Renaissance Studies Vol. 4 No. 2

Whitney ’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment

JOHN MANNING

I

Standard histories of the emblem usually refer to Whitney as ‘the first English emblematist’ and his Choice of Emblemes (Leyden, 1586) as the first English emblem book. ’ However, even before more recent research finally removed this distinction from him, his claims to historical priority have always rested on rather shaky foundations. Van der Noot’s A Theatre f o r Voluptuous Worldings (London, 1569) might well be con- sidered a stronger contender for the title of ‘the first printed English emblem book’. It certainly predates Whitney’s Choice by some years, and only a legalistic application of a probably anachronistic definition of what should constitute a true emblem (viz. that it should conform to a tripartite pattern consisting of motto, picture and verse)2 has enabled Whitney’s proponents to resist the earlier book’s claims: van der Noot’s book lacks the requisite mottos.-’ It has now been recognized, however, that even some years before the publication of the Theatre there existed an extensive collection of emblems in English by Thomas Palmer, who presented his manuscript to the Earl of Leicester some two decades before Whitney’s book a ~ p e a r e d . ~ The honour of historical priority, it seems, must now clearly belong to Palmer.

’ Mario Praz, Studies in Seuenteenth-Century Imagery, 2nd edn (Rome, 1964), 46; Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem Books (London, 1948), 32 and 56. Hereinafter English Emblem Books is cited as Freeman.

A view most influentially stated by William S. Heckscher and Karl-August Wirth, ‘Emblem, Emblembuch’, in Reallexicon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, v (Stuttgart, 1959). cols 85-228. However, Hessel Miedema, ‘The term emblema in Alciati‘,] Warburg C, 31 (1968), 234-50, argues persuasively against the historical validity of their views.

’ A line taken by John Franklin Leisher, ‘Geoffrey Whitney’s Choice of Emblemes and its relation to the emblematic vogue in Tudor England, unpubl. diss. (Harvard University, 1952). C. H. Her- ford, Literary Relations between England and Germany in the Szxteenth-Century (London, 1886), 369, and Harold Stein, Studies in Spenseri Complaints (London, 1934), 111 claim the Theatre as England’s first emblem book. Many ‘canonical’ emblem books lack mottoes, or fail to conform to Heckscher and Wirth’s tripartite structure in other ways: e.g. La Perrisre’s Le Theatre des bons engzns does not have mottoes.

Two Hundred Poosees (British Library, Sloane MS 3794). For a discussion of its dating and sources, see John Manning, ‘Continental emblem books in sixteenth-century England: the evidence of Sloane MS. 3794 , Emblematica, 1 (1986), 1-11, and The Emblems of Thomas Palmer: Sloane MS. 3794, ed. John Manning (New York, 1988).

@ 1990 The Society f o r Renaissance Studies, Oxford Uniuersity Press

156 John Manning

Whitney’s displacement from his traditional pre-eminence need not, however, be a matter for regret. Rather, it might be welcomed as an op- portunity to reassess his achievement. His unjustified reputation for historical priority and for innovation has deflected literary historians from closer consideration of what he has left us. So long as he was thought to be introducing the emblem genre into English, emphasis necessarily fell upon his role as a translator, the range of his sources and borrowings, in short, upon his task as an anthologizer. In consequence the disparate and miscellaneous character of his work was brought into undue promin- ence. Emphasis might now more profitably be directed towards the deliberate designs and purposes that lie behind the work, and towards the literary, political, religious and moral ideas that he sought to popularize and inculcate by means of his emblems. A Choice of Emblemes may now be seen as a much more closely organized and deliberate piece of work than has hitherto been credited.

I 1

The seeds, which were later to bear fruit as Whitney’s Choice of Em- blemes, are to be found in a manuscript collection of 197 ‘plesaunte and pithie’ emblems, ‘offer[ed] vp’ to the Earl of Leicester ‘to looke vppon at some houres for [his] re~reat ion’ .~ The gift apparently emerged from Whitney’s belated sense of gratitude for the ‘bountie and fauor’ (Choice, sig. **”) which the poet has long since received at the hands of his patron. As High Steward of Great Yarmouth, Leicester introduced Whitney to the corporation and later attempted, albeit without success, to procure for the poet the office of Under-Steward of the borough, when it became vacant in 1584.6 Whitney’s presentation of the manuscript to his benefac- tor may be presumed to have taken place on, or shortly after, 28 November 1585,’ ‘presentlie before his Honour passed the seas into the lowe countries’ (Choice, sig. * * 3 1 ) .

The manuscript in the Houghton Library (shelf-mark MS.Typ 14), hereinafter cited as MS, was unknown to Freeman. Leisher made some slight use of it. For a discussion of the differences between the manuscript and the printed text, see Mason Tung, ‘Whitney’s A Choice of Emblemes revisited: a comparative study of the manuscript and toe printed versions’, Stud Bibl, 29 (1976), 32-101 (hereinafter cited as Tung), and John Manning, ‘Unpublished and unedited emblems by Geffrey Whitney: further evidence of the English adaptation of continental traditions’, in English Emblems and the Continental Tradition, ed. Peter M. Daly (New York, 1988), 83-107. Unless otherwise stated all quotations from Whitney in this introduction follow the orthography and punctuation of the printed text, A Choice of Emblemes (Leyden, 1586), hereinafter cited as Choice. All contractions, however, have been silently expanded, and the use of long ‘s’ has been normalized. The passages referred to in this note are in Choice on sigs **>->I (MS fol. 5’). Accidental variants between MS and Choice are not recorded.

Compact Edition of the Dictionary of National Biography ( 2 vols, Oxford, 1975), 1 1 , 2258, S.V.

Whitney, Geoffrey: Henry Green (ed.), A Choice of Emhlemes by GefJrey Whitney (1866: New York, 1967), lx-lxi. Hereinafter cited as Green.

’ ‘The Epistle Dedicatorie’ is so dated in Choice, sig. MS is undated.

Whitney ’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 157

The manuscript was designed for one ideal reader, Leicester himself, and was specifically and particularly gratulatory. The collection aimed to praise the ‘noble actes, . . . giftes and vertues rare’9 of the Earl: this ‘Noble, and moste faithful1 counsellor’ of the Queen, ‘zelous fauorer of the Gospell’, patron of learning, and ‘bountiful1 Mecoenas to all the pro- fessors of worthie artes, and sciences’. l o In the ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’ Leicester is urged to see himself as no more nor less than the magnificent English equivalent of the great continental patrons of art and scholar- ship, those kings and princes instrumental in securing the Renaissance revival of learning. ‘Charles the great, Kinge of Fraunce . . . erected two vniuersities’; ‘ I Leicester, as Chancellor of Oxford and High Steward of Cambridge, occupied prominent positions in two English universities. The parallel, though not overtly stated, was probably meant to be drawn.

More explicit are the similarities between the earl and Emperor Sigis- mund, who ‘highlie extolled the learned’, and Ferdinandus, who ‘gaue yearelie out of his treasurie, great sommes of money to the readers of diuinitie, Phisicke, Rethoricke, and Philosophie, to the great incourag- inge of those that weare inclined to good studies’.I2 In the following paragraph Whitney states that Leicester was ‘so addicted to [learning] these many yeares, that diuers, who are nowe famous men, had bin throughe pouertie, longe since discouraged from their studies: if they had not founde [Leicester], so prone to bee their patron’.13 The parallel, of course, redounds to Leicester’s further credit. Where Ferdinandus had given sums of money to any who ‘weare inclined to good studies’, the earl practised a judicious discernment in his aid, giving financial assistance to those who needed it. His patronage is seen, therefore, as more than merely generous: it is a quasi-religious act of charitable alms-giving. I 4

From Sigismundus, Whitney’s roll-call of continental patrons continues to ‘Alphonsus King of Naples . . . Fredericke Duke of Saxon Prince elec- tor’, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, and Borso d’Este.’’ In the manuscript the list was even longer, embracing ‘Cosimus Medices duke of Florence’ and ‘Gonzaga duke of Arrian, of the house of Mantua’ (MS fol. 4”). The list finally ends, inevitably and triumphantly, with the praise of Leicester himself ‘there needeth no Apologie to bee made vnto your honour, in the behalfe of learning . . . ’ I6

A case argued in Manning, ‘Unpublished and unedited emblems by Geffrey Whitney’. ’ In praise of the Righte Honorable my good Lorde, and Maister, the Earle of Leycester’, 1. 14,

l o Choice, sig. ” Choice, sig. **,” (MS fol. 4’). ’ * Choice, sig. **,” (MS fol. 4). ” Choice, sig * * 2 r (MS fol. 4”). The plight of poor scholars is adverted to in Paupertatem summis

‘ I Cf. Bis dat qui cito dut (Choice, p. 190). I s Choice, sigs l6 Choice, sig. * * 2 r (MS fol. 4”).

Choice, p. 107 (MS fol. 5T). (MS fol. 2”: ‘worthy sciences and exercises’).

ingeniis obesse ne prouehantur (Choice, p. 152; MS fol. 39”).

(MS fol. 4”).

158 John Manning

The topics that formed the basis of Whitney’s collection were matters of concern to ‘great Princes and noble Peeres’, among whom the earl was certainly meant to count himself. These ‘actes of mightie Monarches and great Princes, and the matters and thinges of former time worthie memorie, done by sage Gouernors, and valiant Captaines’ were meant to function as a ‘glasse’,” or mirror, in which the earl might behold himself and his deeds. Throughout the ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’ and in the emblems themselves, Leicester is explicitly and implicitly identified with and likened to the emperors, princes, governors and captains of anti- quity: Artaxerxes, Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great, Augustus, Hector, Achilles, Ulysses, Brutus, Pompey, Scipio Africanus and many others. The images reflected back from Whitney’s book were intended not only to flatter, although they were certainly intended to do that. They were intended to act as role models, which the earl might well adopt for his advantage: ‘approoued examples for the whole course of . . . life, eyther to bee imitated, or eschewed’. l 9 Tempered with Whitney’s adula- tion was also the sobering reflection on ‘the mutabillitie of worldly felicitie, and howe the wise haue behaued them selues in bothe fortunes’. From this the earl might ‘drawe vnderstanding and good counsaile, to in- struct and gouerne [himself] in all [his] actions’.2o

These methods of praise and gratulation, in which the patron is im- plicitly and explicitly compared to the great and famous, carry with them certain corollaries, which throw some light on Whitney’s perception of his role and responsibilities as an emblematic author. If Leicester is Alexander, then Whitney must see himself as an Aristotle, prescribing ‘houlsome preceptes . . . of regiment’ and ‘searchinge the secrettes, natures, and qualities of all creatures’; if Leicester is Scipio, then Whitney must emulate Ennius, who ‘did highlie extol1 his worthie actes, registring them in his learned cronicles to all posterities’; if Leicester is Augustus, Whitney is Vergil, who ‘spent manie yeares . . . to deriue the race of the Emperor from Mneas, and the noble Troians’; if Leicester is Maecenas, Whitney is Horace, whose works, ‘stuffed full of wise and graue preceptes’, also include particular praise of ‘the birthe the bountie the learninge, and the noble qualities’ of his patron; if Leicester is com- pared to Trajan, it is because he had a Plutarch in Whitney, writing ‘priuate bookes . . . of counsel1 and gouernement’ as well as ‘liues . . . [which give] due commendation’. ’ This interweaving, or ‘interlacing’ to

” Choice, sig. * * , I (MS fol. 3”). Cf. 11.26 below, and also Choice, p. 44, I . 12: ‘Let greedie heires, this looking glasse behoulde’; p. 113, 1 . 6: ‘glasse of true renoume’. For Camillus, to whom this last reference refers, as Leicester, see below.

’ * See Choice, pp. 10, 30, 37, 45, 47, 70, 82, 116, 193, 198, 219. I s Choice, sig.

’’ (MS fol. 3”). (MS fol. 3”). Choice, sig. * *

Choice, sig. *dr (MS fol. 3r).

Whitney ’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 159

use Whitney’s term, 2 2 of specific gratulation with general moral reflec- tion, of natural history and ‘houlsome preceptes’, of past heroes with pre- sent examples, ‘counsell’ with ‘commendation’, we might recognize as essentially emblematic in method: an intricate mosaic of history and pre- sent praise, of lively examples with ‘wise and graue preceptes’.

