The very same copy from which, by the great favour of its owner, the Rev. Thomas Corser, our photolith fac-simile reprint was taken, is the one which Lodge thought to be unique, and which was in his hands when he wrote the memoir of Henry Wriothesley. Written in pencil by Mr. Corser, we found within the cover of it the following record:

"This very fine copy belonged to the late Edmund Lodge, Esq., and is particularly noticed in the Memoir of Henry Earl of Southampton, where he has quoted the metrical lines which accompany his Arms, and those of the Emblem annexed." "From Lodge it was purchased at the sale by Mr. Bent, of the Aldine Chambers, Paternoster-row, for the sum of £13. 10S."

We add, with some degree of pride in the excellence and rarity of our exemplar, that when Mr. Corser's copy was sold by public auction, March 19, 1869, the final bidding was no less a sum than thirty-six pounds sterling.

The authorship of the Mirror of Majestie remains somewhat in doubt, but Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in a work which he edited from Mr. Huth's very valuable collections,-Poetical Miscellanies,-interprets H. G. to be the ciphers of Sir Henry Goodere, an attendant on King James. In a note at sign. H H verso, on An Elegy at sign. DD 4, the editor remarks:

"Sir H. G. It is conjectured that these initials belong to Sir Henry Goodyeer, whom the editor inclines to regard as the author of a very rare volume of Emblems, The Mirrour of Majesty, 1618. Jonson, among his Epistles, has one to Goodyere, and at the end of Drayton's Legends, 1596, 8vo., is a sonnet in praise of the author by H. G. Esquire."

It depends on the interpretation we give to the elegy in the Poetical Miscellanies, whether we assign it to King James's reign, or later; but the lament is probably over the early death of Prince Henry, when the author asks:

"Will not he think that, by lamenting thus
The leaving of these kingdoms and of us,
We do not to his new-got Kingdom strive,
Where he is crown'd, his fathers both alive?"

The same notion that Prince Henry has a "a new-got

kingdom," where, if not literally crowned, he lives in blessedness, occurs in the Mirror's 4th Emblem, p. 7, dedicated to his brother Charles :

"When Peace (suspecting he would warre inferre,)
Tooke Henry hence, to liue aboue with her,
She bade Ioue's Bird returne from 's quicke convoy
Of his faire soule, left in Heav'ns lasting Ioy."

Seth, too, appears to be King James himself, eulogized and glorified. The Mirrour, Embleme 1, celebrates the sovereign as REX ET SACERDOS DEI, King and Priest of God, and thus sounds his praise :

"Earth can but make a King of earth partaker

But Knowledge makes him neerest like his maker.
For man's meere power not built on Wisdomes fort,
Dos rather pluck downe kingdomes than support
Perfectly mixt, thus Power and Knowledge moue
About thy just designes, ensphear'd with loue ;
Which (as a glasse) serue neighbour-Kings to see
How best to follow, though not equall thee."

The Elegy speaks of the work of Nature, and assures

us,―

"She made our world, then us; she made his head;

Our sense and motion from his brain were bred:

And as two great destructions have and must
Deface and bring to nothing that of dust,
So our true world, this princes head and brain,

A wasteful deluge did and fires sustain.
But as foresight of two such wastes made Seth
Erect two columns t'outlive that world's death,
Against that flood and fire, of brick and stone,
In which he did by his provision
Preserve from barbarism and ignorance
Th' ensuing ages, and did re-advance
All Sciences, which he engraved there,
So by our Seth's provision have we here
Two pillars left: where whatsoe'er we prized
In our lost world is well characterized.
The list'ning to this sovereign harmony
Tames my grief's rage. That now as Elegy
Made at the first for mourning, hath been since
Employ'd on love, joy, and magnificence;
So this particular elegy shall close

(Meant for my grief for him), with joy for those.

66

'SIR H G."

The first trace I have found of the initials H. G. is at the end of a sonnet in Michaell Drayton's Tragicall legend of Robert duke of Normandy, surnamed Short-thigh,-with the Legend of Matilda the chast.-And the Legend of Piers Gaveston. London 1596-16o.

