SOURCE: Daly, Peter M. “The Arbitrariness of George Wither's Emblems: A Reconsideration.” In The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl Josef Höltgen, edited by Michael Bath, John Manning, and Alan R. Young, pp. 201-34. New York: AMS Press, 1993.

[In the following excerpt, Daly suggests that Wither's comments on the emblems in his collection underestimated the influence of his sources and minimized his own understanding of their complexity.]

Critics from Rosemary Freeman (1948) to Michael Bath (1989), Charles Moseley (1989) and Richard Cavell (1990)¹ have tended to lend credence, if in differing measure, to George Wither's comments about his emblems. Authorial statement has thus coloured the critical reception of the emblems. Wither's comments have been seen as suggesting an arbitrary relationship between word and image, or thing and meaning, which, in Bath's view “comes close to sabotaging the credibility of the whole emblematic enterprise.”²

In assessing Wither's emblems, Rosemary Freeman³ seems to take too literally both the author's criticism of the emblems he appropriates from Gabriel Rollenhagen, whose name he never mentions, and Wither's critical comments on the illustrations and the meanings implied by, or attributable to, some of the symbolic motifs. But, as Irma Tramer⁴ had already demonstrated in the 1930's, Wither often read the original texts more closely than he acknowledged, incorporating or adapting some important interpretational suggestions from his sources. In other words, Wither understates, for whatever reason, his indebtedness to his Continental emblem sources. And he also evidently understood better than he pretended the meaning and complexity of the material with which he was working.

Freeman argues that Wither was more interested in “driving home the moral lesson” than “in the meaning of the pictures, and these he often treats in a highly cavalier fashion” (p. 144). She suggests:

The reason for this airy dismissal of the original sense lies partly in the fact that the pictures were imported from Holland and some of them seemed to him exceptionally obscure, but it is mainly due to Wither's consciousness that his material belongs to a tradition now obsolete.

(p. 144)⁵

But, the evidence she adduces in support of this statement is unconvincing. It is true that Wither introduces some emblems by phrases such as “in former times,” “earlier,” or such statements as the following:

Our Elders, when their meaning was to shew
A native-speedinesse (in Emblem wise)
A picture of a Dolphin-Fish they drew …

(2,10)

But this does not prove the material obsolete. Such iconographic materials were, of course, current among a courtly and learned audience. One has only to think of the masques of Ben Jonson, Thomas Heywood's allegorical pageants for Lord Mayors' Pageants, and his emblematic decorations for Charles I's ship The Sovereign of the Seas.⁶ Thomas Blount published the first edition of his translation of Henri Estienne's The Art of Making of Devises in 1646. This occurred during the Civil War, when, as Blount was aware, the Royalists and Parliamentarians drew upon the tradition of the emblem and impresa for the creation of hundreds of cornets under which they fought and died. The printing history of English emblem books in the seventeenth century also shows that the tradition was far from obsolete.⁷

In addition, it is important to note that some of Wither's remarks are better understood as reader-oriented; he is explaining traditional, at times learned, allusions to a mixed readership. Phrases such as “in former times” (1,39), “in former Ages” (1,45), “Our Elders” (2,10), “The Sages old” (2,26), “old Emblem (worthy veneration)” (2,42), and “wise Antiquitie” (2,47) are also rhetorical strategies designed to lend authority to symbols and their meanings that may be unfamiliar to some readers.⁸ That Wither is conscious of his reader is clear from the manner in which he constantly addresses those who take his book in their hands as though he is engaging in an interpretative process in which he is the interpretative authority and the reader the recipient. This is the context for his continual use of such forms of address as “you” (1,40, 1,46, 3,42), “thee” (1,50, 3,34, 4,3) and “Reader” (2,33, 2,41, 3,12), and the extensive use of imperatives such as “mark well” (2,34, 3,24, 4,5), “looke here” (3,20) and “consider this” (3,34).

The received opinion in English scholarship is that Wither was by turns perplexed by the subtleties of the originals, impatient with their obscurity, and critical of their obsolescence. Certain of Wither's authorial statements have been taken as supporting the view that his emblems are arbitrary. As yet, however, no-one has studied the two hundred emblems carefully enough to test this received wisdom, nor has anyone compared authorial statement with actual practice. From his general Introduction to A Century of Emblems (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1989), it would appear that Charles Moseley subscribes to this general view. He tells us that “Wither seems in some ways to look back to earlier conceptions and applications of the emblem even while he is explicitly uneasy about the value of its complexity …” (p. 23); his verses are “comments—sometimes puzzled—on and responses to what the ‘author’ of the emblem intended” (p. 24); he “used the picture as a starting point for ingenious analysis of its possible meaning” (p. 24) with the result that in his epigrams Wither “expounds ideas that can be attached to the illustration” (p. 24). Moseley's conclusion, carefully worded though it is, is ultimately a misrepresentation of Wither's emblem book. He writes:

But he was aware from his own occasional difficulty in explaining and using the picture by which he was bound that visual symbols must not be too complicated—as well as the possibility of one symbol quite legitimately carrying several independent meanings … This implies that in the very act of using picture plus verse to suggest a general and universal truth in a special and particular application, Wither must have been uneasily aware of the doubtfulness of the emblem's status. His book thus becomes, indeed, a sort of lottery of meaning: the wheel design and the moveable pointers at the end suggest that he recognized that its significance is ultimately determined by its reader.

(p. 25)

In fact, as I shall demonstrate, Wither accurately identifies, names and describes the symbolic motifs in virtually all of the two hundred engravings, providing the correct general meaning and only thereafter specifying more narrowly their application according to the themes and maxims that he wishes to express. The meaning of any given Wither emblem comprising his English couplet motto, engraving and epigram is not “a lottery of meaning” (p. 25). The lottery was used as a way of applying the fixed meaning of the emblems, but it does not “unfix” that meaning.