Whitney decorously and ingeniously adopts what he took to be the characteristic styles and preoccupations of the classical authors most in- timately connected with those role-models he had proposed for Leicester, and admirably adapted them to the characteristic methods of the Renais- sance emblem. When Whitney later described the different species of emblematic composition in the preface, ‘To the Reader’, in the printed version of his Choice of Emblemes, he divided emblems into ‘three kindes’: ‘Historicall, Naturall, and Morall’ (Choice, sig. * *4r) . These distinctions, it may be seen, were already latent in, or even suggested by, the favoured subject matter of those authors he had earlier proposed as his models in the manuscript dedication. Ennius’ ‘learned chronicles’, Plutarch’s Vitae comparatae, and Vergil’s epic celebration of ‘Aeneas and the noble Trojans’ are all ‘Historicall‘: commemorating ‘the actes of some noble persons.’ Aristotle, ‘searchinge the secrettes, natures and qualities of all creatures, ’ pre-eminently exemplifies the ‘Naturall’ emblem, which draws upon ‘the natures of creatures’. Aristotle’s ‘houlsome preceptes’, Horace’s ‘wise and graue preceptes’ and Plutarch’s ‘bookes of counsell’ provide ample matter for Whitney’s last and all- embracing category, the ‘Morall’ ‘pertaining to vertue and instruction of life’ (Choice, sig. * * 4 r ) .

What, however, distinguished the manuscript Choice from the later printed text was Whitney’s much more overt praise of Leicester himself, and, above all, his particular concern for his patron’s Fame.23 ‘Honour, fame, renowme, and good reporte, doe triumphe ouer deathe, and make men liue for euer’, Whitney assured Leicester (Choice, sig. Writers may confer a kind of immortality: ‘future time so long as the worlde shall indure’, Whitney promises, ‘shall taste of this blessing: For our succession, shall see what we haue seene, and behoulde hereby what famous thinges weare enterprised and doen in our daies, as if they weare euen nowe standing at our e1b0wes.l~~ Pre-eminent among the enterprises of his day were the achievements of Leicester himself: ‘You haue made choice of the best parte’, says Whitney, addressing his patron, ‘and embraced throughe vertue, that which liueth, and neuer dieth.’25 Through Whitney’s em- blems, Leicester was to become an example to others: ‘to the lewde for their amendement. And to the godlie, for their better goinge forwarde in

2 2 Choice , sig. * 4 r .

*’ See Manning, ‘Unpublished and unedited emblems by Geffrey Whitney’ 2 4 Choice, sig. ( M S fol. 3”). ’’ Choice, sig. ***” ( M S fol. 5‘).

160 John Manning

their course, that leades to euerlastinge glorie.’26 ‘Euerlastinge glorie’ is, as we have seen, in the first instance conferred by the poet and by Fame as the reward of Virtue. But such glory is but a token and a shadow of that conferred by ‘almightie God’, the source of ‘all honour and true nobillitie’, who will in the fullness of time summon the earl, Whitney asserts, to ‘euerlasting honour, which is alwaies permanent without mutabilitie’.”

There seems to have been no firm intention on Whitney’s part to pub- lish the manuscript. In the dedicatory poem that prefaced the second part of the collection, Whitney promises to ‘houlde [his] peace’, since the earl’s own deeds and Fame herself had sufficiently set his Lordship before the public gaze ‘on the formost fronte of honours hautie stage’.28 Earlier, in the ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’, he mentions Alexander’s reproof to Aristotle, who had published the ‘priuate instructions’ he had formerly given his royal pupil. Alexander blamed Aristotle ‘for participating to others, that which hee desired to haue proper to him~elfe.’~’ Such an example might well have deterred Whitney, our latter-day Aristotle, from any o’erhasty excursion into print, which might incur the displeasure of his Prince. Whitney’s immediate motives were, it seems, fairly modest: to praise his patron, to attempt to win notice and approval, and to seek encourage- ment. If this was forthcoming, Whitney advertised his willingness to ’assay some matter of more m~rnente’ .~’ The opportunity to do this was soon to come his way.

1 1 1

The timing of Whitney’s presentation of his manuscript to Leicester, ‘presentlie before his Honour passed the seas into the lowe countries’, seems hardly to have been a coincidence. The gift was almost certain to have been a deliberate, even opportunistic, attempt to gain a place in Leicester’s train, when the earl took up the position of ‘lorde Leefe- tenaunte vnder hir Maiestie of the lowe cuntrees’.” Whitney, we know, had recently been bitterly disappointed by his failure to secure the posi- tion of Under-Steward in Great Y a r m o ~ t h . ~ ’ But dissatisfaction with his previous employers need not have been his only motive in wanting to join his patron. The whole expedition must have appeared in prospect as a great adventure, in which Whitney, like so many of his contemporaries, would have wished to take part.

26 Choice, sig. **,r, Cf. MS fol. 5‘: ‘which maie serue to the lewde as a mirror for theire amende- ment, and to the godlie as a glasse whereby theie maie see to goe on still to gett the goale of euerlastinge glorie’.

*’ Choice, sig. 2 8 ’An other on the same’, 1. 9, Choice, p. 107 (MS fol. 52‘). ’’ Choice, sig. *3r . This passage does not appear in MS. 3 0 Chotce, sig. ** lr (MS fol. 5‘).

(MS fol. 57.

MS fol. 2‘. Cf. Choice. sig. *>I: ‘Lorde Lieutenant and Captaine General1 of her Majesties forces in the lowe countries’.

3 2 Green, p. lxi. The matter came to litigation.

Whitney s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 161

It is’difficult to overestimate the excitement and the anticipation with which Leicester’s appointment was viewed in the national consciousness. It was the culmination of ten years’ dithering negotiations between England and the Dutch. Leicester, and his nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, had actively promoted such an aggressive foreign policy since the 1570s and were supported by the militant Protestant faction in Elizabeth’s court. Now, since the signing of the Treaty of Nonsuch in August 1585, promising monetary and military aid to the United Provinces in their struggle against Spain and the pope, it seemed that Leicester’s expedition really would finally become an a~tual i ty .~’ We might suppose that bet- ween August and the end of November Whitney was busy preparing his manuscript.

J. A. van Dorsten and Roy Strong have done much to recapture the way in which this English assistance to their beleaguered Protestant neigh- bours was imaged in contemporary literature and pageant. 3 4 Spenser’s chivalric epic, written some years after the event, shows the visionary, apocalyptic quality with which these events were viewed. Leicester, as the real-life champion of Justice, would deliver the oppressed nation from her foes, the political oppression of the Spanish and the religious persecution of the Inquisition and Roman Cathol ic i~m.~~ The heroism of Leicester, Sidney and Essex, among others, was displayed in a great symbolic and idealized posture, as a chivalric, knightly contest between Virtue and Vice, Right and Injustice, Truth and Iniquity. Here and elsewhere, in van Dorsten’s and Strong’s words, the English intervention in the Nether- lands was to herald ‘the day when the Empire of the false Antichrist of Rome and his adherents [should] crumble away and the reign of God and his Saints [should] be ushered in’.36 The earl’s expedition was seen as nothing less than a latter-day crusade against the pope, and the forces of evil. Nor was such idealization merely retrospective. Sir Philip Sidney wrote to his father-in-law on departing for the Low Countries: ‘Me thinkes I see the great work indeed in hand, against the abusers of the world, wherein it is no greater fault to have confidence in mans’ power, than it is to hastily to despair of God’s Such a view was orches- trated in sermons, polemical tracts and, above all, in pageant^.^' ’’ For a full discussion of the political and cultural links between England and Holland in these

years, see J. A. van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors: Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers and the Leiden Humanists (Leiden and London, 1962) and R. C. Strong and J. A. van Dorsten, Leicester’s Triumph (Leiden and London, 1964), 1-30. Hereinafter, these works are cited as Poets, Patrons and Professors and Leicester’s Triumph.

34 See Leicester’s Triumph, chs III-v. and appendix I I See also J. Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (3 vols, London, 1823), 11. 455-7. Hereinafter cited as Nichols. ” Faerie Queene, Book v Cantos x-xi. 36 Leicester’s Triumph, 2-3. ” The Prose Works, vol. 1 1 1 , ed. A Feuillerat (1912; Cambridge, 1968), 166.

Leicester’s Trzumph, 32-3. Whitney’s dedication of many emblems to eminent divines keeps the religious dimension of Leicester’s campaign in view. Knewstub, to whom Whitney dedicates the emblem on Choice, p. 223 was Leicester’s chaplain.

162 John Manning

Within this climate of opinion, Whitney, having made his way to Leiden in the early months of 1586 as a supernumerary in the party of Janus DO US^,^^ was ‘earnestlie required by somme’ (Choice, sig. * * 3 v ) to have his emblem book printed. The identity of those who ‘required’ the labour is decorously veiled. Authority may have come from Leicester himself.40 Equally, it may have been urged by some acquaintances who favoured the Anglo-Dutch alliance. The Dousas, active Anglophiles, sug- gest themselves as strong candidates. 4 1 To facilitate his labours, Whitney enrolled as a student at the University of Leiden and took lodgings in the city, where he would have access to the Plantin Press, where his book was later to be printed. He was thus on hand to perform proof correction, and, earlier, to consult the press’s stock of wood-blocks, which he would draw upon in preparing the printed version of his text.42

Whitney’s work was probably ‘required’ as part of the current con- certed effort to publicize Leicester’s campaign, to project the earl’s public image and to create a climate of opinion, both in England and Holland, which would render the English ‘invasion’ of the Low Countries accept- able. On a public level this had been undertaken in a series of magnifi- cent civic pageants and triumphal entries into the major cities of the United Provinces. 4 3 Whitney’s emblem book would appeal to a different audience: the intellectual, humanist elite of the University at Leiden. The adopted emblematic mode might be seen in itself as something of an implied compliment to his Dutch hosts. The Plantin Press had set a stan- dard of excellence in the printing and distribution of the European emblem book, and Hadrianus Junius, the Dutch humanist, was one of the triumvirate of Latinists, who were thought to have excelled in the art of emblematic composition. 4 4 Whitney had now become, to all intents and purposes, nothing less than a propagandist for the English war effort.

Perhaps this was the ‘matter of more momente’ which he had sought in the earlier private dedication of the manuscript to Leicester. His work was no longer a private act of fealty between poet and patron, but a public apology for a national campaign. In his own words, ‘Future time

l9 Leisher, 362-78; Tung, 37. See the Latin commendatory poems of Vulcanius and Colvius: Choice, sig. * * * , r : ‘auspiciis

Leycestrr’, Emblemata lucem/Aspiciunt’ (‘at Leicester‘s command the Emblem7 sre the light of day’); Choice, sig. ***,”: ‘Leycestrzus heros/ Vindicat auspiciis edita scripta suis’ (‘The hero, Leicester, commands by his authority that the writings be publishrd’). For discussion of thrse poems see below.

On the Dousas, see Poets, Patrons, and Professors, part 1 1 , sections I . 1 1 1 and I V ; Leicesterj Triumph, 27-9. ‘’ For details of Whitney’s residence in Leiden, see Poets, Patrons, and Professors, 123-7, 131-8.

For Whitney’s sources and use of the Plantin press woodblocks, see the thorough article by Tung. ‘’ Between 20 December 1585, when Leicester’s fleet anchored in Flushing, and 3 May 1586, the

St George’s Day celebration of the Garter ceremony at Utrecht. The dating is van Dorsten’s, who cites all dates in new style. Choice would, therefore, be the final tribute to the earl, before he was to join his troops in the middle of May.

See Janus Dousa’s poem, Chorce, sip. ***,I, which compares Whitney’s achievement to that of Sambucus, Junius and Alciatus.

4 0

4 4

Whitney ’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 163

. . . shall see what we haue seene, and behoulde hereby what famous thinges weare enterprised and done in our daies, as if they weare euen nowe standing at our e l b o w e ~ . ’ ~ ~ Whitney, with Fame to assist him, was about to attempt to set Leicester ‘on the formost fronte of honours hautie stage’ (Choice, p. 107).

I V

In under four months, between January and May 1586, Whitney revised the manuscript for publication. The requirements of the political programme to which he was contributing, the changes from private manuscript gratulation to public printed text, and the shifting political circumstances that overshadowed the early stages of Leicester’s campaign, meant that the manuscript could hardly act as copy text, or even first draft, for the printed version. Whitney composed and translated some sixty-two new emblems, which he added to the manuscript collection. Concern for his patron’s reputation led him to suppress, or thoroughly rewrite some fifteen manuscript The sequence of the emblems was deliberately changed. Dedications to notable soldiers, scholars and preachers that formed part of Leicester’s train, to eminent Englishmen at home and to his hosts, friends, acquaintances and relatives were attached to emblems, which were previously designed for Leicester alone. The English text was glossed with extensive Latin marginalia and annotation for the benefit of his non-English-speaking readers. A new preface was written, and some scholarly friends contributed some prefatory dedicatory verses. Whitney had to choose over two hundred wood-blocks from the stocks at the Plantin Press, and to commission artists to redesign or to cut some forty These extensive revisions, coupled with the changes of intention between manuscript and printed book, mean that, despite some overlap in content, the manuscript and the printed text should be con- sidered as essentially separate works.

