So have I seen a well-built castle, stand
Upon the tip-toes of a lofty hill,
Whose active power commands both sea & land,
And curbs the pride of the bleag’rers’ will;
At length her ag’d foundation fails her trust,
And lays her tott’ring ruins in the dust.
So have I seen the BLAZING TAPER shoot
Her golden head into the feeble air;
Whose shadow guilding ray, spread round about,
Makes the foul face of blade brow’d darkness fair;
Till at the length her waisting glory fades,
And leaves the night to her invet’rate shades
Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man published in 1637, was the sequel to Francis Quarles' best-selling Emblems (1635) which was lavishly illustrated, containing five books of meditative verse. The poems are introduced by a scriptural motto, then a commentary based on quotations from various sources, and at the end closure is achieved with a short didactic epigram. To Francis Quarles, an emblem is but a short parable and the verse puts the visual into the mental. In this way, the words and pictures complement each other, therefore having a double impact on the reader.
Sutherland's litho was from a set of three ... they are the first three images in this set ...
http://www.williamweston.co.uk/item/artist_previous/233/1
there still exists an imprint of all three Sutherland designs on one sheet ...
https://www.gazette-drouot.com/lots/10311506
later ... it seems that "emblem books" were a popular renaissance publishing format ...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26402658?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emblem_book
Ah-ha ! After MUCH GOOGLE-ING ... Here's some proper scholarship relating to the printing of the Emblems ... by
Whitney Trettien
"It is the argument of this chapter and this monograph more broadly that the creativity and cultural work of books like Theophila become legible when we read them not as texts but as multidimensional media objects designed with meaning and purpose."
https://manifold.umn.edu/read/untitled-a5533014-27c2-48fd-a0fb-498976cbe4da/section/653a6a70-f1f6-41ea-839e-917db4a2fc56