It has become something of topos when writing about Wither to note the Englishman's impatience with his learned Continental source. Moseley, albeit in a footnote, asserts that Wither was “exasperated” with the “multivalency” in a Rollenhagen emblem.⁹ It seems to me that it is not the multivalency but rather the obscurity of the pictura featuring three interlocking crescent moons surmounted by a crown that Wither objects to when he begins his subscriptio:

What in this Emblem, that mans meanings were,
Who made it first, I neither know nor care;
For, whatsoe'er, he purposed, or thought,
to serve my purpose, now it shall be told;
Who, many times, before this Taske is ended,
Must picke out Moralls, where was none intended.

(2,49)

Since this is a hieroglyphically stylized configuration, indeed an impresa probably deriving from Paradin,¹⁰ one can understand Wither's difficulties. An impresa is always allusive and often esoteric; without knowing the identity of the bearer and the circumstances of its use, the impresa virtually defies interpretation. Paradin informs us that this is the device of Henri II in his role as defender of the Church. In his commentary Paradin refers to the scriptural use of the moon as a prefiguration of the Church. It is this meaning that Wither explicates. But obscurity not multivalancy is the problem. In fact, Wither can recognise and use multivalency when its suits his purpose, as is demonstrated by his interpretation of the owl as “night,” “studious Watchfulnesse,” and the “Bird of Athens” (1,9).

Michael Bath¹¹ is the first modern scholar since Irma Tramer to attempt a serious re-evaluation of Wither's emblems. He begins by considering the relation of text and image, noting that the precisely ruled pages of Wither's emblems create a strong impression of a discrete unity, which is reinforced in the four-book structure with its separate title-pages and dedications. However, Bath finds that certain features “argue against the unity of form and purpose which this apparently orderly structure suggests” (p. 4). These include Wither's apparent indifference to the originally intended meaning in his sources. It is important to recognize that Wither's source emblems were tripartite, but his own emblems have four parts: in addition to epigram, pictura and Latin motto encircling the engraving, Wither places an English couplet above the pictura which for the English reader replaces or augments the original Latin motto. Wither often explicitly signals the relationship of picture to text by the use of deictic phrase or comment. Such deixis may lend authority to interpretation, but Bath suggests it may also paradoxically indicate its abitrariness. He finds that Wither thus often deconstructs the unity of the emblem.

According to Bath, the 30-line epigrams are usually divided tidily into representation or description and interpretation, with a Puritan emphasis on “bringing home the moral to life of the individual reader, a process which the Lottery reinforces” (p. 9). When prayer concludes the epigram, the emblem shows a certain affinity with the three stages of Ignation meditation.

Bath also pays close attention to the composition of de Passe's “finely-drawn and intelligently-designed engravings” (p. 5), which, as Wolfgang Harms¹² has shown, are characterized by inner-pictorial comment and symbolic statement. Many a single motif, cluster, or scene in the middle or background adds to the meaning of the motif in the foreground. Although Wither's texts seldom specify those meanings, they remain available for the knowing reader. Bath refers to a convincing example in his discussion of the emblem of the stricken deer (4,6), enriched by two other stag and eagle motifs. Although Wither does not comment on these visual motifs and their meanings, his concluding verse suggests that he was not unaware of some of this meaning: “And, therefore, from my Selfe, I flie to Thee.” Bath summarizes:

Such an emblem will stand as a model of semiological consistency and closure: all its elements contributing to a complex unitary significance, underwritten by the authority of received meanings which had been sanctioned by previous, indeed Biblical, usage.

(p.12)

Bath believes that many other emblems, however, betray Wither's scepticism about ascribing meaning to image, his “impatience at allegorical subtlety,” and an insistence on arbitrariness that in Bath's view “comes close to sabotaging the credibility of the whole emblematic enterprise” (p.12). While Bath presents a well argued case, Wither's actual practice still needs to be compared with authorial statements. Further careful analysis is required to establish to what extent Wither actually builds on the inherited significance implied by his emblem sources. In this regard Wither's intended readership and his own purposes—religious, moral, social, and political—in the earlier 1630's will need to be taken into account.

The need for such a re-evaluation is supported by Bath's far-reaching interpretation of the architectural and cosmic structuring of the book, which was Wither's creation. In his “Writ of Prevention,” Wither uses an architectural metaphor for the four books, thus associating them with architectural space used as memory-places in the ars memorativa. To this Bath adds the idea of the book as microcosm, invoked perhaps through the final lottery with its four compass points, which effectively squares the circle. To what extent Wither intended the values inherent in these symbolic schemes cannot be determined. At least they bespeak the “survival of a largely instinctive and conservative desire for a fitting correspondence between the ordered universe and the microcosm of the book” (p.14). Such a sense of order, whether instinctive or conscious, is anything but arbitrary, and this brings Bath to consider the lottery. In the final analysis the lottery “is not determined by ‘Chance’ but ‘divinely sent’” (p.16).

