[In the following introduction, Freeman maintains that Wither found rich meanings in the engravings in his collection and composed verses to accompany and explain them that were well-suited to the emblem form.]

George Wither's A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne, was first published in 1635. Evidently the book was a long time a-making. The engravings which Wither expounds were made for and first printed in Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum by Gabriel Rollenhagen (Utrecht, 1611? and 1613).¹ According to Wither's statement (A1^v), a copy of this book came to his hands not long after publication, “almost twentie yeares past.” Then, “for mine owne pleasure,” he wrote “Illustrations” upon a few of them and showed these poems to his friends. The latter “were so much delighted in the Gravers art, and, in those Illustrations … that they requested mee to Moralize the rest. Which I condiscended unto: And, they had beene brought to view many yeares agoe, but that the Copper Prints (which are now gotten) could not be procured out of Holland,² upon any reasonable Conditions.” Clearly this book would have been more up-to-date if it had appeared contemporaneously with the emblem books of Whitney (1586) and Peacham (1612), with which it has much in common. By 1635 Quarles was offering a new and more popular style, focused upon the relation between the infant Christ and the soul of man.

Although Wither's Collection consists of the same two hundred emblems as Rollenhagen's Nucleus (1613),³ the treatment is very different. Wither thought Rollenhagen's verses “meane”: “the Collector of the said Emblems … was neither so well advised in the Choice of them, nor so exact in observing the true Proprieties belonging to every Figure, as hee might have beene.” Rollenhagen's text consists solely of two (occasionally four) brief lines in Latin, Greek, or Italian embodying the words of the motto. Their purpose is chiefly expository; the relation of the picture to the motto which surrounds it is explained, but none of the concepts which Wither introduces in his lengthy verses occur. A few examples will demonstrate what Rollenhagen does with his pictures. The image of the compasses (no. 9, second century; Wither's IX, Book 3) carries the motto “Labore et constantia” and is accompanied by the verses:

Omnia perficies constante labore, nec vllum
          Difficile est, illi qui benē pergit, opus.(4)

The emblem of the pelican (no. 20, second century; Wither's XX, Book 3) has the motto “Pro lege et pro grege” and the verses run

Dux, Vitam, bonus, et pro lege, et pro grege ponit,
          Haec veluti pullos sanguine spargit avis.(5)

These Latin couplets do little more than expound the mottoes, although occasionally (as in the second example) they also apply the idea suggested by the mottoes. The Nucleus is primarily a picture book in which the meaning of the illustrations is set forth. Rollenhagen says in his address “To the Honest and Sympathetic Reader”—adapting a tag from Horace—that his text is intended for those who are capable of studying the emblems: “Scribimus indocti doctique Poemata passim.” Beyond that he will not go.

It is hardly surprising that Wither found richer meanings in the engravings and in the mottoes attached to them. Many of his emblems follow the example of his source and employ the mottoes as a starting point. Each page is headed with a couplet that indicates the theme upon which the content of the poem turns. Thus the image of the compasses is headed with

Good Hopes, we best accomplish may,
By lab'ring in a constant-Way.

The thirty-line poem expounds the necessity of perseverance in executing an intended task. Similarly, the image of the pelican in her piety⁶ is introduced with this couplet:

Our Pelican, by bleeding, thus,
Fulfill'd the Law, and cured Vs.

The poem is concerned with the atonement, a topic which is elaborated by the representation of the crucifixion in the background of the engraving.⁷ One feature included in several poems (with this among them) is a concluding prayer (cf. XXXVI, Book 2; XXVIII, Book 4). In addition to such prayers, Wither also inserted various biblical quotations paraphrased in couplets. For instance, Illustration XLIV, Book 2, which describes the work of the ploughman, ends

Yea, they that in Good-workes their life imploy;
Although, they sowe in teares, shall reape in joy.

Another example occurs in Illustration XV, Book 3: the final couplet in this study of the duties of the clergy runs

And us from harmes, and error he will keepe,
For, Hee that guardeth Isr'ell doth not sleepe.

Similarly, Wither includes miscellaneous scriptural references—for instance, the allusion to the poor wise man who saved a city when the men of war could find no way to do so (II, Book 3).

