The last works we shall name of the period antecedent to A.D. 1501, are due to the industry and skill of John Sicile, herald at arms to Alphonso King of Aragon, who died in 1458. Sicile, it seems, prepared two manuscripts, _one_ the Blazonry of Arms,—the _other_, the Blazonry of Colours. Of the former there was an edition printed at Paris in 1495, _Le_ BLASON _de toutes Armes et Ecutz_, &c.—and of the latter at Lyons early in the sixteenth century, _Le Blason des Couleurs en Armes, Liurees et deuises_. Within an hundred years, ending with 1595, above sixteen editions of the two works were issued. Several other authors there are belonging to the period of which we treat,—but enough have been named to show to what an extent Emblem devices and Emblem-books had been adopted, and with what an impetus the invention of moveable types and greater skill in engraving had acted to multiply the departments of the Emblem Literature. It was an impetus which gathered new strength in its course, and which, previous to Shakespeare’s youth and maturity, had made an entrance into almost every European nation. Already in 1500, from Sweden to Italy and from Poland to Spain, the touch was felt which was to awaken nearly every city to the west of Constantinople, to share in the supposed honours of adding to the number of Emblem volumes. [Illustration: _Picta Poesis, 1552._] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SECTION III. _OTHER EMBLEM WORKS AND EDITIONS BETWEEN A.D. 1500 AND 1564._ LABORIOUS in some degree is the enterprise which the title of this Section will indicate before it shall be ended. Perchance we shall have no myths to perplex us, but the demands of sober history are often more inexorable than those flexible boundaries within which the imagination may disport amid facts and fictions. Better, as I trust, to set this period of _sixty-three_ years before the mind, it may be well to take it in three divisions: 1st, the twenty-one years before Alciatus appeared, to conquer for himself a kingdom, and to reign king of Emblematists for about a century and a half; 2nd, the twenty-one years from the appearance of the first edition of Alciat’s _Emblems_ in 1522 at Milan, until Hans Holbein the younger had introduced the _Images and Epigrams of Death_, and La Perriere and Corrozet, the one his _Theatre of good Contrivances in one hundred Emblems_, and the other his _Hecatomgraphie_, or descriptions of one hundred figures; 3rd, the twenty-one years up to Shakespeare’s birth, distinguished towards its close chiefly by the Italian writers on _Imprese_, Paolo Giovio, Vincenzo Cartari, Girolamo Ruscelli, and Gabriel Symeoni. ~Stulte̦ gustationis scapha.~ [Illustration: _Badius_, 1502.]