and engraved their apophthegms and mottoes, trapped
and caparisoned their mules and sumpter-horses, apparelled
their pages, quartered their breeches, bordered their
gloves, fringed the curtains and valances of their
beds, painted their ensigns, composed songs, and,
which is worse, placed many deceitful jugglings and
unworthy base tricks undiscoveredly amongst the very
chastest matrons and most reverend sciences.
In the like darkness and mist of ignorance are wrapped
up these vain-glorious courtiers and name-transposers,
who, going about in their impresas to signify esperance
(that is, hope), have portrayed a sphere—and
birds’ pennes for pains—l’ancholie
(which is the flower colombine) for melancholy—a
waning moon or crescent, to show the increasing or
rising of one’s fortune—a bench rotten
and broken, to signify bankrupt—non and
a corslet for non dur habit (otherwise non durabit,
it shall not last), un lit sans ciel, that is, a bed
without a tester, for un licencie, a graduated person,
as bachelor in divinity or utter barrister-at-law;
which are equivocals so absurd and witless, so barbarous
and clownish, that a fox’s tail should be fastened
to the neck-piece of, and a vizard made of a cowsherd
given to everyone that henceforth should offer, after
the restitution of learning, to make use of any such
fopperies in France.
By the same reasons (if reasons I should call them,
and not ravings rather, and idle triflings about words),
might I cause paint a pannier, to signify that I am
in pain—a mustard-pot, that my heart tarries
much for’t—one pissing upwards for
a bishop—the bottom of a pair of breeches
for a vessel full of fart-hings—a codpiece
for the office of the clerks of the sentences, decrees,
or judgments, or rather, as the English bears it, for
the tail of a codfish—and a dog’s
turd for the dainty turret wherein lies the love of
my sweetheart. Far otherwise did heretofore the
sages of Egypt, when they wrote by letters, which
they called hieroglyphics, which none understood who
were not skilled in the virtue, property, and nature
of the things represented by them. Of which
Orus Apollon hath in Greek composed two books, and
Polyphilus, in his Dream of Love, set down more.
In France you have a taste of them in the device or
impresa of my Lord Admiral, which was carried before
that time by Octavian Augustus. But my little
skiff alongst these unpleasant gulfs and shoals will
sail no further, therefore must I return to the port
from whence I came. Yet do I hope one day to
write more at large of these things, and to show both
by philosophical arguments and authorities, received
and approved of by and from all antiquity, what, and
how many colours there are in nature, and what may
be signified by every one of them, if God save the
mould of my cap, which is my best wine-pot, as my
grandam said.
Of that which is signified by the colours white and
blue.
