Turner, again, is the only old herbalist who refers to the old and widespread belief that larch was fire-proof. It was largely used, he tells us, for laying under the tiles of newly-built houses, as “a sure defence against burning,” and he narrates at length how Julius Cæsar was unable to burn a tower built with larch. On the old mandrake legend he is scathing. “The rootes which are counterfited and made like litle puppettes and mammettes which come to be sold in England in boxes with heir [hair] and such forme as man hath, are nothyng elles but folishe fened trifles and not naturall. For they are so trymmed of crafty theves to mocke the poore people withall and to rob them both of theyr wit and theyr money. I have in my tyme at diverse tymes takē up the rootes of mandrake out of the grounde but I never saw any such thyng upon or in them as are in and upon the pedlers rootes that are comenly to be solde in boxes. It groweth not under galloses [gallows] as a certayn doting doctor of Colon in his physick lecture dyd teach hys auditors.” But he accepts without question the belief in its efficacy as an anæsthetic: “It is given to those who must be burned or cut in some place that they should not fele the burning or cuttyng.” Of wine made of it, he says: “If they drynk thys drynke they shall fele no payne, but they shall fall into a forgetfull and slepishe drowsiness. Of the apples of mandrake, if a man smell of them thei will make hym slepe and also if they be eaten. But they that smell to muche of the apples become dum ... thys herbe diverse wayes taken is very jepardus for a man and may kill hym if he eat it or drynk it out of measure and have no remedy from it.... If mandragora be taken out of measure by and by slepe ensueth and a great lousing of the streyngthe with a forgetfulness.”

Turner is one of the few herbalists who cautions against the excessive use of any herb. “Onions eaten in meat largely make the head ake, they make them forgetfull whiche in the tyme of syknes use them out of mesure.” “Cole engendreth euell and melancholie juice. It dulleth the syght and it troubleth the slepe wyth contrary thynges which are sene in the dreme.” Of nigella he writes: “Take hede that ye take not to muche of this herbe, for if ye go beyonde the mesure it bryngeth deth.” “Hemp seed,” he says, “if it be taken out of measure taketh men’s wyttes from thē as coriander doth.” “If any person use saffron measurably it maketh in them a good colour, but if thei use it out of mesure it maketh hym loke pale, and maketh the hede ache and hurteth the appetite.” For those who have taken an overdose of opium there is a surprising remedy. “If the pacient be to much slepi put stynkynge thynges unto hys nose to waken hym therewith.” As in all herbals of this period, there are an astonishing number of remedies against melancholy and suggestions for those whose weak brains will not stand much strong drink; but, while remedies for broken heads, so common in the older herbals, are conspicuously absent, we find that walnuts are recommended “for the bytings both of men and dogges”!

As in the Grete Herball, there are many descriptions of other substances besides herbs, some of the longest being of dates, rice, olives, citron, pomegranates and lentils. The account of citron it would be pleasant to transcribe in full, not for the sake of the story but for the manner of the telling. One could listen to a sermon of considerable length from a divine who, in a book intended for grown-ups, has a tale of “two naughty murthering robbers, condemned for theyr murder and robery to be flayn and poysoned to deth of serpentes, and such venemous bestes,” and of the one who, owing to having eaten “a pece of citron,” remained, Daniel-like, unhurt by the poison of the snakes, whilst the other who had not taken this precaution “fell down sterk dede.” And finally, the moral—“Wherefore it were wisdome that noblemen and other that are bydden to dynner of theyr enemies or suspected frendes before they eat any other thyng should take a pece of citron.”