Wither's alleged arbitrariness must also be seen in the light of a scholarly tradition and set of generic assumptions associated with the names Rosemary Freeman and Mario Praz who see arbitrariness as characteristic of the emblem genre. However, since 1964 other voices, if largely German-speaking, and therefore not always heard in English circles—Albrecht Schöne,¹³ Dietrich Walter Jöns,¹⁴ Wolfgang Harms,¹⁵ and most recently Carsten-Peter Warncke¹⁶ to name but the most influential—have pointed to the role played in the emblem by inherited modes of Christian exegesis and allegory, which must modify our assumptions about arbitrariness.¹⁷

It is time, I believe, to re-consider the “arbitrariness” of word-image relationships in Wither's emblems. To do this, I propose first to re-examine authorial statement, then consider Wither's actual practice by comparing a number of his English emblems with their sources. In the process I shall concentrate on Wither's treatment of foregrounded symbolic clusters.¹⁸

What are we to make of Wither's famous and almost denigratory statements? Consider this: “To seeke out the Author of every particular Emblem were a labour without profit; and, I have beene so far from endeavouring it, that, I have not so much as cared to find out their meanings in any of the Figures; but, applied them rather, to such purposes, as I could thinke of, at first sight” (A2). This has to be taken as proof of Wither's indifference to his source and to the original meanings in the emblems, and as a “frank confession of the arbitrary nature of the sign” (Bath, p.6). But is Wither referring only to his Rollenhagen source, and should we take his statement at face value? Irma Tramer, writing her German dissertation in the 1930's, was not deterred by such authorial assertions. She investigated the possibility that Wither, in spite of his off-handed statements, had actually read Rollenhagen closely and consulted his sources. She shows that Wither “knew and in part used” Rollenhagen's texts,¹⁹ and that he in fact incorporated general ideas and even key words from Rollenhagen's Latin epigrams into his English mottoes. Indeed, it is evident that virtually all of Wither's mottoes are accurate renderings, if longer, of Rollenhagen's Latin mottoes, which invariably encapsulate the meaning of the emblem. In other words, Wither did in fact “find out” Rollenhagen's “meaning.” I would suggest that Wither's comment—so often taken as a proof of his arbitrariness—makes little sense if taken as referring to the two hundred emblems by the one author Gabriel Rollenhagen, and that the plural “their meanings” suggests that Wither is aware that the Rollenhagen emblems with their couplet subscriptiones often ultimately derive from others, and it is “their [original authors'] meanings” that he refuses to pursue. We may believe that Wither did not consult Sambucus, Simeoni, and Alciato, but he certainly understood in virtually every case the meaning of the emblematic pictura, which he almost always describes and interprets with care and precision, as I shall show. Against this apparent confession of carelessness must also be set the more sober statement of intention in one of the dedications. Writing in the dedication to Francis, Duchess Dowager of Richmond and Lennox in Book 3, he recommends his emblems to her as “A Treasury of Golden Sentences”:

… this humble Offring, here,
Within your gracious presence, doth appeare.
And, that it may the more content your eye,
Well-graven Figures, help to beautifie
My lowly Gift: And, vailed are in these,
A Treasury of Golden Sentences;
By my well-meaning Muse, interpreted.

Then there is the following apparently impatient statement in emblem 2,5:

                                                                                                    … little care I take
Precisely to unfold our Authors mind;
Or, on his meaning, Comments here to make.
It is the scope of my Intention, rather
From such perplext Inventions (which have nought
Of Ancient Hieroglyphick) sense to gather
Whereby some usefull Morall may be taught.

Freeman quotes this statement in support of her assertion that Wither “often treats [the meaning of the pictures] in a highly cavalier fashion” (p. 144). But Freeman offers a partial quotation shorn of its context. If we look carefully at the full statement, it would apear that Wither is saying something different. Wither makes this comment in the subscriptio to the emblem on the need for unity in the kingdom with its hieroglyphically stylized pictura of birds supporting a sceptre.²⁰ The statement follows his accurate description of the symbolic cluster, a description not present in the original:

A Crowned Sceptre, here is fixt upright,
Betwixt foure Fowles, whose postures may declare,
They came from Coasts, or Climats opposite,
And, that, they diffring in their natures are.

In her quotation, Freeman omits the next line and a half:

In which, (as in some others, that we find
Amongst these Emblems) …

This indicates that Wither is speaking of the present emblem and only “some others” i.e. not all the emblems. He is neither generalising, nor is he giving expression to the “airy dismissal of the original sense” of the emblem (Freeman, p. 144), but is addressing the question of the precise meaning of the “diffring … natures” of the four birds in this emblem. When Wither observes:

… little care I take
Precisely to unfold our Authors minde

he is refering to the meaning of the “diffring … natures” of the birds, about which he refuses to speculate. In fact, this is not unreasonable. By comparison with the original by Alciato, Rollenhagen, or his artist Crispin de Passe, had introduced significant alterations into the picture. Alciato created a complex motif using not birds of different kinds but one species, the crow, and Alciato did indeed base his emblem on a meaning regarded as inherent in these birds, namely their unity and harmony.²¹ Although the engraving by Crispin de Passe is more elegant, it is inaccurate, however, if intended as a copy of the Alciato emblem. For whatever reason, de Passe replaced Alciato's crows with birds of different species²² thus weakening the original symbolic meaning, and requiring a slightly different interpretation. For his part, Wither refuses “Comments here to make,” but he is careful to apply the four different birds to four different kinds of citizens: “The Rich, the Poore, the Swaine, the Gentleman,” summarized as “men of all Degrees.”

