“A little Academe, Still and contemplative in living art,” Ferdinand, king of Navarre, proclaims,— “Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live register’d upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death; When, spite of cormorant devouring Time, The endeavour of this present breath may buy That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge, And make us heirs of all eternity.” In his Sonnets, more especially, Shakespeare celebrates the enduring glory of the mind’s treasures. Thus, the 55th Sonnet (_Works_, vol. ix. p. 578) is written almost as Whitney wrote,— “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents, Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish lime. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry. Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. ’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity, Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room, Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.” But the 65th Sonnet (p. 583) is still more in accordance with Whitney’s ideas,—not a transcript of them, but an appropriation,— “Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays? O fearful meditation! where, alack! Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? No one, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright.” How closely, too, are these thoughts allied to some in that Emblem (p. 197) in which Whitney, following Hadrian Junius, so well celebrates “the eternal glory of the pen.” Pennæ gloria immortalis. _Ad Iacobum Blondelium._ [Illustration: _Junius_, 1565.[178]] He has been telling of Sidney’s praise, and in a well-turned compliment to him and to his other friend, “EDWARDE DIER,” makes the award,—