The later sixteenth-century herbalists owed much to the famous herbalists of the Netherlands, and above all to that prince amongst publishers, Christophe Plantin of Antwerp, whose personality secured him a unique place in the literary world. Indeed, there is a splendour about the works of the Flemish herbalists unequalled by any others of this period, with the exception of the Bavarian doctor Leonhard Fuchs. There is no comparison between them and the Italian herbalists of the Renaissance, who, for the greater part, devoted themselves to studying the classical writers and identifying the plants mentioned by the old authorities. France, curiously enough, contributed comparatively little when the herbal was at its zenith, though it must of course be remembered that the Bauhins, who rank as Swiss herbalists, were of French extraction. But it is difficult to estimate the influence of the works of those three notable friends, Rembert Dodoens, Charles de l’Escluse and Matthias de l’Obel, particularly on the English herbalists. The most famous English herbal—Gerard’s—is virtually a translation of the Pemptades of Dodoens. Lyte’s translation of the Cruÿdtboeck was the standard work on herbs during the latter part of the century, and Parkinson incorporated a large part of de l’Obel’s unfinished book in his Theatrum Botanicum.

De l’Obel, after whom the little garden flower—lobelia—is named, spent the greater part of his life in England. He was a Fleming by birth and a doctor by profession,[71] and he was physician to William the Silent until his assassination. About 1569 he came over to England (with his friend Pena, who at one time was physician to Louis XIII.) and lived at Highgate with his son-in-law. He superintended Lord Zouche’s garden at Hackney, and later was given the title of botanist to James I. L’Obel’s great work, written in collaboration with Pena, was the Stirpium Adversaria Nova, printed in London by Thomas Purfoot in 1571.[72] Pulteney, in his Biographical Sketches (1790), makes the extraordinary statement that Christophe Plantin of Antwerp was the real printer. It has, however, been pointed out by modern authorities that the archives of the Plantin Museum show that Plantin bought 800 copies of Purfoot’s edition, with the wood blocks, for 1320 florins. In 1576 Plantin published de l’Obel’s Plantarum seu Stirpium historia, and to this he appended the first part of the Adversaria, keeping Purfoot’s original colophon.

Although Dodoens neither lived in England nor had any of his works printed here, his Cruÿdtboeck became one of the standard works in this country through Lyte’s translation. Dodoens was born at Malines about 1517 and, after studying at Louvain, visited the universities and medical schools of France, Italy and Germany, graduated M.D., and was appointed physician to Maximilian II. and Rudolf II. successively. In the latter part of his life he was Professor of Medicine at Leyden, where he died in 1585. Plantin published Dodoens’s most important work, Stirpium historiæ pemptades sex sive libri triginta, in which some of the figures are copied from the fifth-century manuscript[73] copy of Dioscorides. Dodoens’s first book, the Cruÿdtboeck, was translated into French by his friend Charles de l’Escluse[74] and afterwards into English by Henry Lyte.

Lyte, who was an Oxford man, travelled extensively in his youth and made a collection of rare plants. He contributed nothing original to the literature on herbs, but his translation of the French version of the Cruÿdtboeck was an inestimable service. His own copy of the French version, which is now in the British Museum, has on the title-page the quaint inscription “Henry Lyte taught me to speake Englishe.” The book is full of MS. notes and references to Turner.

The full title of Lyte’s book is as follows: “A niewe Herball or Historie of Plantes: wherein is contayned the whole discourse and perfect description of all sortes of Herbes and Plantes: their divers and sundry kindes: their straunge Figures, Fashions and Shapes: their Names, Natures, Operations, and Vertues: and that not only of those which are here growyng in this our Countrie of Englande but of all others also of forrayne Realmes, commonly used in Physicke. First set foorth in the Doutche or Almaigne tongue by that learned D. Rembert Dodoens, Physition to the Emperour: And nowe first translated out of French into English by Henry Lyte Esquyer.”

(Colophon.) “Imprinted at Antwerpe by Me Henry Loë Booke printer and are to be solde at London in Paul’s churchyarde by Gerard Dewes.”[75]

The beautiful illustrations in Lyte’s Dodoens are to a large extent printed from the same blocks as those in the octavo edition (1545) of Fuchs. In Fuchs there are about 516 illustrations, and in Lyte’s Dodoens about 870. Those which are not copied from Fuchs were probably collected by Dodoens himself, who, according to some verses at the beginning of the herbal, took a practical interest in the publication of the English translation of his book.