Emblem 2,49, discussed earlier, featuring three interlocking crescent moons surmounted by a crown elicits from Wither the impatient comment:

What in this Emblem, that mans meanings were,
Who made it first, I neither know nor care;
For, whatsoere, he purposed, or thought,
To serve my purpose, now it shall be taught;

Rollenhagen's motto “Donec totu[m] impleat orbe[m]” [Till he replenish the whole world²³] is a typically incomplete impresa motto, designed to be enigmatic, which is only partially explained in the epigram with its brief mention of the moon and the fame of the King of France. The motif is, in fact, an impresa for Henri II in his role as defender of the faith, as recorded in the impresa collections of Paradin and Typotius.²⁴ Unless one knows the identity of the bearer of an impresa and the occasion of its use, the meaning is usually obscure. It is hardly suprising that Wither, who evidently did not know the Paradin or Typotius collections, can make little sense of this. But then Wither looks more closely at the “knot of Moones (or Crescents)” and observes that it may illustrate a “Mystery”

Of pious use (and, peradventure, such,
As from old Hieroglyphicks, erres not much)

In sound biblical tradition he interprets the moon as the church, and in so doing converts an impresa into a religious emblem. Wither has, in fact, remained within a tradition of religious imagery, and the resulting emblem is anything but arbitrary.²⁵

Elsewhere in A Collection of Emblemes, it is at times difficult for the modern reader to understand Wither's objection to the symbolic picture. Emblem 2,29, for example, features an open book surmounted by a winged heart from which smoke ascends towards a sun inscribed with the tetragrammaton. It is of a kind with many similar hieroglyphic combinations in the collection. Although Wither considers it mean, “vulgar” and defective, he none the less decides that it can “yield some Fruit, and shew a good Intention.” Once again, his interpretation is serious and reasonable.

The figure of Geryon, the three-bodied giant of Greek mythology, is represented in the Rollenhagen's emblem 2,45 by a crowned warrior with six arms, each bearing a different weapon. Wither does not seem to recognise the provenance of the figure, which he condemns as a “Monster” rather than a “Hieroglyphicke.” He complains that he received

These Figures (as you see them) ready made
By others; and, I meane to morallize
Their Fancies; not to mend what they devise.

(3,45)

Wither then offers two plausible interpretations. The first focusses on the “unconquerable strength” of him who holds “Faculties, or Friends” together. The second is a moral statement urging that affections and sense obey reason. Wither then concludes with the observation that, although other readings are possible, his are certainly “good”:

If others thinke this Figure, here inferres
A better sense; let those Interpreters
Vnriddle it; and, preach it where they please:
Their Meanings may be good, and so are these.

My final example has to do with Wither's doubts about what might be called the factual basis for emblem 3,49 which shows two men sawing through a tree against which an elephant leans. Wither explains that this was thought to be the means whereby elephants were trapped, but, he observes “on what grounds, I cannot tell.” Although he evidently does not believe the fable, he is prepared to find a useful truth in it:

Now, though the part Historicall, may erre,
The Morall, which this Emblem doth inferre,
Is overtrue …

He interprets the motif as meaning that the world is full of treachery, and he applies this general notion to the city, court and church.

These, then, are the critical comments that Wither makes in the preliminary matter and the two hundred emblems. As I hope to have shown, very few of these observations show a writer perplexed or exasperated; taken in context these comments do not introduce “ingenious analysis … [or] ideas that can be attached to the illustrations” (Moseley, p. 24), which would suggest an arbitrary treatment of the source emblems. It now remains to be seen whether Wither's actual practice is arbitrary.

Wither treated his Rollenhagen source emblems with considerable respect and attention, providing close, if expanded, translations of the Latin mottoes, and almost invariably incorporating into his epigrams an accurate description of the pictura. Rarely does he interpret the illustration without describing it.²⁶ Wither's normal procedure is to combine description with a general interpretation of meaning before making specific his application of the emblem to a particular theme or concern. This is normal emblematic practice. In his descriptions he invariably shows that he is aware of the Christian and classical traditions, sometimes erudite, which inform his source emblems. His identification of pictorial motif is especially careful when that complex is of classical origin. Emblem 2,10 features the dolphin entwined about an anchor for which Wither composed an interpretative motto:

If safely, thou desire to goe,
Bee nor too swift, nor overslow.

He describes and interprets the picture, providing a general authority for the motif combination in his opening lines:

Ovr Elders, when their meaning was to shew
A native-speedinesse (in Emblem wise)
The picture of a Dolphin-Fish they drew;
Which, through the waters, with great swiftnesse, flies.
An Anchor, they did figure, to declare
Hope, stayednesse, or a grave-deliberation:

Wither discusses the application of this in the rest of the epigram, leading up to a final couplet which sums up the meaning of the whole emblem echoing the motto and thereby effecting an impressive closure of the whole emblem:

By Speedinesse, our works are timely wrought;
By Staydnesse, they, to passe are, safely, brought.

A similar situation is encountered in the cornucopia emblem (2,26). The notion that “Good-fortune” will accompany “True-vertue” (motto of 2,26) is illustrated by two cornucopias encircling a caduceus. This complex might not have been readily understood by all of Wither's readers, but rather than displaying impatience or condescension, he explains the motifs, their meanings and even the technical terms with all the concern of a dedicated teacher:

Marke, how the Cornucopias, here, apply
Their Plenties, to the Rod of Mercury;
And (if it seeme not needlesse) learne, to know
This Hieroglyphick's meaning, ere you goe.
The Sages old, by this Mercurian-wand
(Caduceus nam'd) were wont to understand
Art, Wisdome, Vertue and what else we finde,
Reputed for endowments of the Minde.
The Cornucopias, well-knowne Emblems, are,
By which, great wealth, and plenties, figur'd were;
And (if you joyne together, what they spell)
It will, to ev'ry Vnderstanding, tell,
That, where Internall-Graces may be found,
Eternall-blessings, ever, will abound.

