There is something very attractive in the last inconsequent remark!
Coles deals mercilessly with old Culpeper. “Culpeper,” he says, “(a man now dead and therefore I shall speak of him as modestly as I can, for were he alive I should be more straight with him), was a man very ignorant in the forme of Simples. Many Books indeed he hath tumbled over, and transcribed as much out of them as he thought would serve his turne (though many times he were therein mistaken) but added very little of his own.” He even comments on the fact that either Culpeper or his Printer cannot spell aright—“sure he or the Printer had not learned to spell.”
The Doctrine of Signatures he accepts unquestioningly. “Though Sin and Sathan have plunged mankinde into an Ocean of Infirmities Yet the mercy of God which is over all his Workes Maketh Grasse to grow upon the Mountaines and Herbs for the use of Men and hath not onely stemped upon them (as upon every man) a distinct forme, but also given them particular signatures, whereby a Man may read even in legible Characters the Use of them. Heart Trefoyle is so called not onely because the Leafe is Triangular like the Heart of a Man, but also because each leafe contains the perfect Icon of an Heart and that in its proper colour viz a flesh colour. Hounds tongue hath a forme not much different from its name which will tye the Tongues of Hounds so that they shall not barke at you: if it be laid under the bottomes of ones feet. Wallnuts bear the whole Signature of the Head, the outwardmost green barke answerable to the thick skin whereunto the head is covered, and a salt made of it is singularly good for wounds in that part, as the Kernell is good for the braines, which it resembles being environed with a shell which imitates the Scull, and then it is wrapped up againe in a silken covering somewhat representing the Pia Mater.”
Of those plants that have no signatures he warns the reader not to conclude hastily that therefore they have no use. “We must cast ourselves,” he says, “with great Courage and Industry (as some before us have done) upon attempting the vertues of them, which are yet undiscovered. For man was not brought into the world to live like an idle Loyterer or Truant, but to exercise his minde in those things, which are therefore in some measure obscure and intricate, yet not so much as otherwise they would have been, it being easier to adde than invent at first.” He then gives his own curious but naïvely interesting theory of plants “commonly accounted useless and unprofitable.” “They would not be without their use,” he argues, “if they were good for nothing else but to exercise the Industry of Man to weed them out who, had he nothing to struggle with, the fire of his Spirit would be halfe extinguished in the Flesh.” After pointing out that weeding them out is in itself excellent exercise, he proceeds:—“But further why may not poysonous plants draw to them all the maligne juice and nourishment that the other may be more pure and refined, as well as Toads and other poysonous Serpents licke the venome from the Earth?... So have I seen some people when they have burned their fingers to goe and burne them again to fetch out the fire. And why may not one poyson fetch out another as well as fire fetch out fire?” “For should all things be known at once,” he wisely concludes, “Posterity would have nothing left wherewith to gratifie themselves in their owne discoveries, which is a great encouragement to active and quick Wits, to make them enquire into those things which are hid from the eyes of those which are dull and stupid.”
Coles’s Art of Simpling is the only herbal which devotes a chapter to herbs useful for animals—“Plants as have operation upon the bodies of Bruit Beasts.” This chapter is full of curious folk lore. He gives the old beliefs that a toad poisoned by a spider will cure itself with a plantain leaf; that weasels when about to encounter a serpent eat rue; that an ass when it feels melancholy eats asplenium; that wild goats wounded by arrows cure themselves with dittany; that the swallow uses celandine (“I would have this purposely planted for them,” he adds); that linnet and goldfinch (and have any birds brighter eyes?) constantly repair their own and their young one’s eyesight with eyebright; that if loosestrife is thrown between two oxen when they are fighting they will part presently, and being tied about their necks it will keep them from fighting; that cocks which have been fed on garlick are “most stout to fight and so are Horses”; that the serpent so hates the ash tree “that she will not come nigh the shadow of it, but she delights in Fennel very much, which she eates to cleer her eyesight;” that, if a garden is infested with moles, garlic or leeks will make them “leap out of the ground presently.” Perhaps the most remarkable effects of herbs are the two following. “Adders tongue put into the left eare of any Horse will make him fall downe as if he were dead, and when it is taken out againe, he becomes more lively than he was before.” And “if Asses chance to feed much upon Hemlock, they will fall so fast asleep that they will seeme to be dead, in so much that some thinking them to be dead indeed have flayed off their skins, yet after the Hemlock had done operating they have stirred and wakened out of their sleep, to the griefe and amazement of the owners.”
