wit well blazon'd, smiled or made some moan.

[Footnote 8: Rare word, only known in this passage. Century Dictionary
gives "invisible", "unseen", "uninspected", noting that some
commentators suggest "inspected", "tried", "investigated".]

Had Shakespeare felt much interest in the lore of gems, he had before
him most of the then available material in a book of which he seems to
have made some use.[9] This was an English rendering of the "De
Proprietatibus Rerum" of Bartholomaeus Anglicus (fl. ca. 1350), by
Stephan Batman, or Bateman (d. 1587), an English divine and poet, who
in the later years of his life was chaplain and librarian to the
famous Archbishop Parker, and thus had free access to the latter's
fine library. His rendering, published in 1582, bears the following
quaint title: "Batman uppon Bartholome his Book De Proprietatibus
Rerum"; it was published in 1582, and appears to have been widely read
in England among those still interested in the learning of the
scholastic period. A much earlier English version, made by John of
Trevisa in 1396, was published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495, and is
considered to be the finest production of his press.[10]

[Footnote 9: See H.R.D. Anders, "Shakespeare's Books", Berlin, 1904,
pp. 238-248, and the New Shakespeare Soc. Trans., 1877-79, pp. 436
sqq.]

[Footnote 10: In the author's library is a fourteenth century MS. of
the "De Proprietatibus Rerum", which belonged to the Carthusian
Monastery of the Holy Trinity, at Dijon.]

A rarely noted source for some of Shakespeare's knowledge regarding
curious customs has been sought in the rambling treatise on heraldry
written by Gerard Legh and issued, in 1564, under the title: "Accedens
of Armorie" (approximately, Introduction to Heraldry). This is cast in
the form of a dialogue between Gerard the Herehaught (Herold) and the
Caligat Knight, the latter term designating an inferior kind of knight
with no claim to nobility; indeed, an old writer renders it "a
souldior on foot". The writer manages to weave in much material
slightly or not at all connected with his main theme. Legh was the son
of a Fleet Street draper. He seems to have studied a variety of
subjects and gathered together many scraps of curious information. He
died of the plague, October 13, 1563. His book went through several
editions during Shakespeare's lifetime. Following the first edition
of 1562 came successive ones in 1576, 1591, 1597, and one bearing the
impri