Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers: an exposition of their similarities of throught and expression, preceded by a view of emblem-literature down to A.D. 1616Green, Henry
History
Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers: an exposition of their similarities of throught and expression, preceded by a view of emblem-literature down to A.D. 1616
Green, Henry
Emblem books, English -- History; Emblems -- England -- History; Emblems in literature; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Sources
In its manuscript form, too, the celebrated “SPECULUM HUMANÆ
SALVATIONIS,” _Mirror of Human Salvation_, exhibits throughout the
emblem characteristics. Of this work, both as it exists in manuscript
and in the earliest printed form by Koster of Haarlem, about 1430,
specimens are given in “A History of the Art of Printing from its
invention to its wide spread developement in the middle of the sixteenth
century;” “by H. NOEL HUMPHREYS,” “with one hundred illustrations
produced in Photo-lithography;” folio: Quaritch, London, 1867. Pl. 8 of
Humphreys’ learned and magnificent volume exhibits “a page from a
manuscript copy of the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_, executed previous
to the printed edition attributed to Koster;” and pl. 10, “A page from
the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_ attributed to Koster of Haarlem, in
which the text is printed from moveable types.”
The inspection of these plates, and the assurance by Humphreys, p. 60,
that “the illustrations, though inferior to Koster’s woodcuts, are of
similar arrangement,” may satisfy us that the _Speculum Humanæ
Salvationis_, and all its kindred works, in German, Dutch, and French,
amounting to many editions previous to the year 1500,[35] are truly
books that belong to the Emblem literature. Thus pl. 8, “though without
the decorative Gothic framework which separates, and, at the same time,
binds together the double illustrations of the xylographic artist,”
exhibits to us the exact character of “the double pictures of the
_Speculum_.” “These double pictures,” p. 60 of Humphreys, “illustrate
first a passage in the New Testament, and secondly the corresponding
subject of the Old, of which it is the antitype. In the present page we
have Christ bearing His cross (Christus bajulat crucem) typified by
Isaac carrying the wood for his own sacrifice (Isaac portat ligna sua).”
“The engravings,” p. 58, “_i.e._, of Koster’s first great effort, occur
at the top of each leaf, and the rest of the page is filled with two
columns of text, which, in the supposed first edition, is composed of
Latin verse
(or, rather, Latin prose with rhymed terminations to the lines, as the
lines do not scan); and in later editions, in Dutch prose.” “This
specimen,” pl. 8, p. 60, “will enable the student to understand
precisely the kind of manuscript book which Koster reproduced in a
cheaper form by xylography, to which he eventually allied the still more
important invention of moveable types.”
From a very fine MS. copy of the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_,
belonging to Mr. Henry Yates Thompson, our fac-simile Plates IV. and V.,
though on a smaller scale, present the Title and the first Pair of
devices with their text. The work is in twenty-nine chapters, and to
each there are four devices in four columns, with appropriate
explanations in Latin verse, and at the foot of the columns are the
references to the Old or the New Testament.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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