[viii] [ix] [ix] PREFACE. PREFACE. This small volume is the latest of above three thousand[1] of a similar kind, which, under the general title of "Books of Emblems" have followed in the wake of the Libellus Emblematum,[2] a work, much resembling a child's primer in outward appearance, published at Augsburg in A.D. 1532, and composed by Andrea Alciati, a famous lawyer, antiquary, and litterateur of Milan. This book consisted of nearly a hundred Latin Epigrams, some original, some translated or paraphrased from the Greek, and each accompanied by a[x] rude woodcut illustration. Alciati was the first author who gave the name of Emblem to this form of expressing his ideas: and the notion for so doing was suggested by the original meaning of the word Emblem, which signifies anything inserted. The Greeks and Romans used to insert small pictures or bas-reliefs in the sides of vases, drinking-cups, and various other utensils: these little works of art were called Emblems: they were sometimes accompanied by mottoes or verses, and often made removable at pleasure, so that they formed no necessary part of the article which they adorned. [x] Alciati, therefore, considering that the illustrations formed no necessary portion of his book, and that they were only inserted, as he says himself, to make his moral and philosophical teaching more attractive, gave to his collection of poems and pictures the name of "Book of Emblems." This idea took greatly with the public of his day, and for upwards of two hundred years afterwards, and generated a class of books now reckoned among the fossils of literature, which may be dug out of ancient libraries, or procured by chance here and there through the agency of those useful purveyors, the publishers of Catalogues of second-hand works. [xi]Now Emblem books have had their day, and are no longer regarded as a means of instruction or
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