In some of his poems, Wither (unlike the typical emblematist) writes in the first person, deprecating his own weaknesses and failures and expressing his own aspirations—which, to be sure, are typical enough. The moral problems which, he says, beset him beset every man. The marigold represents the ideal which he knows he ought to pursue, but which he neglects for the sake of worldly interests. Flowers, he realizes, “Have spirits, farre more generous, then ours” and aspire to the sun, drooping when the morning light declines (I, Book 4). Knowledge, he thinks, has been limited to man's capacity; he is warned by the motto “Noli altum sapere” (XIII, Book 3) not to seek for higher learning.

Nor into those forbidden secrets peepe,
Which God-Almighty, to himselfe doth keepe.
Remember what our Father Adam found,
When he for Knowledge, sought beyond his bound.
For, doubtlesse, ever since, both good and ill
Are left with Knowledge, intermingled still.

Wither was particularly fond of one paradox which reflects his own sense of frustrated ambition: the withered branch that will eventually become a great tree (IX, Book 4). Poverty holds back the man who possesses singular power, so that he cannot utilize his genius (XLII, Book 3).⁸ Wither expresses this topic in highly personal terms, recalling the affliction—which has attacked man in all ages—of thinking his own gifts strong enough to enable him to perform great achievements (XLII, Book 3).

          Perhaps I dream'd so once: But, God be prais'd,
The Clog which kept me downe, from being rais'd,
Was chain'd so fast, that (if such Dreames I had)
My thoughts, and longings, are not now so mad.
For, plaine I see, that, had my Fortunes brought
Such Wealth, at first, as my small Wit hath sought;
I might my selfe, and others, have undone,
Instead of Courses, which I thought to runne.
I finde my Povertie, for mee was fit;
Yea, and a Blessing, greater than my Wit:

This moral conception is typical of Wither's puritanical outlook and occurs frequently in the initial couplets which set the tone of the verses attached to the plates. Wither often addresses the reader directly, in order to emphasize the point of the emblem (e.g., XXXVII, Book 2).

Wither added something to the attraction of his book by inventing a game—the “lotteries”—which buyers of the book might play. It is his own idea: there are no lotteries in Rollenhagen, but there is a precedent in Jean David's Jesuit emblem book Veridicus Christianus (Antwerp, 1601), where references to the four gospels are indexed by the use of a turning wheel. On the last leaf of Wither's book there are two large wood engravings, at the center of which movable pointers are affixed. The circle at the top of the page is divided into fifty-six segments. The first fifty segments represent the fifty emblems of which each book is made up; those above fifty are designated “blanks.” The quadrangle at the bottom is divided into four parts, corresponding to the four books. By revolving both pointers, the player selects at random one emblem number (or a blank number) and one book number. He then refers to the appropriate part of the poem at the end of the book he selected (“The First Lotterie,” etc.) and finally—unless he has drawn a blank—to the emblem on which it comments, which is presumed to offer moral advice applicable to him individually. Wither's introduction of the scheme explains its advantages (A2^v).

Some Games were ever in use; ever, I thinke, will be, and for ought I know, ever may be without exception. And, I believe, this, Recreation, will be as harmlesse as any, if it be used according to my Intentions. For, my meaning is not, that any should use it as an Oracle, which could signifie, infallibly, what is divinely alloted; but, to serve onely for a Morall Pastime. …

Yet, if any one shall draw that Lot wherein his Secret vices are reproved; or some good Counsels proposed, which in his owne understanding are pertinent to his welfare, let not such as those, passe them over as meere Casualties to them; for, whatsoever these Lots are to others, or in themselves, they are to all these, made pertinent in such cases, both by their particular Knowledges and Occasions.

Wither insists that he has not included this game in order to reprove men's vices for personal reasons. Those who take part in the lottery, he argues disarmingly, must be regarded as responsible for exposing their own follies to the bystanders if their guilt is recognized. They should be ashamed of their failings.

That the device proved popular is evident from the condition of surviving copies.⁹ Wither's book is essentially social, and all those who joined in reading it took part consciously in a psychological exercise. Surprise and ignorance were jointly involved, and it is easy to re-create the kind of society—puritanical and amused—in which the game was played.

