To what jewel or precious stone was Shakespeare alluding when he makes the exiled Duke in "As You Like It" (after praising his rough life in the forest of Arden, and declaring that adversity has its compensations), exclaim:
"The toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head"?
No doubt the unprejudiced reader supposes when he reads this passage that there is some stone or stone-like body in the head of the toad which has a special beauty, or else was believed to possess magical or medicinal properties. And it is probable that Shakespeare himself did suppose that such a stone existed. As a matter of fact there is no stone or "jewel" of any kind in the head of the common toad nor of any species of toad—common or rare. This is a simple and certain result of the careful examination of the heads of innumerable toads, and is not merely "common knowledge," but actually the last word of the scientific expert. In these days of "nature study" writers familiar with toads and frogs and kindred beasts have puzzled over Shakespeare's words, and suggested that he was really referring to the beautiful eyes of the toad, which are like gems in colour and brilliance.
This, however, is not the case. Shakespeare himself was simply making use of what was considered to be "common knowledge" in his day when he made the Duke compare adversity to the toad with a magic jewel in its head commonly known as "a toad-stone," although that "common knowledge" was really not knowledge at all, but—like an enormous mass of the accepted current statements in those times, about animals, plants and stones—was an absolutely baseless invention. Such baseless beliefs were due to the perfectly innocent but reckless habit of mankind, throughout long ages, of exaggerating and building up marvellous narrations on the one hand, and on the other hand of believing without any sufficient inquiry, and with delight and enthusiasm, such marvellous narrations set down by others. Each writer or "gossip" concerning the wonders of unexplored nature, consciously or unconsciously, added a little to the story as received by him, and so the authoritative statements as to marvels grew more and more astonishing and interesting.
It was not until the time of Shakespeare himself that another spirit began to assert itself—namely, that of asking whether a prevalent belief or tradition is actually a true statement of fact. Men proceeded to test the belief by an examination of the thing in question, and not by merely adducing the assertions of "the learned so-and-so," or of "the ingenious Mr. Dash." This spirit of inquiry actually existed in a fairly active state among the more cultivated of the ancient Greeks. Aristotle (who flourished about 350 b.c.), though he could not free himself altogether from the primitive tendency to accept the marvellous as true because it is marvellous and without regard to its probability—in fact because of its improbability—yet on the whole showed a determination to investigate, and to see things for himself, and left in his writings an immense series of first-rate original observations. He had far more of the modern scientific spirit than had the innumerable credulous writers of Western Europe who lived fifteen hundred to two thousand years after him. Even that delightful person Herodotus, who preceded Aristotle by a hundred years, occasionally took the trouble to inquire into some of the wonders he heard of on his travels, and is careful to say now and then that he does not believe what he heard. But the mediæval-makers of "bestiaries," herbals, and treatises on stones, which were collections of every possible fancy and "old-wife's tale," about animals, plants, and minerals, mixed up with Greek and Arabic legends and the mystical, medical lore of the "Physiologus"—that Byzantine cyclopædia of "wisdom while you wait"—deliberately discarded all attempt to set down the truth; they simply gave that up as a bad job, and recorded every strange story, property and "application" (as they termed it) of natural objects with solemn assurance, adding a bit of their own invention to the gathered and growing mass of preposterous misunderstanding and superstition.
In the seventeenth century the opposition to this method of omnivorous credulity (which even to-day, in spite of all our "progress," flourishes among both the rich and the poor) crystallised in the purpose of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge—whose motto was, and is "Nullius in verba" (that is, "We swear by no man's words"), and whose original first rule, to be observed at its meetings, was that no one should discourse of his opinions or narrate a marvel, but that any member who wished to address the society should "bring in," that is to say, "exhibit" an experiment or an actual specimen. A new spirit, the "scientific" spirit, gave rise to and was nourished by this and similar societies of learned men. As a consequence the absurdities and the cruel and injurious beliefs in witchcraft, astrology, and baseless legend, melted away like clouds before the rising sun. In the place of the mad nightmare of fantastic ignorance, there grew up the solid body of unassailable knowledge of Nature and of man which we call "science"—a growth which made such prodigious strides in the last century that we now may truly be said to live in the presence of a new heaven and a new earth!
Fig. 4.—Representation of a man extracting the jewel from a toad's head; two "jewels", already extracted are seen dropping to the ground. From the "Hortus Sanitatis," published in 1490.
It was, then, a real "stone," called the toad-stone, to which Shakespeare alluded. It is mentioned in various old treatises concerning the magical and medicinal properties of gems and stones under its Latin name, "Bufonius lapis," and was also called Borax, Nosa, Crapondinus, Crapaudina, Chelonitis, and Batrachites. It was also called Grateriano and Garatronius, after a gentleman named Gratterus, who in 1473 found a very large one, reputed to have marvellous power. In 1657, in the "translation by a person of quality" of the "Thaumatographia" of a Polish physician named Jonstonus, we find written of it: "Toads produce a stone, with their own image sometimes. It hath very great force against malignant tumours that are venomous. They are used to heat it in a bag, and to lay it hot, without anything between, to the naked body, and to rub the affected place with it. They say it prevails against inchantments of witches, especially for women and children bewitched. So soon as you apply it to one bewitched it sweats many drops. In the plague it is laid to the heart to strengthen it." Another physician of the same period (see "Notes and Queries," fourth series, vol. vii, 1871, p. 540) appears to be affected by the new spirit of inquiry, for he relates the old traditions about the stone and how he tested them. He says it was reported that the stone could be cut out of the toad's head. (In the book called "Hortus Sanitatis," dated 1490, there is a picture, here reproduced [Fig. 4], of a gentleman performing this operation successfully on a gigantic toad.) Our sceptical physician, however, goes on to say that it was commonly believed that these stones are thrown out of the mouth by old toads (probably the tongue was mistaken for the stone), and that if toads are placed on a piece of red cloth they will eject their "toad-stones," but rapidly swallow them again before one can seize the precious gem! He says that when he was a boy he procured an aged toad and placed it on a red cloth in order to obtain possession of "the stone." He sat watching the toad all night, but the toad did not eject anything. "Since that time," he says, "I have always regarded as humbug ('badineries') all that they relate of the toad-stone and of its origin." He then describes the actual stone which passes as the toad-stone, or "Bufonius lapis," and says that it is also called batrachite, or brontia, or ombria. His description exactly corresponds with the "toad-stones" which are well known at the present day in collections of old rings.
