[87] Published in London. See [Bibliography], p. [217].
CHAPTER VI
JOHN PARKINSON, THE LAST OF THE GREAT ENGLISH HERBALISTS
“For truly from all sorts of Herbes and Flowers we may draw matter at all times not only to magnifie the Creator that hath given them such diversities of formes sents and colours, that the most cunning Worke man cannot imitate, and such vertues and properties, that although wee know many, yet many more lye hidden and unknowne, but many good instructions also to ourselves. That as many herbes and flowers with their fragrant sweet smels doe comfort, and as it were revive the spirits and perfume a whole house: even so such men as live vertuously, labouring to doe good and profit the Church of God and the Commonwealth by their paines or penne, doe as it were send forth a pleasing savour of sweet instructions, not only to that time wherein they live, and are fresh, but being drye, withered and dead, cease not in all after ages to doe as much or more.”—John Parkinson, Paradisus, 1629.
The last of the great English herbalists was John Parkinson, the author of the famous Paradisus and also of the largest herbal in the English language, Theatrum Botanicum, which was published when the author was seventy-three. The latter was intended to be a complete account of medicinal plants and was the author’s most important work, yet it is with the Paradisus (strictly not a herbal, but a gardening book), that his name is popularly associated. Of Parkinson himself we can learn very little. We know only that he was born in 1567, probably in Nottinghamshire, and that before 1616 he was practising as an apothecary and had a garden in Long Acre “well stored with rarities.”[88] He was appointed Apothecary to James I., and after the publication of his Paradisus in 1629 Charles I. bestowed on him the title of Botanicus Regius Primarius. Amongst Parkinson’s acquaintances mentioned in his books were the learned Thomas Johnson, who in 1633 emended and brought out a new edition of Gerard’s Herball, John Tradescant,[89] the famous gardener, traveller and naturalist, and the celebrated physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne. Parkinson died in 1650 and was buried at St. Martin’s in the Fields. There is a portrait of him in his sixty-second year prefixed to his Paradisus, and a small portrait by Marshall at the bottom of the title-page of his Theatrum Botanicum.
The full title of Parkinson’s Paradisus, which in the dedicatory letter to Queen Henrietta Maria he truly describes as “this Speaking Garden,” is inscribed on a shield at the bottom of the frontispiece. The first three words, “Paradisi in Sole,” are a punning translation into Latin of his own surname.
At the top of the page is the Eye of Providence with a Hebrew inscription, and on each side a cherub symbolising the winds. In the centre is a representation of Paradise with Adam grafting an apple tree and Eve running downhill to pick up a pineapple. The flowers depicted are curiously out of proportion, for the tulip flower is a good deal larger than Eve’s head, and cyclamen in Paradise seems to have grown to a height of at least five feet.
The most interesting feature of this elaborately illustrated title-page is the representation of the “Vegetable Lamb” growing on a stalk and browsing on the herbage round about it.[90] This records one of the most curious myths of the Middle Ages. The creature was also known as the Scythian Lamb and the Borametz or Barometz, a name derived from a Tartar word signifying “lamb.” It was supposed to be at once a true animal and a living plant, and was said to grow in the territory of the “Tartars of the East,” formerly called Scythia. According to some writers, the lamb was the fruit of a tree, whose fruit or seed-pod, when fully ripe, burst open and disclosed a little lamb perfect in every way. This was the subject of the illustration, “The Vegetable Lamb plant,” in Sir John Mandeville’s book. Other writers described the lamb as being supported above the ground by a stalk flexible enough to allow the animal to feed on the herbage growing near. When it had consumed all within its reach the stem withered and the lamb died. This is the version illustrated on Parkinson’s title-page. It was further reported that the lamb was a favourite food of wolves, but that no other carnivorous animals would attack it. This remarkable legend obtained credence for at least 400 years. So far as is known, the first mention of it in an English book is the account given by Sir John Mandeville, “the Knyght of Ingelond that was y bore in the toun of Seynt Albans, and travelide aboute in the worlde in many diverse countries to se mervailes and customes of countreis and diversiters of folkys and diverse shap of men and of beistis.” It is in the chapter describing the curiosities he met with in the dominions of the “Cham” of Tartary that the passage about the vegetable lamb occurs.[91] The origin of this extraordinary myth is undoubtedly to be found in the ancient descriptions of the cotton plant by Herodotus, Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny and others.[92] The following passages in Herodotus and Pliny will suffice to show how easily the myth may have grown. “Certain trees bear for their fruit fleeces surpassing those of sheep in beauty and excellence” (Herodotus). “These trees bear gourds the size of a quince which burst when ripe and display balls of wool out of which the inhabitants make cloths like valuable linen” (Pliny).