A third portion of the popular creed may be considered as including the various kinds of superstitious Cures, Preventatives, and Sympathies; a species of credulity which has suffered little diminution even in the present day; for, though the materials selected for the purpose be different, the folly and the fraud are the same. Instead of animal magnetism and metallic tractors, the public faith, in the days of Shakspeare, rested, with implicit confidence, on the virtues supposed to be inherent in bones, precious stones, sympathetic signs, powders, &c.; and the poet, accordingly, has occasionally introduced imagery founded on these imaginary qualities. Thus, in the Merchant of Venice, the high value which Shylock places on his turquoise ring, was derived from this source, the turquoise or Turkey-stone, being considered as inestimable for its properties of indicating the health of the wearer by the increase or decrease of its colour, and for its protective power in shielding him from enmity and peril. That this was the cause of Shylock's deep regret for the loss of his ring, will appear probable from the more direct intimations of his contemporaries, Jonson and Drayton; the former, in his Sejanus, remarking of two parasites, that they would,
"—— true, as turkoise in the dear lord's ring,
Look well or ill with him."[366:B]
and the latter declaring, that
"The turkesse,——who haps to wear,
Is often kept from peril."[366:C]
A more distinct allusion to the sanative virtue of precious stones, is to be found in the celebrated simile in As You Like It:
"Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."[367:A]