The subjects of many emblems are widely familiar. Various mythical figures and classical gods and goddesses appear: Sisyphus, Ixion, Hercules choosing between virtue and pleasure. Most common are topics used by Alciati: Arion on the dolphin, Occasion with flying forelock standing upon a wheel on the sea, the salamander, the palm tree, the ship making for harbor.

Wither was, of course, bound by the engravings confronting him, and he did not always find it easy to explain some of the more obscure. “I had,” he says (XLV, Book 3),

These Figures (as you see them) ready made
By others; and, I meane to morallize
Their Fancies; not to mend what they devise. …
This Picture (though I like it not) displayes
The Morall, which the Motto doth imply;
And, thus, it may be sayd to signifie. …
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.

On one occasion (XXXVII, Book 2), Wither describes at length a plate which seems extremely complicated.

Upon an Altar, in this Emblem, stands
A Burning-heart; and, therewithall, you see
Beneath Deaths-head, a paire of Loving-hands,
Which, close, and fast-united, seeme to be.
These moderne Hieroglyphickes (vulgarly
Thus bundled up together) may afford
Good-meanings, with as much Propriety,
As best, with common Iudgements, will accord.

This example is a reasonable appeal to the use of the intelligence, which was one of the characteristics of emblematic devices. Wither then proceeds to expound the meaning and the moral application of the idea. It “may imply,” we are told, that union should remain steadfast but falsehood will be exposed at death. This has been plausibly interpreted, but there are other plates also for which Wither feels he is responsible to provide an explanation. The picture which consists of a crown above three intertwined crescents (XLIX, Book 2) forces Wither into a tentative explanation. To him it represents the church militant, sanctified, and ultimately triumphant. Yet he insists upon the difficulty imposed by the picture.

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;
Who, many times, before this Taske is ended,
Must picke out Moralls, where was none intended.

He then explains that the “three Moones in one” intimates the “holy-Churches threefold blest estate,” that is, its existence among human beings, among the sanctified dead, and ultimately in the heavenly world of the life hereafter. He has tackled here a problematical illustration, with some assistance from Rollenhagen's motto, “Donec totū impleat orbē,” translated by Wither as:

Shee shall increase in glory, still,
Vntill her light, the world, doth fill.

The topic is evidently based upon the nature of the church, but it is essential for Wither to elaborate the implications of the engraving. Certain other examples force him to apply the picture and its motto to the idea underlying the emblem as a whole. He has a considerable dislike for emblems which are too complicated (XII, Book 3).

When Emblems, of too many parts consist,
Their Author was no choice Emblematist:
But, is like those, that wast whole howres, to tell
What, in three minutes, might be said as well.

Nevertheless, his primary concern was to gather a moral conclusion from the engraving before him or, as he says, to find in it the kernel. In V, Book 2, he states that he takes less care to unfold his author's mind or to make comments upon it than to find a practical moral application of the hieroglyphical sense of the text. This attitude runs all through his view of his sources, and the chief merit of the volume is that it conveys his belief in the advantage of the form he has adopted.

Some of the poems offer remarkedly well-argued statements in which the substance of the emblem is set forth convincingly. One (XVII, Book 3) provides a beautifully balanced study of the attributes of the serpent and the dove, combining intellect and gentleness in the composition of a human character. This ends with a prayer for union of the two in a single virtue of prudent innocence. Another poem (XXIV, Book 3) turns on the art of writing. Rollenhagen had made a good pair of lines on the motto “Nulla dies sine linea,” and Wither elaborates the topic by suggesting that great authors can produce famous works by devoting themselves to writing a single line a day or by occasionally spending a whole hour in composition.

