and a bitless bridle.1 On the left of the page, at the right of Nemesis, stands a Rosicrucian philosopher, as the roses on his shoes indicate, and behind him a knight in armor, and on the left an actor, as his buskins and Roman helmet show, with the left arm extended toward the globe, and his right grasping the shaft of a spear, his sword on the wrong side and entangling his legs, and the single spur on his left heel. To the extreme right is the same philosopher holding the spear shaft strongly with both hands, its end raised to the wheel of fortune, the confusing whirl of which it has arrested for us to examine, and we see upon it the "mirror," which he held "up to nature," "the rod for the back of fools"; the "basin" for "guilty blood" in "Andronicus"; "the fool's bauble" the grave-digger's "dirty shovel" in "Hamlet"; "the Gentleman's Hat," his own; the "peer's coronet;" the royal crown of England, and the "imperial crown of Henry Seventh," the subject of Bacon's history. The bitless bridle, the broken spear, the staff in his own possession are prophetic, and easy of interpretation. It may be illuminating to note that Nemesis is also the goddess of retribution, and under this aspect is represented with a forbidding face, and holding a bitted bridle. The next title-page is that of Bacon's "Augmentis Scien 1 Baudoin's Emblems, 1638. |