"The vision of Matilda

Methought I saw upon Matildas Tombe,

Her wofull ghost, which Fame did now awake,
And cr-'d her passage frõ Earth's hollow Wonibe,
To view this Legend, written for her sake:

No sooner shee her Sacred Name had seene.
Whom her kind friend had chose to grace his story,
But wiping her chast teares from her sad eyne,
She seem'd to tryumph, in her double glory.

Glory shee might, that his admired Muse,
Had with such method fram'd her just complaint :
But proud she was, that reason made him chuse,
To patronize the same to such a Saint:

In whom her rarest Vertues may be shown
Though Poets skil shold faile to make the known.
"H. G. ESQUIRE."

In a description on Latin rhymes by Ralph Calphut (Thomas Cariat), of Brasenose College, Oxford, of "a philosophical feast" there, Sep. 2, 1611, among the guests` named as present are Sir Henry Goodere, John West, Hugh Holland, and Inigo Jones."

Among his other works, the device to which was a duck, with the motto Non altum peto, Drayton's Odes, with other Lyrick Poesies, were published in folio in 1619, the year after the Mirrovr of Maiestie. The Odes bear this dedication, pp. 277-8:

"TO THE WORTHY KNIGHT AND MY NOBLE FRIEND, SIR HENRY GOODERE, a Gentleman of his Maiesties Priuie Chamber."

"THESE Lyrick Pieces, short, and few,

Most worthy Sir, I send to you,

To reade them, be not wearie :

They may become JOHN HEWES his Lyre,
Which oft at Powlsworth by the fire
Hath made vs grauely merry.

See Mrs. Everett Green's Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1611-1618.

"Belieue it, he must have the Trick
Of Ryming, with Inuention quick,
That should due Lyricks well :
But how I haue done in this kind,
Though in my selfe I cannot find,
Your Iudgement best can tell.

"Th' old British BARDS, vpon their Harpes,
For falling Flatts, and rising Sharpes,
That curiously were strung;

To stirre their Youth to Warlike Rage,
Or their wyld Furie to asswage,

In these loose Numbers sung.

"No more I for Fooles Censures passe,
Then for the braying of an Asse,

Nor once mine Eare will lend them :
If you but please to take in gree
These Odes, sufficient 'tis to mee:
Your liking can commend them.
"Yours

"MICH. DRAYTON."

Out of these materials, I believe, we are not able to construct absolute conviction. But whether Sir Henry Goodere be the author or not, certain it is that the initials H. G. were attached to the original Mirrovr of Maiestie in 1618; and now, in 1870, this introductory notice of a fac-simile reprint is signed with the same monogram. The metempsychoses for 250 years, through at least seven generations, from the author to the editor, I leave to be explained by some one who, like Joseph Glanvill, an early defender of the Royal Society of England, affirms,—

"The sages of old live again in us." "We are our re-animated ancestours, and antedate their resurrection."

H. G.

II.

ANNOTATIONS ON THE ARMORIAL BEARINGS AND NOBLE PERSONAGES.

ERALDRY, in its expressive symbolism embodying a wide range of thought in the visible form of a simple image, speaks the same language as Emblems-possessing many features in common and oftentimes so closely interwoven as scarcely to be distinguishable, it ought rather to be considered as a branch of the same subject than a distinct science. Each speaks laconically to the mind through the eye, by the agency of figurative imagery conveying distinctive ideas, and both seem to have had their origin in that love of symbolical expression which in the rudest conditions of barbarism not less than in the most advanced stages of civilization has been one of the component elements of the human mind.

The two extremes of the human family seem almost to stand side by side in their adoption of this heraldic symbolism; indeed nature had hardly imparted to man the instinct of self-preservation when he found it necessary to impress some device or cognizance upon his own tribe, that he might distinguish it from those which were inimical to him. Our knowledge of the habits of barbarous nations leads to the conclusion that in the most primitive stages of society the chiefs of different tribes, in the ignorance of written language, adopted some such emblematic devices as would convey in the simplest manner an idea of their predominant qualities or peculiar characteristics. Symbolical figures are known to have been emblazoned upon the

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