A further example of Wither's concern to offer the reader a helpful exegesis is found in the griffin emblem (3,5). The theme of virtue and fortune is embodied in the difficult and complicated picture of a griffin with wings outstretched, surmounting a stone block chained to a winged sphere. Wither knows that he cannot appeal to the Book of Nature for the meaning of the griffin, and his observation shows an understanding of both allegorical and exegetical procedures:

The Griphon, is the figure of a creature,
Not found within the Catalogues of Nature:
But, by those Wits created, who, to shew
Internall things, externall Figures drew

The combination of bird and beast signifies “The Vertues, both of Body, and of minde.” After this general introduction Wither specifies the meanings of the individual motifs: the stone expresses the “firme abiding, and the solidnesse” of true virtues; the winged ball is “the gifts of changing Fortune.” But he knows that in fact material fortune is not always attendant upon virtue, and he concludes:

But if we bide content, our worth is more;
And rich we are, though others think us poore.

Wither bestows the same interpretative care on the theme of virtue and fortune endangered by envy, which in 2,39 is illustrated by the complex pictura of an eagle with outstretched wings surmounting a winged sphere set on a square altar and flanked on each side by a snake poised to strike. The confidant motto reads:

He needs not feare, what spight can doe,
Whom Vertue friends, and Fortune, too.

Wither's epigram opens with a general description of the “Eaglet,” “Winged-ball,” and “Altar,” and their meaning as representing wealth and virtue. He then makes those meanings more specific:

My Iudgement, by that Altar-stone, conceives
The sollidnesse, which, true Religion gives;
And, that fast-grounded goodnesse, which, we see,
In grave, and sound Morality, to be.
The Flying-ball, doth, very well, expresse
All Outward-blessings, and, their fickleness.
Our Eaglet, meaneth such Contemplatives,
.....The Snakes, may well resemble those, among them,
Who, meerely out of envie, seek to wrong them;

Wither treats an emblem on wisdom in Book three with the same interpretative precision. Wisdom is embodied in the hieroglyphic combination of two snakes encircling a laurel tree (3,8). Again Wither describes and identifies the general meaning of laurel as “Glory,” “renowne” and “Wreaths of Honour,” while the serpents are “WISDOME'S Emblems.” Their combination declares:

That, Wisdome is the surest meanes to save
Our Names and Actions, from Oblivion's Grave.

Wither then suggests two more specific meanings for the wisdom of the snake, i.e. “Morall-wit” and “Christian-policie,” which again is not an arbitrary imposition of meaning on image, but rather represents a narrowing of the application of the general notion of wisdom:

The Snakes are two, perhaps, to signifie
That Morall-wit, and Christian-policie
(Vnited both together) doe contrive
The safest guard, and best preservative.

A spade surmounting a winged sphere set on a stone altar (4,31) bodies forth the notion encapsulated in the motto:

A Fortune is ordain'd for thee,
According as thy Labours bee.

Wither begins the epigram by identifying the spade with labour, the sphere with “flitting-rowling-worldy-things” and the altar with “Things firmer, sollid, and of greater worth.” He expands on the application of the motif cluster to various situations in life and concludes with a prayer which implicitly activates the religious significance of the altar:

To worke-aright, oh Lord, istruct thou mee;
And, ground my Workes, and buildings all on thee:
That, by the fiery Test, when they are tride,
My Worke may stand, and I may safe abide.

This, then, is the final and specific application of the emblem which Wither has taken over from Rollenhagen, and again there is nothing arbitrary in his treatment of the material.

Wither's treatment of Fortuna (3,40) reveals the same concern to identify and interpret for his reader all her relevant attributes, including her blindness, nakedness, forelock, winged sphere and, hand-held moon. The only subjective or innovative comment is reserved for Fortuna's scarf blown back like a sail. He writes:

A Skarfe display'd by the wind, she beares,
(And, on her naked Body, nothing weares)
To shew, that what her Favorite injoyes,
Is not so much for Vsefulnesse, as toyes.

But there is no reason to label this arbitrary or a cavalier disregard for the source emblem.

One final emblem must stand for the scores of other examples that could be cited.²⁷ Emblem 4,40 depicts a notched wheel of Fortune with two cornucopias chained to a stone block. Both the Latin and English mottoes indicate that fate is the restraining influence. In the first line of his epigram Wither identifies the wheel with “Fate,” which he later insists is a function of “God's Providence”; the movement of the wheel shows “That, some waxe Poore, as others Wealthy grow.” The notches or “stops,” as Wither calls them, are the obstacles “Which barre all those that unto Wealth aspire” such as “want of wit,” sloth, pleasure, pride, and “Conscience.”

The perception that Wither's interpretation of the Rollenhagen emblems is arbitrary is implied in the statement that he “used the picture as a starting point for ingenious analysis of its possible meaning … [and] expounds ideas that can be attached to the illustration” (Moseley, p. 24). And this mistaken view may derive from the fact that Wither not infrequently provides two or more different interpretations or applications of the general meaning associated with the visual symbols in the engraving. In Emblem 3,8 two snakes entwined about a laurel tree signifies the idea that wisdom secures lasting honour of noble deeds, which is the notion conveyed by Rollenhagen's couplet subscriptio. The fact that Wither suggests that the two snakes may signify “Morall-wit, and Christian-policie” is certainly the Englishman's addition, but since in bonam partem the snake can mean prudence and wisdom, Wither's specifications are hardly aribitrary.

Rollenhagen's emblem of Virtue strengthened through Unity, “Virtus unita fortior” (2,43) is illustrated by a bound sheaf of arrows which a bear cannot break apart. Wither likewise interprets the general sense as “That Safeguard, which is found in Vnity, but he applies it firstly to “Children of one Sire” whose strife will be their undoing, and secondly more broadly to all human-kind in a spiritual sense:

For, wee are Brethren all; and (by a Bloud
More precious, then our nat'rall Brother-hood).