The Latin verses that preface Whitney’s printed text openly state some of the ideals and objectives that motivated the publication of the book. The first two of these form a complementary pair. The first, by Janus D o u ~ a , ~ ’ praises the English poet for his success in emblematic composi- tion, hitherto identified with the continental masters, Alciato, Sambucus and Junius. The second poem, by one of Whitney’s professors at Leiden University, Bonaventura V u l c a n i u ~ , ~ ~ places Whitney within his native

4 5 Choice, sig. **2r (MS fol. 3”). ‘‘ For the text of these suppressed emblems, and their literary implications, see Manning, ‘Un-

published and unedited emblems by Geffrey Whitney’. 4’ For a discussion of the sources, see Tung. For some examples of the rewriting forced on

Whitney, when the Plantin blocks failed to match picturae in MS, see Mason Tung, ‘Emblematic in- ventions of Alciati and Whitney’, Engl Miscell, 24 (1974), 9-17.

The poem is by the younger Dousa (see Poets, Patrons, and Professors, 135). ‘’ Choice, sig. * * * , r . Vulcanius saluted Leicester in Latin verse, when the latter visited Leiden

Choice, sig.

University (Poets, Patrons, and Professors, 116).

164 John Manning

English literary tradition, and allots him a place equal to, if not greater than, the master of a former age, Chaucer himself. Although such verses are intended to flatter, these estimates of Whitney’s literary merits are excessive, and, one assumes, meant to be taken with a grain of salt. We should, however, be less sceptical of Vulcanius’s declaration of the politi- cal and patriotic motives that lie behind Whitney’s book. These emblems saw the light of day by Leicester’s command (‘auspiciis Leycestri’), and their purpose was to give, as well as to receive, praise (‘dant accipiuntque decus’). Through his literary achievement, his contribution to both con- tinental and his own national literature, Whitney will bring fame both to himself and to his native land.”

The next poem, by Petrus Colvius, 5 ’ develops Vulcanius’s theme. Col- vius describes the subjects of Whitney’s emblems: gnomic allegories ex- pressed in words accompanied by various images ‘expressa . . . /Symbola cum variis . . . imaginibus’,52 the sayings of the ancients (‘veterum dicta’), and the immortal deeds of the heroes of ages past (‘priscorum Heroum immortalia facta’). He then lists a number of ancient Roman exemplars of manly virtue and courage, all of which are mentioned in Whitney’s text: Curtius, Horatius, Fabricius, Decius, Junius, Curius, Metellus, Scipio. 5 3

In fact, Whitney extends this list. But why, asks Colvius, did Whitney do this? (‘Quid!’). Because Leicester commands him to print the work (‘Ley- cestrivs heros / Vindicat auspiciis edita scripta suis’) and, most import- antly, because we are to admire the virtues of this great leader. Leicester himself possesses all the virtues of those eminent Romans of the past (‘cuncta simul laudata Heroica dona/ Possidet’). Future ages will thus ad- mire the illustrious deeds of Dudley, and Whitney will both confer im- mortal praise on his leader, and acquire everlasting fame for himself.54

Colvius was in a position to know Whitney’s intentions. He was a fellow student with the English poet, and was sharing lodgings with him at the time the book was being prepared for the press.55 Praise for the patron is to be found in the ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’, and in the three poems in honour of the Dudleys that preface the second part of the Choice. 5 6 Here the earl receives his apotheosis, as his heraldic crest, the Beauchamp bear, is

I ” ‘Perge tuae Whitney titulos superaddere famae, / Tollens astra super te patriamque tuam.’ I ‘ Choice, sig. ***,”. On Colvius, see Poets, Patrons, and Professors, 131, 132 and 135. ’’ The verb exprimo is particularly used in connection with words, and is here translated ‘ex-

pressed in words’: see A Latin Dictionary, ed. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford, 1969, S.V. exprimo [ I . B .

I ’ Choice, pp. 109-10 and 111-17.

I s On Whitney’s and Colvius’ lodgings, see Poets, Patrons, and Professors, 131. In addition, the commendatory verses must have been almost the last things printrd of Whitney’s Chosce: the half- sheet, sig. *** , contains the ‘Faultes escaped’, Dates of printing and composition need not be related, but i t is probable that Choice’s whole design was available to Colvius’ inspection before he composed his poem. For other reasons, van Dorsten (Poets, Patrons, and Professon, 135) dates the composition of Dousa’s epigram ‘after 6 May’ (new style: i.e. 26 April, old style).

‘In Emblemata Galfridi Whitnei’, 11. 23-8 (Choice, sig. ***,”).

5 6 Choice, pp. 106-7 (MS fols 51’-52‘).

Whi tney ’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 165

stellified as Ursa Major; his brother, Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, is assigned the lesser role, as Ursa Minor. Such direct praise, however, is infrequent in the printed text. The strategy of compliment was to be indirect, as Col- vius indicated. Whitney’s emblems were to imply a comparison between the heroes of the past and the present-day exemplars of virtue: the bright lights of ancient courage and manhood were to be compared with present- day luminaries (‘virtutum hic Clara suarum / Opponunt nostris lumina luminibus’).

In revising his manuscript for publication Whitney took great care not to embarrass his patron by over-particular compliment and flattery. One example of the process of revision will suffice. On fol. 53” of the manu- script, directly after the Janus emblem that divides the first and second parts of the collection, comes an emblem which points to Leicester most specifically and in terms of the highest flattery: ‘In logum et foelicissimum statum illustrissimi comitis Leicestrensis’ (‘On the estate and condition of the right honorable Earl of Leicester’). 5 7 This emblem congratulates the earl for his complete mastery over the powers of the goddess, Fortune, and for the fact that in his many achievements he is sustained by the hand of God. The Folger Library possesses a variant issue of the printed Choice, which shows that Whitney had intended to include this emblem, under a revised motto, Fato, nonfortuna (‘By God’s will, not by fortune’), on p. 109 of the printed text.58 As in the manuscript it was to follow the Janus emblem at the beginning of Part Two. At an early stage in the print- ing of the book, Whitney suppressed this emblem, and replaced it with the verses which we now have on p. 109: ‘To the honorable Sir Philippe Sidney’ (see fig. 2). These list the excellent examples of Roman courage and manhood, to which Colvius alludes in his prefatory poem. In the printed text, though not in the manuscript, there follow seven emblems which further expand the verses to Sidney, where the deeds of valiant Romans are dealt with ‘in larger sorte’. 5 9 Because Envy is the companion of Virtue and always dogs her footsteps,“ the Emblem, Znvidia integritatis assecla (‘Envy is the attendant of integrity’), follows the example or the examples of ‘iuste deserte’ and ‘honor greate’ in the manuscript and the printed text respectively.

I ’ For the text of this emblem, see Manning, ‘Unpublished and unedited emblems by Geffrey Whi tney’ .

See fig. 1 and Leisher, 399ff. ’’ ‘To the honorable Sir Philippe Szdney Knight’, 1. 66 (Choice, p. 110). The emblems concerned

are in Choice, pp. 111-17. An abbreviated version of the verses to Sidney (without the dedication) and of the emblem on Camillus, together with the emblem on Marcus Scawa had appeared in MS fols 94‘-95”. The other emblems in this mini-sequence were freshly composed for Choice.

LO Cf. the Renaissance commonplace, Virtuti5 comes invidza (‘Envy the companion of merit’). For classical sources, see A. Otto, Die Sprichworter und sprichwortlichen Redentarten der Romer (1890; Hildesheim, 1962), 871. Virtutis comes inuidia was the motto of the Devereux family, and Whitney may here allude to the Earl of Essex, a modern worthy in the tradition of ancient valour. The list of worthies may be therefore implicitly continued to p. 118.

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Fig. 1 mission of the Trustees of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Whitney, A Chozce ofEmblemes (Leyden, 1586), p. 109, first state'. Reproduced by per

Whitney 's Choice ot Emblemes: a reassessment 167

Fig. 2 mission of the Librarian, Glasgow University Library.

Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes (Leyden, 1586), p. 109, second state. Reproduced by per-

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The specifically congratulatory emblem to Leicester is thus replaced in the printed text by the verses to Sidney and seven emblems concerning noble Romans. This revision, or substitution, is in keeping with the change from particular praise appropriate to a manuscript to more general, moral reflection, which might be more fittingly found in published emblematic work.6’ Yet, if we attend to Colvius’ prefatory verse, this change can be seen not as an abandonment of the former gratulatory design, but a restatement of it in a different symbolic mode. It is not so much a change of meaning, but of strategy.

The catalogue of the courageous deeds of the ancient Romans might well have been thought appropriate to the man under whose name they appear in the printed text. Sidney was, even by his contemporaries, ac- counted the paragon of English knighthood and chivalry: to borrow Col- vius’ terms, a luminary to be set against the shining examples of former ages. Yet in substituting Sidney for Leicester, we are not, I think, in- tended to lose sight of the ‘Dudlaei illustria facta’ (‘the magnificent deeds of Dudley’), which Colvius saw as the main theme of Whitney’s book. Sidney was no less a Dudley than Leicester and he was proud of that herit- age, proclaiming: ‘my cheefest honor is to be a Dudlei’.6z Therefore, the praise given to Sidney in Whitney’s collection, both here and el~ewhere,“~ redounds to the credit of the Dudleys.

Leicester himself is not totally displaced from this section of the book, but his presence is indicated more subtly and allusively. In the same year that the Choice appeared, Whitney translated into English the younger Dousa’s epigram to Leicester, which imaged the hoped-for liberator as Camillus:

Not Rome so ioyed to see Camillus in her waules When that shee was beseeged rownd, with armies of the Gaules, so now, most noble Earle, your presence heare doth glad All Belgica . . . 6 4

Camillus finds a place among the seven eminent Romans, whose emb- lems replace the manuscript emblem specifically dedicated to Leicester (Choice, p. l12) .65 The implied identification between the Roman ‘Generall’, and the ‘Captaine Generall of her Majesties forces in the lowe

‘’ ‘all [emblems] doe tende vnto discipline, and moral1 preceptes of liuing’ (Choice, sig. **>). 6 2 ‘Defence of the Earl of Leicester’, in The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. cit., 65-6. For

Sidney’s contemporary reputation, see, for example, John Buxton, Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance, 2nd edn (London, 1965).

6 3 Choice, pp. 38; 109-10; 196-7 (see below n. 78); and possibly on pp. 2; 223; 115. For Sidney as Scaevola, cf. Thomas Moffet, ‘Lessus Lugubris’, fol. 32”: Nobilis . . . and Lessus Lugubris, ed. Heltzel and Hudson (San Marino, 1940), 58.

64 In Janus Dousa, Odarum Brita7~nicarum liber (Leiden, 1586), 53-4, cited in Poets, Patrons, and Professors, 125 n. 1.

6 1 An abbreviated version of this emblem had appeared in MS fol. 95‘. For the text of this earlier draft, and discussion, see Manning, ‘Unpublished and unedited emblems by Geffrey Whitney’.

Whitney’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 169

countries’66 is there to be taken by the book’s contemporary readers: both have ‘noble minde’, ‘true renoume’ and a chivalrous attitude towards warfare.

Where Whitney’s manuscript had celebrated one individual, the printed book extends its praise to others. Praise is given not only to Leicester, the governor and captain, but to those nearly allied to him in blood, his nephew and brother, to the gentlemen, captains, surgeons and clergymen, that made up the earl’s train, as well as to his Dutch sup- porters and hosts. These dedications are sometimes made directly in the printed text, and read at times like a ‘Who’s Who’ of Leicester’s cam- ~ a i g n . ~ ~ Elsewhere the dedications may be more allusively and indirectly made: Whitney’s second emblem borrowed from Alciato, Qua dzj’ vocant, eundum (‘We must go where the gods say’), paraphrases the Sidney family motto, Quofata vocant (‘Wherever the gods the emblem, Nemo potest duobus dominis seruire (‘No man can serve two masters’) from Georgette de Montenay may glance at the Pembroke’s Vng ie seruirey (‘I will serve only Whitney had become an apologist for the English campaign as a whole, and his book was pressed into service to praise English culture, government, civilization and justice, as well as the Protestant religion shared with the host country.