There is one chapter—“Of plants used in and against Witchcraft”—in which, amongst other things, we learn that the ointment that witches use is made of the fat of children, dug up from their graves, and mixed with the juice of smallage, wolfsbane and cinquefoil and fine wheat flour; that mistletoe, angelica, etc. were regarded as being of such sovereign power against witches that they were worn round the neck as amulets. Also, that in order to prevent witches from entering their houses the common people used to gather elder leaves on the last day of April and affix them to their doors and windows. “I doe not desire any to pin their Faiths upon these reports,” says Coles, “but only let them know there are such which they may believe as they please.” “However,” he concludes, “there is no question but very wonderful effects may be wrought by the Vertues which are enveloped within the compasse of the green mantles wherewith many Plants are adorned.”
Coles, nevertheless, treats with scorn, and by arguments peculiarly his own, the old belief in the connection between the stars and herbs. “It [the study of herbs] is a subject as antient as the Creation, yea more antient than the Sunne or the Moon, or Starres, they being created on the fourth day whereas Plants were the third. Thus did God even at first confute the folly of those Astrologers who goe about to maintaine that all vegetables in their growth are enslaved to a necessary and unavoidable dependence on the influences of the starres; whereas Plants were even when Planets were not.” In another passage, however, he writes, “Though I admit not of Master Culpeper’s Astrologicall way of every Planets Dominion over Plants, yet I conceive that the Sunne and Moon have generall influence upon them, the one for Heat the other for Moisture; wherein the being of Plants consists.”
The most attractive parts of the Art of Simpling are the chapters devoted to the “Joys of Gardening.” Coles tells us that “A house, though otherwise beautifull, if it hath no garden is more like a prison than a house.” Of what he has to say about gardens and the happiness to be found in gardening I quote much because it is all so pleasant.
“That there is no place more pleasant [than a garden] may appear from God himselfe, who after he had made Man, planted the Garden of Eden, and put him therein, that he might contemplate the many wonderful Ornaments wherewith Omnipotency had bedecked his Mother Earth.... As for recreation, if a man be wearied with over-much study (for study is a weariness to the Flesh as Solomon by experience can tell you) there is no better place in the world to recreate himself than a Garden, there being no sence but may be delighted therein. If his sight be obfuscated and dull, as it may easily be, with continuall poring, there is no better way to relieve it, than to view the pleasant greennesse of Herbes, which is the way that Painters use, when they have almost spent their sight by their most earnest contemplation of brighter objects: neither doe they onely feed the Eyes but comfort the wearied Braine with fragrant smells. The Eares also (which are called the Daughters of Musick, because they delight therein) have their recreation by the pleasant noise of the warbling notes, which the chaunting birds accent forth from amongst the murmuring Leaves....”
“Of the profits” [of a garden] he says, “First for household occasions, for there is not a day passeth over our heads but we have of one thing or other that groweth within their circumference. We cannot make so much as a little good Pottage without Herbes, which give an admirable relish and make them wholsome for our Bodies.... Besides this inestimable Profit there is another not much inferior to it, and that is the wholsome exercise a man may use in it.... If Gentlemen which have little else to doe, would be ruled by me, I would advise them to spend their spare time in their gardens, either in digging, setting, weeding or the like, then which there is no better way in the world to preserve health. If a man want an Appetite to his Victuals the Smell of the Earth new turned up by digging with a spade will procure it,[125] and if he be inclined to a Consumption it will recover him.