JOHNSON AND THE HERBAL si 



been otherwise. The printer, John Norton, had com- 

 missioned Dr. Priest to translate Dodoens' Pemptades 

 (1583) into English. Priest died, and Gerard continued 

 the work. But to mask the fact of his Herbal being 

 little else than a mere translation, he altered the arrange- 

 ment from that of Dodoens to that of Lobel ; and 

 flippantly remarking that he had heard of Dr. Priest's 

 labours, but the man being dead his work had perished 

 with him, he had the effrontery to declare that his own 

 researches had produced the work. Wood-blocks used by 

 Tabernaemontanus in his Eicones (1590), with some others, 

 were procured from Frankfort by Norton, but Gerard soon 

 showed his slender knowledge, by misapplying many of 

 the figures, and caused so much confusion in the early 

 chapters of the Herbal, that the attention of the printer 

 was directed to it by James Garret, the London apothe- 

 cary. Lobel was therefore invited to correct the work, 

 and by his own account he actually corrected it in a 

 thousand places, but further emendation was stopped by 

 the author, who contended that the Herbal was already 

 sufficiently accurate, and that his censor had forgotten the 

 English language.^ 



Gerard's book gave a very real impetus to the study 

 of our English flora, but it was avowedly a popular 

 work, 'being principally, intended for gentlewomen'-; 

 and in this connexion Mrs. Gerard, who assisted her 

 barber-surgeon husband in his practice, would have been 

 most helpful ; for her professional assistance was similar to 

 that which Mrs. Gamp was in the habit of rendering at 



^ An excellent account of the Herbal is contained in B. J. Jackson, Gerard's 

 Catalogue of Plants, 1S76. 



^ Americans of ' royal descent ' may be interested to learn that the copy of 

 Gerard's Herbal now in the library of the Botanic Garden at Oxford, originally 

 belonged to a gentlewoman, Dorathie Kedmayne (1565-1645) whom I believe 

 to have been identical with the mother of John Rolfe of Heacham, ancestress of 

 all who trace their descent to the Indian Princess Pocahontas. Dorothy Rolfe's 

 second husband was Robert Redmayne, Chancellor of Norwich. She was 

 buried 'at the feet of her two husbands' in»Heacham Church. Rolfe Family 

 Records, p. li. 