Whitney’s imperial theme and his praise of English justice is most fully explored in his Sine iustitia, confusio (‘Without justice there is disorder’) (Choice, pp. 122-3: see fig. 3a and fig. 3b) which is based, in part, on an emblem with the same motto in Barthe‘lemy Aneau’s Picta poesis.70 Aneau’s pictura (see fig. 4), a cut his printer had earlier used in an edition of Marot’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, illustrates the war bet- ween the elements before they were disposed into order by ‘God - or kindlier n a t ~ r e ’ . ~ ’ Aneau in his epigram turns his Ovidian source and pic- tura into an emblem on Justice, by comparing the primordial confusion of the elements to the strife-riven state of things when Justice is absent:

Est Mundanarum talk confusio rerum. Quo Regina latet Tempore Iustitia.”

So styled in the dedication, Choice, sig. * z r . 66

61 E.g. George Brooke (Choice, p. 69); John James, Leicester’s physician (Choice, p. 212); Sir Robert Jermyn (Choice, p. 43); Knewstub, Leicester’s chaplain (Choice, p, 223); Sir John Norris (Choice, p. 194); Sir William Russell (Choice, p. 193); Sir William Stanley (Choice, pp. 47; 195); as well as Sidney, n. 63 above.

68 The emblem’s motto is taken from his source, Alciato, Emblemata no. 8; its inclusion in Choice may glance at the Sidney motto, and indicate the divinely ordained and directed course, which took Leicester to the Low Countries.

6 y Choice, p. 223. Sidney’s sister, Mary, had married Henry Herbert, second earl of Pembroke, in 1577. For literary use of the Pembroke motto, see Thomas Howell, Devzjes (London, 1581), sig. D,”. ” (Lyon, 1552), p. 49. ” Ovid, Metamorphoses, I , 21: ‘deus et melior . . . natura’. The translation cited, unless otherwise

” Aneau, 11. 7-8. stated, is that of Frank Justus Miller (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1921).

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Fig. 3a Librarian, Glasgow University Library.

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Whztney S Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 171

Fig. 3b Librarian, Glasgow University Library.

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Fig. 4 Librarian, Glasgorv University Library.

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Whitney S Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 173

Whitney made use of the Picta poesis woodcut design and had it copied by Plantin’s artist. He considerably expands and embroiders upon Aneau’s eight-line epigram. He describes the confusion of the elements at greater length than Aneau had done, with the Ovidian original directly in view. Ovid’s lines are cited in Whitney’s side note (Choice, p. 122). Whitney then gives ten lines to a description of the prosperity that ensued after disorder was quelled, when the ‘goodly worlde’ was created. The original of this passage is not in Aneau, but in O ~ i d . ’ ~ Similarly, Whitney follows Ovid rather than Aneau, by describing the subsequent history of the created world, the four ages of gold, silver, brass and iron.74 The iron age receives Whitney’s most extensive treatment. He sets out the various mischiefs and crimes which occur in this last and worst age, when pros- perity and plenty decline, and abuses abound (Choice, p. 123, 11. 7-21). Whitney at this point makes Aneau’s connection between primordial Chaos and the degenerate world where Justice is lacking: ‘Nowe, into the worlde, an other Chaos came.’

Thus far Whitney has followed Ovid’s scheme fairly closely. He now abandons his former sources, Aneau and Ovid. In Ovid’s account of the iron age, Justice at last flees from a world that has become steeped in bloodshed:

Virgo caede madentis ultima caelestum terras Astraea reliquit. ’’

For Whitney, however, this is the moment when Justice arrives:

But God, that of the former heape: the heauen and earthe did frame, And all thinges plac’d therein, his glorye to declare: Sente Ivstice downe vnto the earthe: such loue to man hee bare

(Choice, p. 123. 11. 22-4)

Where Ovid’s God was almost synonymous with nature (‘deus et melior . . . n a t ~ r a ’ ) , ’ ~ Whitney’s is hardly distinguishable from the Christian, or the Psalmist’s God: his handiwork declares his glory; He loves mankind sufficiently .to send His emissary to earth for man’s salvation; and He regards the reformation of men as a challenge as great as that He faced when he created the world out of darkness.”

But Whitney’s departure from the Ovidian model cannot be attributed simply to a preference for Christianity over paganism. In the rest of the emblem Whitney abandons Ovid for Vergil, and in so doing transmutes

’ I Metamorphoses, I , 26-31; 69-88. 7 4 Metamorphoses, I , 89-150. ’’ Metamorphoses, I , 149-50. 7 6 Metamorphoses, I , 21. ” E.g. Psalm 19.1; John 3.16: John 1.3-4.

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Aneau’s sober admonition on the necessity of justice into patriotic congratulation on the righteousness of Elizabethan imperial ambitions. Where Ovid saw the decline from the golden to the iron age as a presage of the near-universal destruction of humanity, ” Vergil, following the eso- teric tradition of the sybilline prophecies, viewed the iron age as the end of an era, whose completion ushered in universal reform, and the return of a new golden age:

Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas; magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; iam nova progenies ccelo demittitur atto. tu mod0 nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum desinet ac toto surget gens aurea mundo, casta fave Lucina.79

Whatever Vergil may have meant by these lines, their meaning was beyond doubt for every patriotic Englishman, for whom Vergil’s ‘iam redit et Virgo’ referred not only to the return of the Goddess of Justice, Astraea, but to the coming of the Royal Virgin, Elizabeth, whose corona- tion fulfilled the Vergilian prophecy, by bringing about a new golden age of plenty, prosperity, justice and peace. Camden, the English antiquary, records that the words ‘Jam redit et Virgo’ were applied to Elizabeth ‘in the beginning of her . . . Reign’.80 Whitney does not quote the famous Vergilian tag, but his allusion to Vergil’s prophetic vision is so plain, and the identification of Elizabeth and Astraea so well known, that, by the time Whitney finishes embroidering upon Aneau’s original, the identity of the Latin epigram’s abstract ‘Regina . . . Ivstitia’ has been rendered almost unmistakable, if particular to Whitney’s interpretation and revision of his source. Such concealment of particular intimations behind the public statement of commonplaces is of the essence of emblematic

” Metamorphoses, I , 177-347. ’’ Vergil, Eclogue I V , 4-10: ‘Now is come the last age of the song of Cumae; the great line of the

centuries begins anew. Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new generation descends from heaven on high. Only do thou, pure Lucina, smile on the birth of the child, under whom the iron brood shall first cease and a golden race spring up throughout the world’ (trans. H. Rushton Fairclough in Virgil: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I - V I , new and rev. edn (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1935). At Choice, p. 196, 1. 10, the child is implicitly identified as Sidney: Lusina is an evident misprint [or Lucina. ” William Camden, Remarns Concerning Britain (London, 1870), 381. Modern scholars owe a

great debt to Frances Yates, whose ’Queen Elizabeth I as Astraea’,j War6urg C, 10 (1947), 27-82, repr. in Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth-Century (Harmondsworth, 1977), did much to alert us to this aspect of Elizabethan imperialism. Both Yates and Howard Erskine-Hill, The Augustan Idea in English Literature (London, 1983), 73-3, associate the identification of Elizabeth with Astraea as a predominantly post-Armada phenomenon, and with an England secure in its own borders. As the quotation from Camden shows it was associated with Elizabeth from the beginning of her reign, and Whitney here, two years before the Armada, invokes it to favour an expansionist, im- perialistic foreign policy. These ambitions, we now know, as Whitney did not, were probably more Leicester’s then Elizabeth’s.

Whitney ’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 175

composition. Yet Whitney’s withholding of explicit identification is not opaque. The land where Justice flourishes, this ‘paradice, of blisse’, is revealed as ‘happie England’, whose institutions of Justice are founded upon Reformation principles, a recognition of the ‘dewties’ to both ‘God, and Prince’.’’ Significantly, Whitney begins his collection of emblems by praising the queen as the supporter of the reformed religion (Choice,

Whitney does not wish to confine his gratulation to his sovereign. Vergil’s prophecy also embraced ‘the golden race’ that was to spring up under the tutelage of the returned Virgin (‘toto surget gens aurea mundo’). Accordingly, Whitney’s final couplet, introduced for the first time in the printed text of the emblem, plainly declares his nationalistic pride:

P. 1).

Then happie England most, where Iustzce is embrac’d: And eeke so many famous men, within her chaire are plac’d.’’

These final words recall an earlier emblem dedicated to Sidney, in which ‘iustice cheare’ is similarly allotted to famous men:

men of iudgement graue, Of learning, witte, and eeke of conscience cleare, In highe estate, are fitte theire seates to haue, And to be stall’d, in sacred iustice cheare.

(Choice, p. 38, 11. 7-10)

Accordingly, we may infer that Whitney’s praise of famous men in the final lines of Sine iustztia, confusio embraces not only the two judges, Wyndham and Flowerdewe, to whom it is explicitly dedicated, but other ‘men of iudgement’, whose gifts have made England ‘happie’. Sir Charles Calthorpe, Attorney-General of Ireland, praised elsewhere (Choice, p. 136) for his judicial re~t i tude;’~ Stephen Limbert, William Malim, Alexander Nowell, renowned for their learning;s4 Dyer and Sidney dis- tinguished for their ‘wit’ (Choice, pp. 196-7); Miles Hobart, whom Whitney singles out for his ‘conscience cleare’ (Choice, p. 67). All ex- emplify the virtues of the ‘gens aurea’ that banish iron age barbarism and set their mark on the new golden age of Elizabeth’s Justice. Nor can

’’ The religious implications of the Astraea myth are fully explored by Yates in Astraea, 38-51. 8 2 Choice, p. 123, 11. 33-4. In MS the final lines read:

Then iustice still aduance with reverence, love, and feare: And those that do hir statutes teache, and set within hir charre.

*’ Choice, p. 136. Calthrope was Attorney-General in Ireland from 1584 to 1603. His proper ad- ministration of English justice in dominions beyond the seas might have been considered a precedent for the Low Countries.

84 Choice, pp, 173; 152 and possibly 89; 92 and 93.

176 John Manning

Vergil’s prophecy that the golden race should spread itself over the entire world (‘toto surget gens aurea mundo’) be considered an understatement given Whitney’s later celebration of Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe (Choice, p. 203).85

The ‘golden’ quality of England is depicted as much in Whitney’s cele- bration of private, domestic and familial virtues as in his praise of public ones. Under the motto Putriu cuique chums6 Richard Cotton’s estate, Cumbermaire, is imaged as a hive flowing with honey, living Elizabethan proof that golden age prosperity had indeed come again.

A stately seate, whose like is harde to finde, Where mightie Zone the horne of plentie lendes: With fishe, and foule, and cattaile sondrie flockes, Where christall springes doe gushe out of the rockes. There, fertile fieldes; there, meadowes large extende: There, store of grayne: with water, and with wood. And, in this place, your goulden time you spende.

(Choice, p. 201, 11. 9-15)

The time spent at Cumbermaire is ‘goulden’, both because it is exceed- ingly pleasant, and because it recalls Whitney’s earlier description in Sine z’ustitiu, confusio of ‘the goulden worlde, that Poettes praised moste’, which is similarly characterized by spontaneous natural outpourings of fruitfulness and plenty (Choice, p. 122, 11. 11-16). Whitney’s mytho- logical finesse insinuates an additional allusion to Saturn’s reign, Vergil’s ‘Saturnia regna’: Jove’s ‘horne of plentie’ commemorates his period of concealment when his father, Saturn, feared that the infant Jove would oust him from his golden age reign.*’

In many ways Whitney’s emblem on justice foreshadows the later emblem on Cotton’s country house, a microcosm of Whitney’s patriotic idealism, and proof that ‘that land doth flourishe still’ where Justice is to be found (Choice, p. 123,l. 29). Where the earlier emblem dealt with the public administration of justice, the later is private, yet the conditions outlined in the former make possible the flourishing conditions described in the latter. The close connection between the emblems is further in- timated by the allusion inherent in Whitney’s choice of illustrative wood- cut for his Putriu cuique chum (‘Each man’s native land is dear to him’).

*‘ For the connection between the Astraea myth and England’s maritime expansion, particularly in connection with John Dee’s General and rare memorialspertayning to the Perfecte Arte of Nawga- tzon, see Yates, Astraea, 48-9 and 5 5 , which mentions Harrington’s praise of Drake’s achievement as a sign of England’s imperial ambitions. *‘ Choice, pp. 200-1, For a discussion of this poem, see Kathryn Hunter, ‘Geoffrey Whitney’s “To

Richard Cotton, Esq.”: an early English country house poem’, Rev Engl St 28 (1977), 438-41. The emblem to Cotton might be more profitably related to the tradition of georgic: see Alastair Fowler, ‘Country house poems: the politics of a genre’, Seventeenth Cent, 1 (1986), 4.

The horn of plenty is in fact the horn of Amalthea, who nourished Jove, when he was sheltering from Saturn (see Ovid, Fasti, v, 121-8).

