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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    saynt Martyns pa- | rysshe, at the sygne of saynt | John Enangelyst, | besyde Charyn | ge Crosse. | | [.Printer's mark~\ Secretary type, 8vo, A—P.4 Title. — Macers | Herbal | Practy- | syd by | Doctor | Lynacro | Translated out of laten, | into Englyssbe, which | shewynge theyr Ope- | racyons & Yertnes, | set in the margent | of this Boke, to | the extent you | myght knowe | theyr Yer- | tues. Colophon.—Imprynted by | me Robert wyer | dwellynge in seynt Martyns Pa- | rysshe at the sygne of seynt | Iohn Euangelyst, besyde Charyn- | ge Crosse. [Printer’s device]. Black letter, 8vo, A—W.4 The dates assigned to these works in the British Museum Cata- logue are 1535, 1540, and 1530 respectively. Now a characteristic of Wyer’s books is that not more than eight or nine, out of a series of more than one hundred, show the year of printing. It is, there- fore, a difficult and dangerous task for one who is not a practical printer or typefounder to assign any date from a comparison of the types alone. Mr. Henry R. Plomer made a study of Wyer’s books, and came to the conclusion that the “ Secretary ” type—so-called from its resemblance to the manuscript writing of the period—was used for the text of all books printed down to 1542. But in 1542, and from that time onwards, the order was reversed, the text of all books being printed in Black Letter, and the supplementary matter in “ Secretary.” Of the three editions quoted above the first and second are in this “ Secretary ” type, and as the approximate dates ascribed to these— namely, 1535 and 1540—fall in the period during which this type was employed, and as, also, there is no evidence to show that they were not printed during that period, they may be allowed to stand. But according to Mr. Plomer’s theory, the third edition, the text of which is’in black letter, must be assigned, not to the year 1530, but to a date later than 1542. Apart from the question of types, Mr. Plomer was of the opinion that this edition was later than the one ascribed to 1535, on account of “ an addition to the text of herbs under (A).” But this consists only of two single lines obscurely placed at the end of A, immediately preceding B. They are of no importance, and seem to me to prove nothing. The order of the editions might just as well have been reversed and the lines omitted. Some interesting observations may be made with regard to two of these editions printed by Wyer. It will be observed that the title- pages represent the work to be a translation of the Latin poem of