Old English herbals 1525-1640 / by Horace Mallinson Barlow.

  • Barlow, Horace Mallinson, 1884-
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Old English herbals 1525-1640 / by Horace Mallinson Barlow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    that it lies hidden away in the “ Memorie della Reglia Accademia di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Modena,” ser. 2, vol. iv, 1886, p. 49. It is wTorthy of a separate existence. As the French manuscript of the “ Circa Instans ” is another version of “ Le Grant Herbier,” the text of our own “ Grete Herball ” is, therefore, derived from the same source. The preface and supplement, however, seem to find their origin in the German “ Herbarius zu Teutsch ” and the Latin “ Hortus Sanitatis.” The woodcut figures which illustrate the first and second editions of the English work number 478, but they call for no special remarks. Unlike the illustrations in the later herbals of Turner, Lyte, and Gerard, they are of no importance in the history of botanical illustration. The majority, taken from those in the French edition, are reduced and inferior copies of the cuts in the German herbals mentioned above. In this instance one cannot do better than quote Pulteney: “ Many are fictitious and many misplaced. In a variety of instances the same figure is prefixed to different plants, and in very few are they sufficiently expressive of the habit, to discriminate even a well-known subject, if the name applied did not suggest the idea of it. In some, these icons are whimsically absurd, especially in the animals and minerals.” Two later editions of the herbal appeared in England in 1539 and 1561, but these are less interesting than the editions printed by Treveris. One was printed by Thomas Gibson, and is entirely without cuts, while the other, printed by John King, only contains two figures of a man and a woman representing the male and female mandrake, the male figure being repeated at the beginning of the treatise on urines. Title.—The great herball | newly corrected. | The contents of this boke. | A table after the Latyn names of all | herbes, | A table after the Englyshe names of all | herbes. | The propertees and qualytes of all | thynges in this booke, | The descrypcyon of urynes, how a man | shall haue trewe knoweledge of all seke- | nesses. | An exposycyon of the wordes obscure and | not well knowen. | A table, quyckly to fynde Remedyes | for all dyseases. | God saue the Kynge. | Londini in edibus Thome »Gybson | Anno | M.D.XXXIX. [The above title sur- rounded by woodcut border of classic design.] Black letter, fob, 4 prel. 11., A—Z4, Aa—Bb4, Cc6. The introduction in the first and second editions of 1526 and 1529 is omitted in this, and its place taken by “ The prenter to the reder.” The address at the end of the text of those editions, “0 ye worthy reders,” &c., is also omitted, and instead of the original 505 chapters