In the seventh canto the poet shows he was well acquainted with some medicinal plants, and gives us quite a group of “herbs of ill favour”.
“There mournful cypress grew in greatest store;
And trees of bitter gall; and ebon sad;
Dead sleeping poppy, and black hellebore;
Cold coloquintida, and tetra mad;
Mortal samnitis; and cicuta bad,
With which th’ unjust Athenians made to die
Wise Socrates, who, thereof quaffing glad,
Pour’d out his life and last philosophy
To the fair Critias, his dearest belamy!”[43]
Here we have mention of the narcotic poppy and the black hellebore, a drastic purgative with which tradition states Melampus, the great soothsayer and physician, cured the daughters of Prœtus, King of Argos, of madness. Also the colocynth or bitter apple; tetra mad, an old name for the belladonna or deadly nightshade; savin, here called mortal samnitis, a plant possessing powerful properties, used in medicine from the time of the Romans; and the cicuta or hemlock, which formed the active ingredient in the poison cup of the Greeks.
In the Shepherd’s Calendar we have another allusion to the black hellebore:—
“Here grows melampode ev’rywhere,
And terebinth, good for goats;
The one my madding kids to smear,
The next to heal their throats”.[44]
The ancient name for hellebore was melampus root, hence the name melampode, which doubtless arose from the old tradition. By terebinth the poet probably means one of the species of pine from which turpentine is obtained.
CHAPTER IV.
GOETHE.
The Faust-legend around which Goethe wove his great tragedy, was one of those floating traditions which were common in the romantic lore of many countries during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and which seem to have originated in the general belief in occult forces. The Johann Faust of the popular stories was undoubtedly an individual of that name, born towards the close of the fifteenth century in the little town of Knittlingen, near Maulbronn, in Würtemberg. His parents were poor, but he was enabled by the bequest of a rich uncle to study medicine. He attended the University of Cracow (where he probably received his doctor’s degree), studied magic which was there taught as an accepted branch of knowledge, and appears to have afterwards travelled for many years through Europe. Manlius, the disciple of Melancthon, quotes the latter as having said: “This fellow Faust escaped from our town of Wittenberg, after our Duke John had given the order to have him imprisoned. He also escaped from Nuremberg under the like circumstances. This sorcerer Faust, an abominable beast, a common sewer of many devils, boasted that he, by his magic arts had enabled the Imperial armies to win their victories in Italy.” It was probably the famous battle of Pavia fought in 1525 of which Faust spoke, as the time of his visit to Wittenberg appears to have been about the year 1530. Further evidence of the existence of such a character is to be found in the Index Sanitatis of the physician, Philip Begardi, published at Worms in 1539, and in the Sermones Conviviales of Johann Gast, who gives an account of a dinner given by Faust at Basle at which he was present. The original form of the legend is contained in a work published by Spiess in Frankfurt in 1587, entitled the History of Dr. Joh. Faust, the Notorious Sorcerer and Black-artist, etc., etc. This book was first translated into English in 1590, and from it Marlowe doubtless obtained the material for his tragedy of “Dr. Faustus,” which appears to have been first performed in London in 1593, the year of his death.