which show the Poet’s wonderful power over our feelings; it is from _As You Like It_ (act ii. sc. 1, l. 29, vol. ii. p. 394),— “To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself Did steal behind him [_Jaques_] as he lay along Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood: To the which place a poor sequester’d stag, That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt, Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord, The wretched animal heaved forth such groans, That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting, and the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool, Much marked of the melancholy Jacques, Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, Augmenting it with tears.” Graphic and highly ornamented though this description may be, it is really the counterpart of Gabriel Symeoni’s Emblem of love incurable. The poor stag lies wounded and helpless,—the mortal dart in his flank, and the life-stream gushing out. The scroll above bears a Spanish motto, _This holds their Remedy and not I_; and it serves to introduce the usual quatrain. D’VN AMORE. INCVRABILE. [Illustration: _Giovio and Symeoni_, 1562.] _Troua il ceruio ferito al ſuo gran male Nel dittamo Creteo fido ricorſo, Ma laſſo (io’lsò) rimedio ne ſoccorſo All’ amoroſo colpo alcun non vale._ Eſto tiene ſu remedio, y non yo. “The smitten stag hath found sad pains to feel, No trusted Cretan dittany[168] is near, Wearied, for succour there is only fear,— The wounds of love no remedy can heal.” To the same motto and the same device Paradin (fol. 168) furnishes an explanation,— “_The device of love incurable,_” he says, “_may be a stag wounded by an arrow, having a branch of Dittany in its mouth, which is a herb that grows abundantly in the island of Crete. By eating this the wounded stag heals all its injuries. The motto,_ ‘Esto tienne su remedio, y no yo,’ _follows those verses of Ovid in the Metamorphoses, where Phœbus, complaining of the love for Daphne, says, ‘~Hei mihi, quòd nullis amor est medicabilis herbis~.’_” The connected lines in Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ (bk. i. fab. 9), show that even Apollo, the god of healing, whose skill does good to all others, does no good to himself. The _Emblems_ of Otho Vænius (p. 154) gives a very similar account to that of Symeoni,—