The one application is a natural extension of the other, which has its authority in Scripture as Wither reminds the reader:

The Psalmist, numerous Off-springs, doth compare
To Quivers, that with Shafts replenish'd are.

In Rollenhagen's collection the leaky barrel is a warning against the untrustworthiness of the whore (2,88). Wither writes a new English motto which makes a more general statement:

The Tongue, which every secret speakes,
Is like a Barrell full of leakes.

(4,38)

Wither begins his epigram with a reiteration of that general message about the “babling Tongue” and later narrows its application to the “trustlesse nature of a whorish woman,” which can hardly be considered arbitrary or something he attached to the original since it in fact derives from Rollenhagen's epigram.

In several cases Wither applies a general emblematic meaning to three or more situations. Emblem 1,15 depicts branches consumed by fire and smoke on an altar. In feeding the flame the wood, i.e. the “Nourisher,” is consumed. Wither applies this to parents who support “thriftlesse Children in unlawfull Pleasures,” to “such Wantons as doe feede / Vnchaste Desires,” and to those who and further the careers of ungrateful men, to good statesmen who secure a thankless commonwealth, and to those who devote their life and health to study only to become “helps to other men.” The fact that Rollenhagen does not make the application of the emblematic motif precise beyond the notion of self-sacrifice does not make Wither's interpretation in any sense arbitary.

A similar situation is encountered in many emblems and one last example must stand for many.²⁸ Emblem 2,6 showing the wind enflaming a lighted torch embodies a similar warning, which is expressed in Wither's English motto as follows:

From that, by which I somewhat am,
The Cause of my Destruction came.

Self-inflicted destruction is the general interpretation which Wither firstly applies broadly:

Thus fares it, in a Thousand other things,
As soone as they the golden Meane exceed; …

He then refers this to successful men who leave virtue behind in the climb upwards; secondly to those who grow wealthy and whose riches then make them uncharitable and “hard-hearted”; then finally to those whose love becomes a physical obsession. I can see no reason to label “arbitrary” such an exercise in the application of a general statement to specific situations.

Wither's treatment of the classical content of Rollenhagen's picturæ bespeaks both care and understanding. He takes pains to explain to his readers some of the classical stories alluded to by a symbolic motif. A case in point is the Ixion emblem (2,7) used as a warning to “Guilty men.” In a few lines Wither refers to the myth according to which the ungrateful Ixion coveted Zeus' wife Hera (Wither refers to her as “Juno”) and thought to possess her, only to find that Zeus had tested his intentions by creating a cloud in the likeness of Hera (Juno). For his treacherous and attempted adultery Ixion was perpetually bound to a flaming wheel. Wither writes:

To gaine a lawlesse favour he desired,
And, in his wicked hopes beguiled was:
For, when to claspe with Iuno, he aspired,
Instead of her, a Clowd, he did embrace.
He, likewise, did incurre a dreadfull Doome, …

In similar manner Wither briefly recounts the story of Ganymede in the opening lines of emblem 3,22, insisting that although this is a fable it none the less contains a “Reall truth,” which he interprets in terms of the Christian doctrine of the purification and regeneration of the soul through baptism:

Though this be but a Fable, of their [“Poets”] feigning,
The Morall is a Reall truth, pertayning
To ev'ry one …
By Ganymed, the Soule is understood,
That's washed in the Purifying flood
Of sacred Baptisme (which doth make her seem
Both pure and beautifull, in God's esteeme).
The Ægle, meanes that Heav'nly Contemplation,
Which, after Washings of Regeneration,
Lifts up the Minde, from things that earthly bee,
To view those Objects, which Faith's Eyes doe see.

Wither treats certain other fables in a similar manner.²⁹

His understanding of the Rollenhagen emblems and his acquaintance with classical traditions is also evidenced by the references he makes to classical figures and motifs which are never mentioned in his sources. Wither expands on the motif of Diana the huntress by re-naming her Cynthia (1,24). As noted above, he tells the story of Ixion's attempted rape of Juno which was never alluded to in the source (2,7). In an emblem on royal power Wither refers to Alexander and Caesar (2,16). The importance of learning is demonstrated by an owl which Wither names “the Bird of Athens” and in this context he discusses knowledge, studies and the “Academ” (2,17). Learning is also the subject of 2,25 where Wither calls the moon “horned Cynthia” and holds up Cato as exemplary. Wither names Mars and Pallas in his English motto and epigram to 2,18, Pegasus and Bucephalus in 2,43, Janus in 3,4, Appelles' table in 3,14, Styx and Acheron in 3,18, Phoebus in 3,25, Titan in 4,1 Alexander and, by implication, Diogenes in 4,14, and Apollo in 4,26. None of these is particularly erudite, but none the less they can hardly be regarded as household terms for the uneducated London reader who is often thought to constitute the audience for the book.

Wither evidently has some readers in mind who will understand these classical references, and such technical terms as “tetragrammation” (2,29 and 4,33). In some emblems he appears to expect the reader to understand Latin. With such phrases as “words inclosing” (4,31)³⁰ he also occasionally refers to the engraved Latin mottoes, which presupposes that some readers would be able to understand them.

The perception that Wither's emblems are arbitrary, and often self-consciously so, appears related to some assumptions about his intended readership. Again Wither's comments in the introduction have supported the view that he had an uneducated, lower middle class reader in mind. In his dedication to King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria he says that his emblems will profit “vulgar Iudgements” (fol *3r) and “common Readers” (“To the Reader,” A1r, A2r). These phrases also re-appear in some emblem epigrams.

