Notes & Queries: Bird of Liberty

Hint: It's not him.

Repeat visitors to this blog will know that The Spectacled Avenger’s favourite book is Lord Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. I have a particular fascination with the engravings commissioned for the second edition (1714), executed by Simon Gribelin. These consisted of a large frontispiece plate for each of the three volumes of the work, with elaborate headpiece engravings designed for the individual treatises that comprise its entirety. Most (but not all) of these engravings have a tripartite structure, and all of them are intended as emblematic illustrations of key parts of the text.

I was lately pondering the significance of the storks in the bottom panel of the triptych to the plate for Volume I:

Why storks? They must have some significance. In interpreting the meaning of Shaftesbury’s emblems, there are, generally speaking, two loci classici. One is the so-called “Virtuoso-Coppy Book” or set of detailed instructions that Shaftesbury sent from Naples (where he was dying) to Gribelin in London. The second is a 1974 paper by Felix Paknadel, “Shaftesbury’s Illustrations of Characteristics”.

Turning to Paknadel, here is what he notes about this panel:

“Shaftesbury had thought of the picture of ‘a boy holding the cap of Liberty in a triumphing manner’, but then decided to keep the boys for the ‘treatise plates’, which were to be of a lighter character. The lower border represents social harmony [on one side ‘two right hands meeting and clasped’ above the three altars of different forms; on the other side, the emblems of music] and prosperity, mainly in the oval frame [night and day-the face of Apollo at the top, that of Diana at the bottom abundance reigns-cornucopias, a vine growing up a tree, the Rotundo and a ‘palace in good repair’, the caduceus with two wings, the two storks ‘which with their wings seem to support the work above’]. The motto ‘FEL.TEM.’ is the abbreviation of ‘Felicia Tempora’…. The social implication of the whole emblem is clear. Freedom, maintained by a wise ruler, breeds social harmony and fosters the development of civilization.” (p. 299)

No enlightenment here; just the laconic mention that the storks exist and that they support the larger panel above it (not reproduced here). As a gloss, this is no more informative than the “Virtuoso-Coppy-Book”, indeed, it simply reproduces the relevant passage from the Copy-Book. The latter also fails to explain the significance of the storks, though it does mention that they are significant (“essential”):

“Note that in the mere Grotesque-Work of this Under-Border there are four Pieces essential viz^t. The Two Storks which with their Wings seem to support the Work above, and between their allmost joyning Bills (just at the Top the Oval frame-Work) the Head or rather Face of an APOLLO…” (Virtuoso-Coppy-Book 184)

(Sadly, it is worth mentioning that the design for this Volume I frontispiece is the only one for which Shaftesbury lived to see Gribelin’s finished plate.)

Now, it often happens that one cannot “read” one of these plates in isolation from the others. In this case, for reasons I won’t elaborate on here, it bears a relationship to the bottom panel of the triptych to the plate for Volume III. Suffice to say that, whereas the former illustrates the fruits of political and religious liberty, this one is meant to illustrate the evils of a policy of tyranny, superstition, and religious bigotry. Here is that panel:

 

 

 

 The twin storks in the earlier panel have been replaced with

“two metamorphos’d Human Forms which seem of a female Kind and serve as Supporters, back to back, against the Frame-Work, [and] must appear blind-folded.” (Virtuoso-Coppy-Book 154)

Here is Paknadel’s gloss:

“The results of such a policy are shown in the oval frame. [The ancient monuments are tumbling down; day is turned into night, birds of bad omen are flying; the vine has become a bare tree. The faces of Apollo and Diana are replaced by those of Ignorance at the top and Stupidity at the bottom; the storks by two blinded females. The motto is now EN QUO, the abbreviation meaning ‘Behold, whither are we brought! To what state reduced!’]” (pp. 304-305)

I did recently chance upon a rather obscure connection between the above-mentioned “birds of bad omen” and storks. In his posthumous Select Discourses (1660), the Cambridge Platonist philosopher John Smith (1618-1652) makes the following remark: “as Aelian observes of the Stork, that if the Night-owle chanceth to sit upon her eggs, they become presently as it were υπηνεμια, and all incubation rendred impotent and ineffectual” (p. 7). (The reference is to Book I.37 of Aelian’s De natura animalium.)

Now, this is all very interesting, one supposes. But still my question persists: why storks? If he simply needed some creature as mere ornament to frame the head of Apollo, presumably any bird would do. Why not eagles? Or roosters? Shaftesbury doesn’t tell us, and Paknadel makes no attempt to decode the symbolism of the storks, if indeed there is any.

In my experience, when in need of information about the traditional lore of the natural world, it is often helpful to reach for Pliny, or, failing that, to pull Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) from the shelves. Lo and behold, in the latter’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646, last revision 1671), Bk. III, ch. 27, we find out that it was once a commonly held belief that “Storks are to be found, and will only live, in Republikes or free States”. Browne’s work does not appear in Shaftesbury’s library catalogue as it has come down to us, but no doubt he was familiar with the notion.

Incidentally – this entire post has been incidental – we also learn from Browne (Bk. V, ch. 22) that the owl had historically been seen as a harbinger of misfortune, and by extension had in his time become emblematic of superstition.

 

Bibliography

BROWNE, Sir Thomas. The Works of Sir Thomas Browne (Vol. II: Pseudodoxia Epidemica). Geoffrey Keynes (ed.). London: Faber and Faber, 1964.

PAKNADEL, Felix. “Shaftesbury’s Illustrations of Characteristics,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 37 (1974), 290-312.

SHAFTESBURY, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3^rd Earl of. Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (3 vols.). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001.

—— PRO 30/24/24/13. (“Virtuoso-Coppy-Book”, consisting of Shaftesbury’s instructions for the engravings in Characteristicks.) Reproduced in Standard Edition (Vol. I,3), Wolfram Benda (ed.). Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Fromman Verlag, 1992. 

—— PRO 30/24/23/12. (“Catalogus Librorum Anglicorum, Gallicorum, Italicorum etc…. Anno Ærae Christianæ 1709”, catalogue of works in vernacular languages in Shaftesbury’s libraries in Chelsea and St. Giles.)

SMITH, John. Select Discourses. London: J. Flesher for W. Morden, 1660.