Whztney ’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 177

Originally the beehive pzctura (fig. 6 ) had been used in Alciato’s Emblem 148 (fig. 5 ) , under the motto Princzpzs dementia to show

imperium clemens. moderataque regna, Sanctaque iudicibus credita iura bonis. (‘merciful government, a well-managed kingdom, and sacred laws entrusted to good judges.’)’’

Elsewhere Whitney celebrates private virtues and the personal felicity associated with the golden age, when ‘no hate, was harbor’d . . . at home’ (Choice, p. 123, 1. 2). Whitney congratulates particular individuals upon their attainment of domestic tranquillity in philosophical retirement and prosperity, and on their wise use of income in works of charitable relief.89 He extols parental love, filial obedience and matrimonial harmony.” He recommends wifely virtues to his sister, and financial prudence to his brother.” Some of this may, possibly, be an attempt to encourage the dedicatees to virtues they conspicuously lack,92 but in the vast majority of cases praiseworthy deeds are applauded as genuine attainments.

The impression created is of an exemplary society, thoroughly ad- mirable in all its achievements, whether military, moral, cultural or religious. Nor is admiration confined to the deeds of the noble on the public stage of national and international affairs. The performance of humble domestic duties and obscure works of charity equally redound to the greater glory of England, and secure merited ‘fame’ for the in- d i v i d ~ a l . ~ ~ Whitney sets up before the envious gaze of Europe the image of an England flourishing in peace and prosperity under the auspices of a righteous and merciful sovereign.94 He does this, of course, at the

Alciato, Emblemata (Lyon, 1614), Emblem 148, 11. 3-4. The numbering of this emblem follows that in the majority of editions of the Emblemata omnia after 1573. The translation is my own.

8 9 In particular, Richard Cotton and Thomas Wilbraham: Choice, pp. 65; 200; and 199.

” Choice, pp. 93; 88. ’* Most conspicuously in the dedication of Victoria cruenta (Choice, p. 195) with its moral, ‘those

are captaines good, That winne the fielde, with sheddinge leaste of blood’, to William Stanley. Stanley had won a reputation for extreme ruthlessness in his service in Ireland (see DNB, 1 1 , 1986). The earlier dedication of Marte et arte (‘By valour and skill’) to him (Choice, p. 47) might be read as something of a plea to moderate his martial exploits according to more prudent counsel. ” Note Whitney’s variations on the phrase ‘for our countries good’ applied to different achieve-

ments: e.g. Choice, p. 64: ‘Not for our selues, alone wee are create, / But for our frendes, and for our countries good’, which is followed directly by the emblem, Mutuum auxilium (‘Mutual aid’), dedicated to Cotton; p. 199: ’[Your] daily studie is, your countrie to adorne: /And for to keepe a worthie house’ dedicated to Wilbraham for his charity; p. 201: ‘Vnto your praise, and to your coun- tries good’ to Cotton for his management of his estate; p. 203: ‘Geue praise to them, that passe the waues, to doe their countrie good’, to Drake.

91 Whitney hymns the virtues of his sovereign in such terms in his contribution to Janus Dousa, Odarum Britannicarum liber (Leiden, 1586), sigs *1-*4:

Choice, pp. 29; 73; 99; 163; 93.

. . . . Then Englande most reioyce, Bycause shee is thy gratious soveraigne Queene: And prayse the Lorde, with all thy harte and voyce,

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Fig. 5 Librarian, Glasgow Universitv Library.

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Whitney S Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 179

Fig. 6 Librarian, Glasgow University Library.

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moment when England’s Royal Virgin was in the very act of extending these benefits, ‘her white rod’ of power and peace, ‘ouer the Belgicke

He implies the promise that from the present war, concord and peace will come, and that the Low Countries will experience, like the phoenix rising from its ashes, a social and cultural renewal on the English model: a renaissance, fostered by moral, religious and literary ideals, and patronized by such shining examples of courage and culture as Leicester and Sidney. 9 6 These two heroes are endowed with apocalyptic praise which derives from Vergil’s imperial theme in Eclogue 4. Vergil asked for Lucina’s blessing on the birth of the child that will bring peace; Whitney blesses Lucina when Sidney’s birth is hymned in Pennce gloria perennis (see fig. 7 ) . ‘Lvsina’ is obviously Lucina, an error which reflects contem- porary Latin pronunciation, and perhaps indicates that Whitney’s text was set in the printing house from dictation.

Political and historical circumstances exert constant pressure on Whitney’s collection of emblems. In sinu alere serpentem (‘To nourish a serpent in one’s bosom’) explicitly mentions the siege of Antwerp and the narrow escape from danger by Whitney’s publisher, Franciscus Raphel- engius (Choice, p. 189). Iron age vices of treachery and dissimulation are shown at work in these recent event^.^' Such personal and historical im- mediacy gives some piquancy to the otherwise often banal quality of Whitney’s moral reflection:

What can preuaile your bulwarkes? and your towers, When, all your force, your inwarde foe deuoures.

Since other landes, her like have never seene: Oh happie cause, Lorde Dousa thou hast founde, Still write hereon, and never chaunge thy grounde, And thoughe, that none thy gifte in verse can passe, Yet shalt thow faile, her graces all to tuche: Bycause this is that perfecte looking glasse, That Europe doth with wonder vewe so muche: Whoe shewes them lighte, that doe in darknes rest, Wherby they see, thc waye they maye bee blest . . .

Quoted from the text as printed in Poets, Patrons, and Professors, 125-7n. q * Spenser, Faerie Queenc, 1 1 1 . i i i , 49, 7. ’‘ See Choice, pp. 76; 138; 177; 196-7. The application of the emblem Vnica srmper auiS (‘Only

one bird of its kind’), to the current political situation is only implied. The praise of Sidney is overt:

Fore those that liue in other landes, of Szdneys giftes doe heare. And suche as Muses serue, in darkenes meere doe dwell; If that they haue not scene his workes, they doe so farre excell.

(Choice, p. 197, 11. 6-8)

g, Then wronge, did maske in cloke of righte: then bad, did good exile. Then falshood, shadowed truthe: and hate, laugh’d loue to skorne: Then pitie, and compassion died: and bloodshed fowle was borne.

(Chozce, p. 123, II . 16-18)

Whztney 5 Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 181

Fig. 7 the Librarian, Glasgow University Library.

Whitney, A Choice ofEmblemes (Leyden, 1586), pp. 196-197. Reproduced by permission of

182 John Manning

Whitney’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 183

The truth of this commonplace notion is enforced, or rather reinforced, since it has been so often and so variously stated, by its connection with recent history and personal experience.

Elsewhere, Whitney’s apparently generalized moralizing impinges directly, if implicitly, on his propagandistic purposes. Under the motto C e c u m odium (‘Irrational hatred’), Whitney reproves as morally reprehensible the envious man’s refusal to come to the aid of his neigh- bour, whose house is burning down:

Th’Enuious man, when neighboures howse dothe flame, Whose chiefe delighte, is in an others harme, Doth shutte his eies, and will nott see the same, But pulles awaie, his fellowe by the arme: And sayeth, departe, wee care not for this ill, It is not ours, let others care that will.

(Choice, p. 31, 11. 1-6)

Later, in T u n c tua res agitur, paries c u m proximus ardet (‘It’s your con- cern when your neighbour’s wall is on fire’),98 such neglect is seen as per- sonally and politically imprudent, since our neighbour’s perils are dangers as much to ourselves as him:

Yea, those that helpe deferre, when neighbours house doth burne: Are like with griefe, to see their owne, with speede to cinders turne. Then, cut of all delaies when daungers are begonne, For if beginnings wee withstande, the conquest sooner wonne.

(Choice, p. 208, 11. 7-10)

For those who may not have already caught his drift, the military and tac- tical implications of this piece of proverbial wisdom are spelt out in Whitney’s side notes. His references to Vegetius’ classic work on military strategy, De re militari, and to Marcellus, one of those ancient heroes, whose exploits were supposed to foreshadow those courageous acts per- formed in the present conflict in the Netherlands (Choice, p. 110, 11. 5-6), insinuate the necessity of England’s intervention in the affairs of her foreign neighbour. The two emblems combine to adduce persuasive moral and tactical reasons why such assistance should be lent. Neglect of such distress could only be condemned by God and man alike:

98 Chozce, p. 208. The pictura, copied from La Perrisre, Theatre des bons engins, Emblem L I X il- lustrates the proverb, ’I1 n’est pas temps de iouer aux eschetr, / Lors que le feu te brusle ta maison.’ This is not invoked by Whitney. The equivalent English proverb, When a Man’s house burns it’s not good playing at chess (Tilley M497), would not seem to have been current in 1586. The first attested usage recorded by Tilley is 1596. Even if it were available, it would not have fitted the current political situation nearly as well as the motto chosen by Whitney. Whitney’s motto is taken from Horace, Epodes, I , 18, 84, and its meaning was traditionally interpreted allegorically: Porphyry’s commentary on Horace notes ‘sententia per allegoriam demonstrans vicinorum periculum nostrum esse’ (cited Otto, 1341).

184 John Manning

Let them repente, for God whoe knowes theire harts, Will them rewarde, accordinge to deserts.

(Choice, p. 31 , 11. 11-12)

Whitney needs only add divine sanction, and the imperatives of the reformed religion for his arguments in favour of Leicester's campaign to become well-nigh irresistible. Eventually he takes up the cry displayed in the triumphal entries that greeted Leicester on his arrival in the Low Countries: S i Deus nobiscum, quis contra nos? ('If God be with us, who shall stand against us?').99

V

In view of the foregoing discussion, Rosemary Freeman's estimate of Whitney as little more than a translator and anthologizer almost entirely lacking in originality needs some revision."' We ought not, of course, to look for originality in Whitney's woodcut designs. The exigencies of time, as much as money, compelled him to draw the bulk of his illustrative material from his printer's stocks. Yet occasionally Whitney could reap some slight advantage from this arrangement. The dislocation of an image from its original context will frequently surprise, particularly when it is applied to the current political situation, or to the purposes of par- ticular gratulation. At times the effect can be subtly allusive. Whitney in part relies upon his reader's recognition of the fact that the pictura for his Patria cuique chara emblem had earlier been used for Alciato's Principis dementia ('A prince's mercy'): Whitney's native land is dear to him precisely because his sovereign is merciful.

Moreover, we ought not to conclude too readily that Whitney's ambi- tions were confined to those of the translator and anthologizer on the basis of the statement on the title-page of the book."' Whitney is rarely content merely to render the sense of his Latin originals. He will treat their explicatory epigrams with considerable freedom, expanding, alter- ing and ultimately adjusting them to fit his particular, and individual designs. Such radical departures from his sources as evidenced in the ex- amination of the Sine iustitia, confusio emblem must show that Whitney did not set great store on fidelity to the exact sense of his originals.'02

'' Choice, p. 166. The biblical reference is to Romans 8.31. See the similar sentiment in connec- tion with Drake, 'God was on his side' (Choice, p. 203, 1. 5 ) , and with Valerius Coruinus, 'the Lorde in daunger doth preserue' (Choice, p. 113, 1. 17). The emblem on Coruinus may allude obliquely to Norris, whose family crest was a crow (Nichols, 111, 420 n. 1) . Coruinus in Latin is 'a rauen, or a crow' (T. Cooper, Thesaurus,London, 1573, S . V . coruinus).

l oo Freeman, 5 6 . " I 1.e. 'For the moste parte gathered out of sundrie writers, Englished . . .' There is no corres-

ponding statement in MS, and it can be by no means certain that Whitney was responsible for this wording.

I u 2 See the discussion above. D. J . Gordon's study of Whitney's emblem (Choice, p. 4);Verztas Filia Temporis: Hadrianus Junius and Geffrey Whitney', J Wurbur C, 3 (1939-40), repr. The

Whitney S Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 185

The notion of ‘anthology’ is unsatisfactory in other ways, since it may imply an organization based almost entirely upon the aggregation and selection of the representative and commonplace. Freeman clearly adopts this view when she refers to Whitney’s Choice as a ‘storehouse of Elizabethan commonplaces’. I o 3 There was, in Whitney’s time, a ready market for books of commonplaces, works of predigested wisdom, offer- ing easy access to notable similes, aphorisms and philosophical bons mots under convenient, sometimes alphabetical, headings. Robert Cawdray, for example, offered a Treasvrie or Storehouse of Similies . . . collected into Heades and Common places, which he modestly advertised as essen- tial reading for every ‘estate of men: . . . for Princes it is prettie, for Preachers profitable, for sage Counsellours it is singular, meete for Magistrates, lawdable for Lawyers, a Iewell for Gentlemen, a staffe to leane on for students . . . ’ I o 4 Cawdray was far from being alone in this field. ‘ 0 5 Emblem books, too, were sometimes similarly ordered and disposed under commonplaces, facilitating the orator’s and the scholar’s search for the rhetorical adornments and moral reflections contained therein. Barthe‘lemy Aneau, one of Alciato’s first editors, introduced such an arrangement of the emblems into editions of the Emblemata omnia. ‘ 0 6

Title-pages boasted of this feature as a possible selling point: ‘in loci com- munes digesta’. All subsequent editors of Alciato followed Aneau’s ar- rangement, and we may therefore suppose that it proved popular, and reflected a need among the book’s early readers, even if it may not have corresponded to the author’s original intentions.