There is, however, an economic consideration that argues against the assumption that the lower middle class of London merchants are the prospective purchasers. With its large folio format, 200 copperplate engravings on finely ruled pages, and final lottery with volvelles, A Collection of Emblemes was the most costly emblem book ever produced to that date in England. It would have been beyond the means of members of the lower middle class. That this expensive book was something of a collector's piece is suggested by the fact that over 70 copies are known to have survived. It was evidently a prized possession.

But what was the audience for this book?³¹ This is a complex question which I can only begin to address here. Perhaps the most useful approach is to look for different kinds of evidence in the text. As I have shown, Wither's use of classical allusion, often with no parallel in his source and at times exceeding the requirements of the picturae, suggests an educated, though not erudite readership, as does the occasional reference to the Latin mottoes, which the reader is assumed to understand. The mere fact that Wither carefully identifies the symbolic motifs in the engravings does not of itself prove that the author had a classically illiterate readership in mind. Even Alciato has some epigrams with descriptions of motifs. We must always bear in mind that, unlike an Alciato, Wither proceeded from the complete tripartite emblem which included an engraving. But this is not to say that A Collection of Emblemes is an academic book aiming to impress with its erudition court and intelligentia. There are no scholarly marginalia and apparatus, no name dropping as with Ben Jonson and Thomas Heywood,³² who both parade their learning.

Although he makes no display of learning, Wither is clearly in touch with the humanistic and Christian traditions that inform the emblems that he appropriated from Rollenhagen. This becomes evident in the manner in which he identifies and describes accurately the motifs, their uses and properties, and attendant meanings.

Wither was certainly courting the influential albeit not through the parade of erudition. He dedicated the first of the four books to the King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria, the second to Charles, Prince of Wales and his brother James, Duke of York, the third to Frances, Duchess-Dowager of Richmond and Lennox and her nephew, James, Duke of Lennox, and the fourth to Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Henry, Earl of Holland. In one emblem Wither expresses the hope that the king will “shine” upon him:

Vouchsafe to shine on Mee, my Gracious King,
And then my Wither'd Leaves, will freshly spring.

(3,25)

This and other evidence suggests that Wither had a broader readership in mind than has been recognised so far, a socially and educationally mixed audience.

This reconsideration of the arbitrariness of Wither's emblems, although based on an analysis of Wither's use [of] Rollenhagen's texts and engravings, has also touched on questions of author intention as well as reader reception. These are large and complex issues that await a fuller treatment, and that holds true for most emblem books not only Wither's.

By way of summary, I would say that Wither does very occasionally show some impatience with the source emblems, and he even criticizes the factual basis for one or two motifs. He can show also a certain independence of mind with regard to the sources. But, as I hope to have shown, these are rare occurrences that have been exaggerated by some critics and misinterpreted by others. The closer one reads Wither's emblems, especially in conjunction with their direct and indirect sources, the less one is prepared to accept Freeman's judgements, and the more skeptical one becomes about taking Wither's authorial pronouncements at face value. Authorial statements must always be compared with actual practice, and emblem writers are no exception to this rule. It is clear from his accurate identification and interpretation of complex emblematic and hieroglyphic motifs that Wither knew and understood the tradition in which the Rollenhagen emblems stand. His ready citation of classical names, where these are absent in the originals, bespeaks a comfortable acquaintance with classical traditions. Some of the formulations and apparently off-hand remarks in his epigrams must be seen as rhetorical and educational strategies. It must always remembered that Wither had a mixed readership in mind, as well as a moral and religious purpose.

Notes

1. See, Richard Cavell, “Representative Writing: The Emblem as (Hiero)-glyph” in The European Emblem: Selected Papers from the Glasgow Conference, 11-14 August, 1987, ed. Bernhard F. Scholz, Michael Bath and David Weston (Leiden, New York, Copenhagen and Cologne: Brill, 1990), pp.167-185. I tend to agree with the reviewer who wrote that Cavell's “post-Derridean musings … seem to me to add very little to the insights of the numerous authors he quotes. I would have been more interested in an expansion of his remarks on what Wither does with Rollenhagen's emblem pictures” (Emblematica, 5 forthcoming). He only devotes two pages to Wither's practise as emblem writer.

2. See Michael Bath's “Introduction” to the new facsimile reprint edition of Wither's A Choice of Emblemes (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989).

3. Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem Books (1948; rpt. London: Chatto & Windus, 1967), pp. 235-236.

4. Irma Tramer, Studien zu den Anfängen der puritanischen Emblemliteratur in England: Andrew Willet—George Wither. Diss. Berlin, 1934.

5. Elsewhere Freeman refers to the Rollenhagen emblems as “old fashioned” (p. 142).

6. Alan R. Young, “Thomas Heywood's Pageants: New Forms of Evidence,” RORD [Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama], 30 (1988), 129-148, and His Majesty's Royal Ship. A Critical Edition of Thomas Heywood's “A True Description” (1637) (New York: AMS Press, 1990).

7. Peter M. Daly and Mary V. Silcox, The English Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary Literature, Corpus Librorum Emblematum (Munich, London, New York, Paris: K. G. Saur, 1990), and Peter M. Daly and Mary V. Silcox, The Modern Critical Reception of the English Emblem, Corpus Librorum Emblematum (Munich, London, New York, Paris: K. G. Saur), forthcoming.

8. See also 1,43.

9. “George Wither suggests just this multivalency, in his flat footed way, in the exasperated response to the cut he took over from Rollenhagen as No.XLIX of Book 2 …” Charles Moseley, “Introduction” to A Century of Emblems. An Introductory Anthology (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989), n. 22. However, in the same book Moseley offers quite a different interpretation of the same comment by Wither: “His comments on the difficulty of interpretation illustrate one aspect of the intellectual appeal of the emblem, and his reference to ‘Hieroglyphicks’ … reminds us of its authority” (p. 225). Moseley's comment applies more to the humanistically-schooled reader of Rollenhagen than it does to Wither's epigram.

