This incombustibility made it a very proper sign for alchemists and apothecaries, and with the last it still continues as such, at least on the Continent. Why the early Venetian printers adopted it as a sign is less evident. In France it was certainly a favourite sign with this class of workmen; but this was from the fact of its having been the badge of Francis I., a liberal patron of the arts and sciences.
The qualities attributed to the [Unicorn] caused this animal to be used as a sign both by chemists and goldsmiths. It was believed that the only way to capture it was to leave a handsome young virgin in one of the places where it resorted. As soon as the animal had perceived her, he would come and lie quietly down beside her, resting his head in her lap, and fall asleep, in which state he might be surprised by the hunters who watched for him. This laying his head in the lap of a virgin made the first Christians choose the unicorn as the type of Christ born from the Virgin Mary.[210] The horn, as an antidote to all poison, was also believed to be emblematic of the conquering or destruction of sin by the Messiah. Religious emblems being in great favour with the early printers, some of them for this reason adopted the unicorn as their sign; thus John Harrison lived at the Unicorn and Bible in Paternoster Row 1603. Again, the reputed power of the horn caused the animal to be taken as a supporter for the apothecaries’ arms, and as a constant signboard by chemists. Albertus Magnus says:—“Cornu cerastis sunt qui dicunt præsenti veneno sudare et ideo ferri ad mensas nobilium, et fieri inde manubria cultellorum quæ infixa mensis prodant presens venenum. Sed hoc non satis probatum est.”[211] Whatever it was that passed for unicorn’s horn, (probably the horn of the narwal,) it was sold at an immense price. “The unicorn whose horn is worth a city,” says Decker in his Gull’s Hornbook; and Andrea Racci, a Florentine physician, relates that it had been sold by the apothecaries at £24 per ounce, when the current value of the same quantity of gold was only £2, 3s. 6d. In a MS. table of customs entitled, “The Book of Rates in ye first yeare of Queen Mary 1531,”[212] we find the duty paid upon “cornu unicorn ye ounce 20s.” An Italian author who visited England in the reign of Henry VII.,[213] speaking of the immense wealth of the religious houses in this country says:—“And I have been informed that, amongst other things, many of these monasteries possess unicorns’ horns of an extraordinary size.” Hence such a horn was fit to be placed among the royal jewels, and there it appears at the head of an inventory taken in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, and preserved in Pepys’s library.[214] “Imprimis, a piece of unicorn’s horn,” which, as the most valuable object, is named first.
This was no doubt the piece seen by the German traveller Hentzner, at Windsor: “We were shown here, among other things, the horn of a unicorn of above eight spans and a half in length, valued at above £10,000.”[215] Peacham places “that horne of Windsor (of an unicorne very likely)”[216] amongst the sights worth seeing. Fuller also speaks of a unicorn’s horn—“in my memory shewn to people in the Tower”[217]—and enters on a long dissertation about its virtues; but it seems to have been lost, or at least, no longer exhibited in his time.
The belief in the efficacy and value of this horn continued to the close of the seventeenth century; for the Rev. John Ward in his diary, p. 172, says:—
“Mr Hartman had a piece of unicorn’s horn, which one Mr Godeski gave him; hee had itt att some foraine prince’s court. I had the piece in my hand. Hee desired Dr Willis to make use of itt in curing his ague; but the Dr refusd because hee had never seen itt used. Mr Hartman told me the forementioned gentleman has as much of itt as would make a cup, and he intended to make one of itt. It approved ittself as a true one, as he said by this: if one drew a circle with itt about a spider, she would not move out off itt.”[218]
| PLATE VIII. | |
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| TWO SPIES. (Banks’s Collection, 1730.) | THREE NEATS’ TONGUES. (Harleian Collection, 1708.) |
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| MAN IN THE MOON. (Banks’s Collection, 1760.) | |
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| BULL AND MOUTH. (St Martin’s-le-Grand, 1835.) | BULL AND MOUTH. (Angel St., St Martin’s-le-Grand, circa 1800.) |
The great value set upon unicorns’ horn caused the goldsmiths to adopt this animal as their sign. There is one recorded in Machyn’s Diary: the first of May 1561, “at afternone dyd Mastyr Godderyke’s sune the goldsmyth go hup into hys father’s gyldyng house, toke a bowe-strynge, and hanged ymseylff at the syne of the Unycorne in Chepesyd.” In 1711 the Unicorn and Dial was the sign of a watchmaker near the Strand Bridge.[219]
Another fabulous animal that formerly (though rarely) occurred on signboards was the Cockatrice, which was the sign of a place of amusement in Highbury circa 1611. The “Bestiaria,” or ancient natural histories, give most extraordinary particulars about the birth of this creature:—
“When the cock is past seven years old an egg grows in his belly, and when he feels this egg, he wonders very much, and sustains the greatest anxiety any animal can suffer. He seeks, privately, a warm place on a dunghill or in a stable, and scratches with his feet, until he has formed a hole to lay his egg in. And when the cock has dug his hole he goes ten times a day to it, for all day he thinks that he is going to be delivered. And the nature of the toad is such that it smells the venom which the cock carries in his belly, consequently it watches him, so that the cock cannot go to the hole without being seen by it. And as soon as the cock leaves the place where he has to lay his egg, the toad is immediately there to see if the egg has been laid; for his nature is such, that he hatches the egg if he can obtain it. And when he has hatched it, until it is time to open, it produces an animal that has the head, and neck, and breast of a cock, and from thence downwards, the body of a serpent.”—Translation from the MS. Bestiarium, Bib. Roy. Brussels, No. 10074.