Modern readers may still wish to consult the Choice as a ‘storehouse of commonplaces’: as a compendium of erudite symbolism, conventional images of Vices and Virtues, and proverbial lore. Yet Whitney does not seem to have designed his book as such a work of reference. Perhaps what Freeman was responding to when she recommended the Choice as an an- thology of commonplaces was Whitney’s only partially acknowledged use of such compendia, dictionaries and anthologies in the composition of the

Renaissance Imagination: Essays and Lectures by D. J. Gordon (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif., 1975), 220-32, reveals a similar independence on Whitney’s part: Whitney ‘is positive, apocalyptic, optimistic’, where his source, Hadrianus Junius, Emblemata (Antwerp, 1565), 59 has ‘nothing of the apocalyptic; no assertion that Time reveals Truth and Truth stands . . . Time may release Truth from her prison, but her enemies are waiting to overwhelm her’ (p. 230). As we have seen Whitney saw Leicester’s campaign as nothing less than as a crusade on behalf of the reformed Truth of the Protestant religion. Closer to Whitney’s treatment of Veritasfilia temporis is the engraving by Pieter van der Heyden, who depicts Elizabeth as Diana, and the pope as Callisto (reproduced Yates, Astraea, plate l l a ; Leicester’s Triumph, plate 1): time assisted by Truth reveals ‘things long hidd’ (Choice, p. 4, 1. 6): the pope’s iniquities.

lo’ Freeman, 57. lo‘ (London, 1600), sig. A,”. Whitney similarly directs particular emblems to Princes, preachers,

I n s On the popularity of such handbooks and some selected titles, see Louis B. Wright, Middle

‘ 0 6 (Lyons, 1548), with some slight changes in (Lyons, 1551). See Henry Green, Andrea Alciati

counsellors, magistrates, lawyers, gentlemen and students.

Class Culture in Elizabethan England (1935; London, 1958), 151-3.

and His Books of Emblems (1872; repr. New York, n.d.),’64.

186 John Manning

Choice. l o ' The scaffolding of Whitney's erudition, his reliance on com- mentaries and works of reference rather than on primary sources, lies so close to the surface of many emblems, and so often seems to support his writing, that it must necessarily obtrude itself on our attention. ' 0 8

Yet the direction of Whitney's writing seems quite opposite to that of the compiler and anthologizer. Where the author of a thesaurus might be content to allow his readers to make their own applications of the assembled materials, Whitney insistently points his chosen commonplaces towards specific individuals, historical situations and national ideals. So determined is this direction towards political and gratulatory objectives, that these objectives, rather than the encyclopaedist's urge for com- pleteness, are sufficient to explain the presence of so many prudential maxims, proverbs, saws and instances. ' 0 9 Whitney seems less interested in

I " ' In common with other Renaissance authors Whitney makes use of classical compilations of miscellaneous information, such as Aulus Gellius's Noctes atticae (cited Choice, pp. 79; 109; 144: 114; sig. * * , I ; sig. * l r 16; 113; 188; 169; 60; 202: 215; sig. * , I ; 123; 144; 197; sig. *,'; 13) and'suidas' (cited sig. *lr and *4r). He owes a large debt, however, to a contemporary compilation of quotable quotes: Nicolaus Reusner's Polyanthea, szue Paradisus poetzcus (Bask. 1578). which he cites as 'Nic. Reusnerus' (Choice. pp. 3; 5; 10; 18; 34: 35; 49; 53; 54: 67; 118; 126; 188; 229) or under its alter- native title, 'Paradisus poeticus' (Choice, pp. 50; 51: 73: 87: 97; 114; 147; 177). He makes acknowledged use of the commentary by Claude Mignault on Alciato's Emhlemata (Plantin edns 1573, 1574, 1577, 1581 were available to Whitney), which he cites as 'Minos' or 'Claudius Minois' or 'Claud. Min.' (Choice, pp. 10: 45; 49; 120; 193; 194). There is also some unacknowledged borrow- ing. E.g. it is probably more than coincidence that the marginal note on p. 174. 'Locus e nucr Ouidiana', also appears in Mignault's commentary on Alciato emblem 192. Another unacknowledged source may well be a school textbook, J . Sturmius, Poeticurn volumen (primum - sertum) (Strasbourg, 1565), which assembles suitable quotations from classical authors under relevant mot- toes. The quotation from Horace under the motto 'Vlyssis abstinentia' (Sturmius, I , 8: no. 6) also appears in Choice, p. 82: the side now to Whitney's Bzuzum mktutis et vitii (Chozce, p. 40) can be found in Sturmius, 111, 6 : no. 2. Elsewhere Sturmius lists convenient schemes, such as the four ages of gold, silver, brass and iron with relevant classical quotations that may have been useful to Whitney. Further examples of possible dependence could be cited.

I " ' See, for example, Michael Bath, 'Whitney's concluding emblem and the legend of the oldest animals', Rev Engl St , 33 (1982), 295-6, who notes the commonplace basis of Whitney's symbolism. In MS (fol. 74') Whitney used Mignault's commentary rather than the original texts for 'The descrip- tion of loue by Marullus and Augerianus': Augerianus should be Angerianus, and Whitney has followed the misprint that had occurred sincc 1573 in texts of Mignault's commentary (see Manning, 'Unpublished and unedited emblems by Geffrey Whitney').

l o " E.g. Whitney will insert additional, thematically related proverbs into his epigrams: 'Thoughe with a forke, wee Nature thruste awaie, She? turnes againe, if wee withdrawe our hande' (Choicr. p. 57: B t h i o p p m lauare); 'so longe the potte to water goes, I That at the lengthe i t broke returnes' (Choice, p. 77: Sero sapiunt Phryges); 'Not euerie one, mighte to Corinthus goe' (Choice, p. 79: Smpius in auro hibitur venenum); 'For infantes hande, the rasor is vnfitte' (Choice, p. 81: Fatuis leuia commitzto); 'the bounde m u t e still obey' (Choice, p. 101: Anzmz scrinium seruitus) etc. Elsewhere, a proverb will form the basis of Whitnry's epigram: e.g. the two stanzas of Amzcztiu,fucata mtanda (Choice, p. 124) are based on the proverb 'It is better to have an open Foe than a dissembling friend' (Tilley F410): Whitney's first stanza deals with 'open foes', his second with dissemblers. Often, pro- verbs will be mentioned in one epigram, and given full emblematic representation elsewhere: 'The Adder fell, within the flowers doth creepe' (Choice, p. 141, 1. 16) is represented in Latet anguzs in herba (Choice, p. 24); 'None merites sweete, who tasted not the sower' (Choice . p. 165, 1. 11) finds fuller expression in Fel in melle (Choice, p. 147); 'Take houlde of time . . . ' (Chozce, p. 172) an- ticipates I n occasionem (Choice, p. 181) etc. Frequently, Whitney will appeal directly to the authority of proverbial wisdom: 'The Prouerbe saithe . . .' (Choice, p. 101); 'Hereof, at firste the prouerbe oulde did growe . . .' (Choice, p. 170); 'Hereof the prouerbe comes: . . .' (Choice, p . 173) etc.

Whitney S Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 187

collecting these things for their own sake, than in showing that cur- rent political events are being directed according to settled principles, founded upon traditional wisdom that has stood the test of time. I l o

Even Whitney’s descriptions of the identifying attributes of the Virtues and Vices, which make up much of the Choice, cannot be divorced from his larger moral and political concerns. These exercises in iconological ‘moral portraiture’ express part of his ‘golden age’ mythology. Whereas he sees the ‘iron’ regime characterized by moral confusion, ‘no vertues then, their proper shapes did beare: /Nor coulde from vices bee decern’d’ (Choice, p. 123, 11. 19-20), no such ambivalence can be found in his emblems. His description of the lineaments and attributes of Strife, Envy, Detraction, Slander, Discord, Hypocrisy and their cohorts renders them instantly recognizable. Equally, he displays the ‘examples’ and ‘monu- ments’ of manhood and valour for all to see. I ” Such moral certainty, and these emblematic preoccupations, are further tokens that the ‘golden age’ has indeed come again, that Time has liberated his daughter at last, and ‘truthe’ can be ‘sett alofte’ (Choice, p. 4, 1. 12) in Whitney’s published book.

It may be seen, therefore, that, by stressing the derivative, miscel- laneous character of the Choice, Freeman has done less than justice to Whitney’s deliberate pointing of his material. Her emphasis is mislead- ing in another way, too, in that she suggests some degree of carelessness in the arrangement of the collection. Comparison of the manuscript and the printed text, however, shows that Whitney spent a good deal of effort in restructuring and reordering the sequence of emblems for publication. Some of these changes were, of course, forced upon him. The introduc- tion of new emblems, and the suppression of others, meant that the exact manuscript order could not have been maintained. However, the revi- sions show that he has done more than insert material in some places and take it away from others. Moreover, he is at some pains to explain some of his organizational procedures. A marginal note on p. 153 tells us that the following twelve emblems are taken from the Aesopic fables of Faer- nus.”* This might suggest some principle of local arrangement of material according to source, or literary kind. Elsewhere, he draws atten- tion to the fact that some emblems have been grouped together because of their common themes and topics. He explicitly introduces the group of emblems dealing with the Romans’ martial valour on p. 110, and rounds off the miniature sequence on p. 1 17.Il3 In the preface, ‘To the Reader’,

‘ I o For Erasmus’ argument on the importance of proverbial wisdom to princes and monarchs, see

‘ I ’ Choice, pp. 4; 94: 118; 109-17; 193; etc. ‘ Iz ‘Duodecem haec sequentia, ob elegantiam, et venustatem: e G. Faerni selectis fabulis sumpta’

(Choice, p. 153). Whereof, ensue some tutch’d in lager sorte’ (Choice, p. 110, 1. 34); ‘those that would more of

these Knightes behoulde, /Let them peruse the Roman Aucthours oulde’ (Choice, p. 117, 11. 11-12),

Adagia, 1 1 , i , 1: Festina lente.

, I 1 I

188 John Manning

added to the printed edition of the Choice, Whitney claims that one of the principles that guided his composition was that of repetition:

manie droppes pierce the stone, and with manie blowes the oke is ouer- throwen, So with manie reprehencions, wickednes is wounded, and sinne ashamed and giueth place vnto vertue.

(Choice, sig. **4r)

Emblematic blows fall repeatedly, but apparently irregularly, against hypocrisy and false friendship, for example, ‘ I 4 and identical sentiments are restated from time to time. ‘ I s On occasions, however, the principle of repetition is more exactly controlled. The mottoes Ferb simile . . . (‘Much the same’) and Ferb simile praecedenti . . . (‘Much the same as the emblem before’) draw explicit attention to Whitney’s habit of juxtaposing emblems on closely related themes (Choice, pp. 148 and 170). Elsewhere this activity is conducted more implicitly. We often find that adjacent emblems elaborate similar moral reflections. The epigram on p. 79 takes up and translates the motto of the previous emblem, Noli al tum sapere (‘Be not high minded’);’I6 the emblem on p. 172, Vsus libri, non lectio prudentes facit (‘Not the reading of books, but the application of what we read makes us wise’), draws out the theme of the emblem on the preceding page, Studiis inuigilandum (‘We must pay attention to our studies’).

Other juxtapositions can appear almost casual, adventitious, or even playful. The emblems on the facing pages 44 and 45 both repeat the same emblematic motif of the fierce lion: the first is a participant in an Aesopic beast fable, the second is heraldically displayed. We are asked to ‘behoulde’ both, but each is moralized to quite different ends. Such juxtapositions seem to be designed to draw attention to the emblematist’s skilful flexi- bility and versatility. Elsewhere, adjacent emblems offer diverse moraliza- tions on fruit-bearing trees (Choice, pp. 173-4), travellers (Choice, pp. 178 -9) and carelessness (Choice, pp. 175-6).