10. Claude Paradin, Devises heroiques (first ed. Lyons, 1551).

11. See his “Introduction” to the new facsimile reprint edition by Scolar Press, 1989.

12. “Der Fragmentcharakter emblematischer Auslegungen und die Rolle des Lesers. Gabriel Rollenhagens Epigramme,” in Deutsche Barocklyrik, ed. Martin Bircher and Alois M. Haas (Bern & Munich: Francke, 1973), pp. 49-64.

13. Albrecht Schöne, Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock (Stuttgart: Beck, 1964, 2nd ed. 1968).

14. Dietrich Walter Jöns, Das “Sinnen-Bild.” Studien zur allegorischen Bildlichkeit bei Andreas Gryphius (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1966).

15. See especially Wolfgang Harms' overview article “Emblem / Emblemtik” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. 9 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1982), 552-58.

16. Carsten-Peter Warncke, Sprechende Bilder—sichtbare Worte, “Wolfenbüttler Forschungen,” vol. 33 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1987).

17. See Peter M. Daly, Emblem Theory. Recent German Contributions to the Characterization of the Emblem Genre (Nendeln: Kraus Thomson Organization, 1979) and Literature in the Light of the Emblem. Structural Parallels between the Emblem and Literature in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979).

18. The whole question of background scenes, which could also contribute to this re-assessment of arbitrariness, deserves separate treatment.

19. “Es läßt sich jedoch beweisen, daß Wither Rollenhagens Text, obwohl er ihn verschweigt, gekannt und zum Teil benutzt hat” (p. 34).

20. For a discussion of the Alciato emblem on which Rollenhagen's emblem is based, see Peter M. Daly, “Alciato's Emblem ‘Concordiae symbolum’: A Medusa's Mirror for Rulers?” German Life and Letters, 44 (1988), 349-362.

21. An indication of the many editions carrying this motif forward will be found in Daly, “Alciato's Emblem ‘Concordiae symbolum’: A Medusa's Mirror for Rulers?” (see note 20 above).

22. Curiously, the art historian Carsten-Peter Warncke misidentifies the four birds as crows, although one has a long beak foreign to the crow family. See his facsimile edition of Rollenhagen, p. 120. Also discussing the pre-history of the motif, he fails to mention the most immediate Alciato source, which is one of the editions printed by Christian Wechel in Paris or his imitators.

23. The translation is by P.S. as it appears in his edition The Heroicall Devises of M. Claudius Paradin (London, 1591).

24. Claude Paradin, Devises heroiques (first ed. Lyons, 1551), translated by P.S. as The Heroicall Devises of M. Claudius Paradin (London, 1591) and Jacob Typotius Symbola divina et humana (Prague, 1601-1603).

25. A similar situation will be encountered in 4,40 where Wither appears to complain impatiently of the original meaning intended for the motif of two cornucopias tied to a wheel of fortune:

    For, whatsoere their Autors understood,
    These Emblems, now, shall speake as I thinke good.

    But the resulting descriptions and interpretations are not arbitrary.

26. Among the rare instances are the following: 3,36 and 4,15,

27. The following epigrams identify and interpret the visual motifs: 1,2 1,5, 1,6, 1,9, 1,24, 1,30, 1,39,,43, 1,45, 1,47, 2,4, 2,5, 2,6, 2,7, 2,20, 2,21, 2,24, 2,29, 2,32, 2,33, 2,35, 2,37, 2,38, 2,41, 2,43, 2,47, 2,48, 2,49, 3,1, 3,2, 3,3, 3,4, 3,6, 3,10, 3,11, 3,12, 3,13, 3,14, 3,15, 3,16, 3,17, 3,18, 3,20, 3,21, 3,23, 3,25, 3,27, 3,29, 3,30, 3,32, 3,34, 3,35, 3,41, 3,42, 3,43, 3,48, 3,49, 4,1, 4,2, 4,5, 4,6, 4,7, 4,11, 4,12, 4,13, 4,16, 4,18, 4,19, 4,20, 4,21, 4,24, 4,25, 4,27, 4,28, 4,32, 4,33, 4,35, 4,36, 4,37, 4,40, 4,41, 4,46.

28. See also 1,11, 1,18, 1,20, 3,31, 3,41, 4,3, 4,11, 4,21, 4,28, 4,44, 4,45.

29. For instance, he narrates the story of a crow putting stones in water pot to get water (2,2) and a fool with goslings (4,17).

30. See also 4,27: “And, by the Words about it, wee are taught / To keep our latter ending still in thought.”

31. The only attempt to investigate Wither's emblems in the light of his intended readership was undertaken by Wolfgang Harms in an essay which contrasts Rollenhagen's brief epigrams with Wither's 30-line “illustrations.” Unlike Joachim Camerarius and Jan David, Rollenhagen does not provide full information on the tradition of the emblem and its intended meaning; rather, the knowledgeable reader receives but an indication through some key words [“Stichworte”]. Wither has a different reader in mind and a different purpose. Harms notes that the brevity of Rollenhagen's epigrams is striking when one considers that they appeared at a time when the tendency was to expand the textual parts of the emblem. Rather than interpreting this brevity as an indication of enigmatic intention, Harms argues convincingly that Rollenhagen counted on the intellectual activity of the reader. His mottoes and epigrams are closely interwoven, but more importantly, the background scenes in the picturae provide clues, one might say glosses, on the meaning of the emblem as a whole.

32. Heywood's Hierarchie of Blessed Angels is likewise a large, illustrated, folio work but full of allusions and references to learned authorities, which include Alciato and Valeriano.