No one could insist that Wither is a great poet. Indeed, his contemporary reputation was decidedly low. Aubrey records the anecdote that Sir John Denham appealed for Wither's life when he was captured fighting for the Parliamentarians by arguing that “Whilest G. W. lived he should not be the worst poet in England.” He attained a place in The Dunciad, as “wretched Withers [sic].” Lamb could find little more to say for him but that he possessed “a hearty homeliness of manner and plain moral speaking.” This is conspicuously true in the Emblemes. They are written either in riming couplets or in alternately riming lines, but Wither achieves no particularly strong effect in either form. At best he could write a religious poem which concluded with a moving couplet (XV, Book 2):

A contrite Heart, is that, and, that alone,
Which God with love, and pitie, lookes upon.
          Such he affects; therefore (Oh Lord) to thee;
          Such, let my Heart, and, such, my Spirit bee.

Brevity and wit are rare in the verses. As Lamb rightly says, there is plainness of exposition in all the emblems, but the poetry lacks drama or excitement. What it does possess is a gift of exposition suitable for the form, whether obscure or obvious. One might add that it also possesses a genuine quality of emotion. More than that one cannot expect Wither to provide.

Notes

1. See John Landwehr, Emblem Books in the Low Countries, 1554-1949 (Utrecht, 1970), p. 573; Mario Praz, Studies in Seventeenth Century Imagery, 2d ed., enl. (Rome, 1964), pp. 476-77.

2. Whether by this Wither means that the engravings were printed in Holland and the letterpress added in London can hardly be determined; perhaps “Copper Prints” is only an inexact way of saying “copper plates.” Wherever printed, the engravings and the letterpress were of course printed on different presses, as the overprinting of the engraving in some plates (e.g., IV, Book 1) shows. The engraved title page for Wither's book is the work of William Marshall (fl. 1630-1650), a prolific artist who worked for many publishers of the period.

3. And in the same order except for the interchange of 11 and 19, 14 and 22 in the first century. Arabic numerals, indicating the sequence in Rollenhagen, appear on the upper right side of the engravings. The engravings are, as Wither says, the work of the well-known Dutch engraver Crispin van de Passe (1565?-1637), the father of a celebrated family of artists at Utrecht during the early seventeenth century. D. Franken (L'Oeuvre grave de van de Passe [Amsterdam, 1881], p. 263) thinks that the plates are actually a collaboration of two or three of his sons and a daughter working under the father's superintendence. In Wither's book a few of the plates show wear or slight alteration. In no. 64 (first century) in Rollenhagen, an insect flutters near a candle flame, and the picture is encircled with the words “Cosi De Ben Amar Porto Tormēto.” In Wither XIV, Book 2, the insect and the candle rays are both wanting and the motto is changed to “Cvi Bono.” He says (A1^v) the verses were “cut off from the Plates” at some time before they were reused.

4. “Carry out all things by constant labor, nor let whoever wishes to proceed well fail with work that is difficult.”

5. “A good ruler lays down his life for the law and for the people, just as the bird sprinkles her blood upon her children.”

6. In his translation of Henri Estienne's L'Art de Faire les Devises (Paris, 1645), Thomas Blount uses the pelican as a typical emblem (The Art of Making Devises [London, 1646]). The “life-rend'ring” pelican occurs, with the motto “pro lege, rege, et grege,” in a device used in several different forms by the printers Richard Jugge and William White (McKerrow and Ferguson, Printers' and Publishers' Devices, 1485-1640 [London, 1913; reprinted 1949], no. 123, 125, 225, 228).

7. Comparison with Whitney's emblem of the pelican (p. 87) shows the greater elaboration of van de Passe's engraving. In the foreground they are very much alike, but van de Passe has added significant background. He shows streams of Christ's blood spewing on His worshipers below. Here is poignant human extension of the bare symbolic picture found in Whitney, and it is often this quality that gives van de Passe's engravings rare distinction.

8. This particular emblem was used as an instance of the loss of opportunity to those who hoped for an outstanding future but were incapacitated by poverty or as an illustration of the prevention of human genius from finding its full outlet. See Robert Dodsley, A Muse in Livery (London, 1732), which employs the emblem as a frontispiece. It was also introduced into the jacket of Rayner Unwin's The Rural Muse (London, 1954).

9. Use has taken its toll of the last leaf in many copies of the book, but the pointers are intact and in working order in the Newberry copy (reproduced in this volume) as well as in the British Museum (STC 25900^b), the Dyce, the Folger, and two of the Harvard copies, and no doubt in others.