More extensive groupings of emblems may be found, linking together common themes or variously exploring a common symbol. The emblems on pages 196-204 offer a number of opinions on the nature of true wealth and on how riches ought best be used. The notion of sickness is examined in three emblems on pages 209-11: the moral disease of avarice, physical debility compensated for by cunning in the Aesopic fable of the lion and

‘ I ‘ E.g. Choice, pp. 112; 124; 139; 141; 142; 144; 150; 189; 191; etc. ‘ I ’ E.g. ‘No foe so fell, (as Bias wise declares)/As man to man, when mischiefe hee prepares’

(Choice, p. 124, 11. 11-12; ‘No mortal1 foe so full of poysoned spite,/As man, to man, when mischiefe he pretendes’ (Choice, p. 144, I I . 1-2); Ars deluditur arte (Choice, p. 161); Fraus meretur Jruudem (Choice, p. 210); ‘attempte . . . is harm’d with haste’ (Choice, p. 185, 1. 12); Festinu lente (Choice, p. 12:) and Maturandum (Choice, p. 188). See also n. 109 above.

‘the poore maie not presume alofte.’ The motto is from Romans 11.20, I Id

Whitney ’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 189

the fox, and the psychological sickness of jealousy. This miniature sequence is suitably followed by the emblem of Aesculapius, Medici Jcon (‘the image of a doctor’). Other emblems are gathered together not because of their subject matter, but because of their dedicatees. Pages 88-94 contain emblems dedicated to Whitney’s family and relations; ‘ I 7

pages 193-5 are directed towards the leaders of Leicester’s forces in the Low Countries, Russell, Norris and Stanley.

Whitney seems to have given some thought to the local placement of individual emblems. There is a playful decorum in his positioning of his emblem Interdum requiescendum (‘We must sometimes rest’) at the point where his own emblematic sequence breaks off at the end of the first part of the book, while his emblem, Tempus omnia terminat (‘Time brings all things to an end’), concludes his book.

Such attention to local detail is not so much a sign of the lack of order, but of its superabundance. Organization, such as it is, appears to be in terms of a multiplicity of small schemes, which are taken up and then casually dropped in favour of another. Moral reflection gives way to political gratulation, and that in turn to witty playfulness or religious meditation. Any large-scale organizing principle would have to be suffi- ciently capacious to accommodate these local schematic arrangements.

Whitney devised such an ample and accommodating structure by dividing his books into two parts. The division, already present in the manuscript, is emphasized in the printed text by the provision of a separate title-page (fig. 8). The emblem of Janus (fig. 9) begins the second part and forms the structural centre of his book. This god and his mythological associations provide most of the over-arching and control- ling principles of Whitney’s collection of emblems. Looking both before him and behind, the god can oversee both parts of Whitney’s book.

Guillaume de la PerriCre had Janus begin his collection of emblems, Le Theatre des bons engins”8 (see fig. 10). Since the god was traditionally associated with beginnings this procedure is decorous enough. Whitney, however, with characteristic independence, cleverly departs from his source, and, invoking the god’s unique ability to look back and forward

places Janus not at the mid-point but at what has become the structural centre of his book. In so doing he advertizes an organizational principle that informs much of his writing:

The former parte, nowe paste, of this my booke, The seconde parte in order doth insue:

‘ I ’ His brother, son-in-law, uncle and cousin. Other dedications to members of his family appear in Part 11: to his father (Choice, p. 164), his uncle (Choice, p. 166), his kinsman (Choice, p. 181), his nephew (Choice, p. 191).

” * 1st illustrated edn (Paris, [1540]). Whitney’s emblematic designs based on La PerriGre were copied or based on the cuts in the de Tournes editions of 1545 or 1583. On the differences between the pictorial details in La PerriPre and MS and Choice see Tung, 54-5.

‘ I 9 On the uniqueness of Janus’ double form, see Ovid, Fusti, I , 89-92.

190 John Manning

Which, I beginne with Ianus double looke, That as hee sees, the yeares bothe oulde, and newe, So, with regarde, I may these partes behoulde, Perusinge ofte, the newe, and eeke the oulde.

(Choice, p. 108, 11. 1-6)

In ‘perusinge . . . the newe, and eeke the oulde’, we find that emblems in the first part of the book frequently anticipate those in the second, while

Fig. 8 sion of the Librarian, Glasgow University Library.

Whitney, A Chozce of Emblemcs (Leyden, 1586). Title-page Part 2. Reproduced by permis-

Whitney S Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 191

Fig. 9 Librarian, Glasgow University Library.

Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes (Leyden, 1586), p. 108. Reproduced by permission of the

192 John Manning

Fig. 10 Guillaume de la Perriere, Lr Theatre des buns erigzris (Paris, [1540?]), Emblem 1

those in the second modify, clarify or support those in the first. Instances are numerous, but the following examples may serve to illustrate Whitney’s characteristic procedures.

The warning against beauty in the emblem Sirenes (Choice, p. 10) is reinforced by Fel in melle (Choice, p. 147): ‘no baite so sweete as beautie,

Whitney S Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 193

to the eie’ (Choice, p. 147, 1. 17). The once lofty pine that now lies low (Choice, pp. 59 and 140) warns in both parts that ‘frowninge fate, throwes downe the mightie kinges’.’’’ Where one part shows the parent stork feeding its young (Choice, p. 73), the other offers a reciprocal image of filial devotion, Aeneas bearing his aged father (Choice, p. 163). Else- where in the second part the emblem Ccecus amor prolis (Choice, p. 188) reprehends foolish affection towards one’s offspring.

What we have is literally a process of moral reflection, possibly promp- ted by an iconographic detail in the woodcut design employed by Whitney: Janus holds in his left hand a mirror.”’ But Whitney so fre- quently applies the emblem-as-mirror trope that it may be unnecessary to refer these procedures to this particular woodcut detail. Study of the rela- tionship between the two parts of the Choice gives new sense to the motion of the book as a ‘g1ass’.I2’ Sometimes we find that sentiments are exactly reflected in both parts. At others there is a genuine ‘mirroring’ effect, where details are reversed in spite of general similarity. In the first part, the parent provides (Choice, p. 73); in the second, the parent in- dulges (Choice, p. 155). In the first a foolish dog incautiously loses his bone in a stream (Choice, p. 39); in the second a prudent dog cautiously laps at a stream (Choice, p. 125). Repetition, on the other hand, can sometimes be exact. The motto Scepius in auro bibitur venenum (Choice, p. 79) is literally translated as part of the epigram to In amore tormentum (Choice, p. 219) in part 11: ‘Yea poison ofte in cuppe of goulde assay’d’ (Choice, p. 219, 1. 24). More often the same sentiment is paraphrased:

Then make thy choise, amongste thy equalles still, If thou mislike Diunas steppes to trace

(Choice, p. 79 , 11. 19-20)

in part I, appears more succinctly in part 11:

Then like, to like: or beste alone remaine (Choice, p. 164, 1. 18)

Occasionally an emblematic motif will appear twice, once in each part. The crocodile is a hieroglyph of foresight in part I (Choice, p. 3), of treachery in part I1 (Choice, p. 125). Whitney deliberately draws atten- tion to the earlier occurrence of the symbol in a side noy to the later emblem.123 A fig tree first occurs to symbolize the squandered wealth of

Choice, p. 59, 1. 10. Cf. p. 140, 11. 17-18: ‘pompe, and worldlie power, /Makes monarches,

’ * ’ An attribute of Jams taken from the de Tournes editions of La Perriere. I t is related in part to

’ ” See above n. 1 7 . 1 2 1 * De praescientia eius, de qua, in prima parte huius libri, fol. 3 . ’

I 2 0

markes: when varijnge fate doth lower.’

the allegory of Prudence, and to Chilon’s dictum, ‘Knowe thy selfe’ (Choice, p. 130, 11. 9-10),

194 John Manning

spendthrifts (Choice, p. 53), later as Adam’s ineffectual refuge from God’s judgement (Choice, p. 229), perhaps also indicating that the debts of sin must be paid.

Some parallels may be purely adventitious. Tantalus appears in part I (Choice, p. 74), a shipwrecked merchant in part I1 (Choice, p. 179): both are immersed in water, both burdened with covetousness. The image of a beached dolphin (Choice, p. 90) provokes a moral on man’s unkindness to his fellow man in part I , as does the fable of Arion and the dolphin in part I1 (Choice, p. 144). It would be hard to determine whether these parallels are the result of conscious patterning. On the other hand, some visual or verbal echoes seem judiciously or wittily directed. A woman gathering skulls appears in the first part (Choice, p. 46) and symbolizes the multi- plicity of men’s opinions; one skull stands towards the end of part I1 (Choice, p. 229) as a memento mori, to register the common and certain fate of all. The instruction on page 2, Qua dzj‘vocant, eundum (‘We must go where the gods say’), receives its triumphant answer on page 203, when Drake’s epic journey is accomplished Auxilio diuino (‘By God’s help’). The classical dictum on page 4, Veritas filia temporis (‘Truth is the daughter of Time’), is given a much firmer Christian interpretation on page 166 in part I1 as Veritas inuicta, when the triumph of truth over her adversaries is plainly attributed to the undimmed light of the Gospel. The purport of the classical fable (Choice, p. 8) concerning the ass bearing the mysteries, N o n tibi, sed Religioni (‘Not for yourself, but for religion’), is given more positive Christian affirmation in part I1 (Choice, p. 228) as SoliDeo gloria (‘To God alone be the glory’). In both cases the move from the first to the second part is from pagan to Christian, from allegory to plain, biblical statement. The necessity of temporary respite closes the first part of the book (Choice, p. 103); the inevitable, final conclusion of death brings Whitney’s book to an end (Choice, p. 230). Such a deliberate parallel would appear to offer a poignant moral reflection.

Janus’s ‘double looke’, as Whitney terms it, oversees the two-part struc- ture of his book, as proverbs, fables, apophthegms and symbols are looked at and interpreted from different perspectives. But even individual emblems are characterized by a kind of bifrontal doubleness. Some offer double moralizations of the same pictura: the second stanza of the epi- gram in the emblem Nolial tum sapere (Choice, p. 78) reprehends pride, the third, foolish astronomers. Aeneas’ exploits are described in the first stanza of Pietas f i l iorum in parentes (Choice, p. 163) while the second turns its attention to ‘sonnes’. The subject has not essentially changed: Aeneas is the exemplar of filial love, as his usual epithet, pius, indicates. The emblem Auaritia (‘Covetousness’) first describes Tantalus, and then the covetous man:

The couetous man, this fable reprehendes, For chaunge his name, and Tantalus hee is

(Choice, p. 74)

Whitney 's Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 195

Fig. 11 Harvard University.

Houghton Library, MS Typ 14. Reproduced by permission of the Houghton Library,

196 John Manning

The quotation exposes one of Whitney’s favoured Janus-like rhetorical strategies in emblematic composition: many of his moralizations are based on exercises in metonymy.

Whitney’s fondness for puns may also be related to the Roman deity’s doubleness. Rhetorically playful is the chiastic traductio ‘printe in minde, what wee in printe do reade’ (Choice, p. 171, 1. 9), while ‘hauenlie starre’ (Choice, p. 43, 1. 9) collapses together the notion of heaven and haven. Puns may be from the verbal to the visual. The dedication to Edward Dyer of the fable De morte, et amore (‘Of Death and Love’) is based on a pun on the mortal implications of his name, while the emblem on the dyer’s art, In colores (‘On colours’), is transposed into a hymn of praise to the English ‘Dyer most of fame’ (Choice, p. 135).lZ4 Elsewhere, puns may be more obscurely heraldic. The helmet which has become a hive for bees is peculiarly appropriate to Hugh Cholmeley: the Cholmondeley crest was a squire’s helmet (Choice, p. 138).I2j

The book’s thematic concerns, no less than its structure and local ver- bal detail, can be seen to be under the tutelage of the double-visaged god. Whitney’s desire to bring together ancient examples of Roman military heroism and the courage and valour of his present-day heroes can be referred to Janus’ control over ‘time past, and time to comme’, ‘the newe, and eeke the oulde’ (Choice, p. 108, 11. 18 and 6). Whitney’s woodcut artist emphasizes this martial connection by depicting Janus in armour armed with the sword of authority. In earlier editions of Whitney’s source for this emblem Janus is not given these attributes. Whitney’s pre- occupations with beginnings and endings would also appear to be Janus- like. The god was also associated with war and peace, navigation, law courts, money and a hostility to idleness, all of which recur as Whitney’s favoured themes. 1 2 6 The traditional offering to the god of honey and

’ “ The lines to Dyer do not appear in MS. “’ Green, 363, notes the heraldic pun. “’ Choice, p. 108, I . 14: ‘call’d the God of warre, and peace’; cf. Ovid Fustz, I , 121-4 and 277-82.

This aspect is particularly emphasized in Choice. Not only do we have the repeated military references throughout, but the third stanza on p. 108 was partly revised for publication, to em. phasize this feature, and two emblems that repeat its sense, Ex Bello, pax (Choice, p. 138) and In pace de be110 (Choice, p. 153), were added in the printcd text. In MS the beginning of stanza 3 reads:

This image firste was wrought by learned skill?, And longe in Romp did stande vnto this ende, That wicked men that were inclin‘d to i l l , The sighte thereof might mooue them to amend.

Janus’ connection with navigation is ancient: Ovid, F a d , I , 229-30. This is echoed in Chozce, pp. 11, 137 and 203. Ovid, Fusti, I , 165-8, connects Janus with the business of the law; his ancient identity with Chaos, ‘me chaos antique . . . vocabant’ (Fusti, I , 103), links him with Whitney’s Sine iustitza, confusio. His hostility to idleness is shown in the fact that he did not exempt the first day of the year from business:

(MS fol. 52’, I I . 13-16)

tempora commisi nascentia rebus agendis, totus ah auspicio ne foret annus iners (11. 167-8)

Whitney frequently reprehends idleness: e.g. Chozce, pp. 85: 159: 175.

Whitney ’s Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 197

sweetmeats may touch upon the image of Cotton’s hive flowing with honey.

The structurally centralized positioning of the emblem to Janus should, however, alert us to the political and gratulatory implications.”’ The manuscript motto, Zanus quid (‘What Janus is’), I z 9 readily exposes the punning reference to Jan van der Does, father and son, Whitney’s Dutch hosts, active promoters of the Anglo-Dutch alliance, and Whitney’s literary patrons. Both men were known by the Latinized form of their name, Janus Dousa. It must have occurred to Whitney that the double identity of this Dutch Janus agreed almost exactly with the conventional representations of the double-visaged god, one of whose faces was shown as that of a man of mature years, the other as much younger.13’ The Dousas must have seemed like real-life embodiments of this traditional iconography: the father expressing the mature face, the son the more youthful, both sharing the name Janus. The joke has a serious side, in that it also may serve to compliment the pair on their common wisdom and prudence.l3‘

The punning reference to Janus still survives in the printed text. However, for publication Whitney changed the motto to Respice, et pros- pice (‘Bear in mind time past and time to come’). In doing so he keeps the political theme of the book to the fore, and adapts the emblem to yet more sustained praise of Leicester. The moralization of the bifrontal figure under such a motto was applied not simply to the prudence of private individuals, la PerriCre’s ‘gens sages’, 13’ but specifically to that of governors and princes:

The two faces of Ianus . . . signifie the wisdome and graue intellect of prudent princes, which besides that by their wise counsels they doe act things politikely and discreetly, instantly, and for the time present, Carrie likewise in themselues a fore-prouiding prescience to preuent , and thereby to remedie succeeding mischeefs and ensuing daungers: for that with the one face before, and the other behind, they

Ovid, Fasti, I , 186-8; Choice, pp. 200-1. On the iconographical significance of the central position, see Alastair Fowler, Triumphal

F o r m : Structural Patterns in Elizabethan Poetry (Cambridge, 1970), 23-33. On Janus, and ancient triumphs, see Vincenzo Cartari, Le imagine de ideideglz’antichi(Lyon, 1581). 41: a triumphal arch was known as a Janus. The solar symbolism of the central position may also be relevant: Janus was identified with the sun (see Macrobius, Saturnalia, I . ix, 8-9: Cartari, 33).

I 2 1

1 2 8

MS fol. 52‘. See fig. 1 1 . ”’ Cartari, 36: ‘mostrano anchora le due faccie di Giano il tempo, che tuttauia viene: e percio

I’vna e giouine , . . , onde I’altra e di maggiore eta, e barbuta’. Both faces are bearded in the woodcut on Choice, p. 108: the one on the left of mature years, the one on the right elderly. In MS one face is turned away from the reader, and is partially concealed (fig. 12).

i i i J . P. Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1556; Venice, 1604), 323: Lib. X X S I I : De Bicipitio, S.V.

Prvdentia. See also Macrobius, Saturnalia, I , vii, 20. l J 2 Le Theatre des bons engins, I , 1. 3.

198 John Manning

continually behold and view round about them, recording things past, and premeditating those likely to follow. ‘ 3 3

The sceptre and the mirror which the god holds in Whitney’s woodcut iconographically convey this traditional view of Janus as the prudent ruler.134 There can be little doubt as to the identity of this prudent ruler in Whitney’s view. He places the Janus emblem immediately after his poem in praise of Leicester, and immediately before his poem to Sidney, and tells us in the motto to look before and after (Respice, et prospice). Janus is obviously meant to be Leicester and Sidney, the older and the younger Dudley. When he adapted the woodcut device from La PerriPre, Whitney showed some tact and sensitivity to the current political situa- tion, instructing Plantin’s woodcut artists to omit the crown. The princely status accorded the Governor-General in the Low Countries had already incurred Elizabeth’s displeasure. Yet there is implicit congratulation, or at least assurance, that the combined wisdom and foresight of the Dudleys will lead to success in the current Dutch campaign, and in England’s imperial enterprise. Whitney may have recalled Ovid’s prayer to Janus:

dexter ades ducibus, quorum secura labore otia terra ferax, otia pontus habet135

Yet Whitney’s gratulation is far from easy or complacent. Political events are placed within a larger temporal and religious framework. In Whitney’s adoption of an unequal, asymmetric division of his book into unequal parts, there may even be something of that Renaissance unease about the presumption and insufficiency of earthly glory, which Alastair Fowler associates with the asymmetric arrangement of Renaissance triumphs.’36 The instruction, ‘to beare in minde . . . time to comme’ (Choice, p. 108, 1. 18), directs us to the final emblems in the book. Here we find that ‘time to comme’ offers trial, ‘tormentes straunge, and persecutions dire’; the quickening passage of time; the consciousness that ‘God . . . all thy waies doth see’; the imminence of death; and the certain knowledge that ‘all must ende’. 1 3 ’ Such eschatological reflection exerts constant pressure on the individual towards well-doing and virtuous

”’ Richard Linche (trans.), T h e Fountutne o/Ancz‘ent Fzctzon (London, 1599), sig. D4‘. The original of this passage is in Cartari, 3 7 .

I J 4 For the mirror as an attribute of Prudence, see Guy de Tervarent, Attributs et symboles dans l’urt profane 1450-1600 (Geneva, 1958), S.V. Miroir I . For the sceptre as a symbol of royalty, see Ter - varent, S . V . Sceptre I . Whitney’s artist omits Janus’ usual attribute, the key, which is shown in La Perricre (1540), and Cartari. Ovid calls him ‘clavigerus deus’ (Fasti, I , 228). Whitney’s intention was to emphasizr Janus’ martial authority: the key was associated with peace (Fusti, I , 253-4).

” I Fusti, I , 67-8. ”‘ Fowler, Triumphal Forms, 27-8. I ” Choice, pp. 224, 1. 2; 227: 229, 1. 4: 229; 230, I . 6.

Whitney S Choice of Emblemes: a reassessment 199

achievement, for therein lie man’s hope of salvation, and of immortality, through faith and fame.‘” That promise of ‘euerlasting honour, which is alwaies permanent’ Whitney offered Leicester in the ‘Epistle Dedica- torie’. He extends the same hope in the final emblems of the Choice.

V I

There was no second edition of Whitney’s Choice, and it was not reprinted till the nineteenth century. 1 3 9 The reasons for its contemporary neglect may be attributed in part to the changing political situation that surrounded the books first publication. From the beginning, the English cause in the Low Countries was in difficulties, and was eventually to founder upon a failure of financial support, a lack of enthusiasm at home for the interventionist foreign policy, dissension between the commanders in the field and Leicester’s own indecisiveness.I4O Within months of the publication of the Choice, Sidney was dead, killed in action;I4’ while Stanley, Whitney’s latter-day Diomedes, proved a Sinon, betraying the English cause and changing sides to fight for Philip 11. 14* Just over a year after Whitney’s book appeared, Leicester was ignominiously recalled and England’s policy towards the Low Countries was discredited with him. In retrospect Whitney’s gratulation could hardly have seemed less appro- priate.’43 To have reprinted the Choice at such a time would only have served to embarrass Leicester further, reminding the Dutch and the English of the failure of the earl’s political ambitions and hopes.

Poetically, too, Whitney’s book must have appeared rather dated. Whitney may have known Sidney’s Defence of Poesie in manuscript. The dedication to Sidney of the woodcut device of the horseman from Alciato’s emblem 35 may have been chosen as a conspicuous allusion to the opening paragraphs of Sidney’s poetic treatise. ‘44 But for all his praise of Sidney’s and Dyer’s literary achievements, Whitney’s work shows little sign of their poetic influence.’45 If he understood the precise nature of the poetic reforms put forward by Sidney’s Areopagus, he must have lacked the will, or the talent, to put them into practice. Whitney’s writing with

‘ l a Choice, pp. 224; 225; 232; 296-7. But cf. p. 228. 1 1 . 7-12. ‘ I p Green’s edition, 1866. ’“ For a fuller account, see Leicester’s Triumph. The progress of the campaign is charted in Cor-

respondence of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, dunizg his government of the Low Countries, ed. John Bruce (London, 1844).

‘ I ’ 17 October. 1 4 ’ See Green, 330. ‘ I ’ Van Dorsten and Strong suggest that the verses to Leicester were out of date and out of step

with the current political situation even at the time when the book was first published: Lezcester’s Triumph, 78.

’“ The Norwich MS was headed ‘A treatise of Horsman Shipp’: see Mary R . Mahl. TLS. 21 December 1967, col. 1245.

‘IJ One manuscript emblem may contain an allusion to one of Dyer’s poems: see Manning, ‘Un- published and unedited emblems by Geffrey Whitney’.

200 John Manning

its proverbial wisdom, plainness of diction and metrical uncertainty has more in common with the verse of the mid-sixteenth century than the work of Sidney and his circle. To use C. S. Lewis's terms, Whitney was 'drab' rather than 'golden', looking back to Tottel's Miscellany, rather than forward to the poetic achievements of the 1590's. 1 4 6

The death of Sidney was followed within two years by the death of Leicester. With both his patrons dead Whitney's hopes of advancement must have come to an end. As far as we know, he wrote no more. However, he fulfilled one of his personal ambitions. He returned to his native Cheshire, and ended his days as one of Richard Cotton's 'bees', a tenant farmer on the idyllic estate at Cumbermaire. 1 4 '

The Choice established Whitney's reputation as a pioneer of emblem- atic composition in English. Meres and Peacham in the next decades both looked back on him as a master of the art, and as one whose achievement could stand comparison with that of the continental Latinists. 1 4 *

Freeman detects the use of the Choice as a pattern book for certain features of Jacobean domestic architecture and decorative furnishings. ' 4 9

William Byrd set some of Whitney's epigrams in his Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets (1611), where the sententious plainness of the verse finds or- namentation in the music. ''' Immediate embarrassment with the failure of the English cause in the Low Countries, and the passage of time, con- spired at first to muffle, and then to obscure, the precise nature of Whitney's gratulatory design and the ideals, which lay behind the book's publication. With the failure to appreciate Whitney's deliberate control over his material, and his subtle allusiveness in the use of his sources, it is perhaps inevitable that he should have come to be seen as no more than a collector of woodcut designs, and a writer of moral verses.

The Queen's University of Belfast

l i b For the terms 'drab' and 'golden', see C. S. Lewis, English Lzferuture zn the Szx / een th -Cen tuq excludzng Drama (Oxford, 1954).

"' Green, pp. xciiiff prints Whitney's will: ' I bequeath to my brother Brooke Whitney the residue of yeares yet remaininge in my Farme or lease which I holde of Richard Cotton of Cambermere esquier together with the deede of the same lease . . .' For Cotton's bees, see Choice, p. 201, 11. 17-18.

I J n Francis Meres, 'Palladis Tamia (1598)'. in Elizabethan Crzfzcal Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith

1 4 * Freeman, 92-5; 98-9. ' " E. H. Fellowes, English Madrzgul Verse 1588-1632, rev. and enl. edn (Oxford, 1967). pp. 60,

70, 71. The references to Choice are pp, 199, 24, 159. 180, 198. See G. K . Hunter, 'Madrigal verses from Whitney's Choice o fEmblemes , ' Notes Quer, n.s. 7 (1960), 215-16.

(2 vols, Oxford, 1904), 1 1 , 323; Peacham, Minerva Brztanna (London, 1612), sig. A ? ' .