TURNER'S HERBAL 83 



works. Notably in Hieronymus Bock's KreiUer Bttch (1546), 

 Rembert Dodoens's Cniydthoeck (1554), Henry Lyte's Niewe 

 Herhall (1578), and Jean Bauhin's Historia plantamm univer- 

 salis (1651). It is a remarkable fact that so far as wood- 

 engraving is concerned this country has contributed nothing to 

 the art of plant illustration. In the first EngHsh illustrated 

 Herbal, the Grete Herhall of 1526, the figures are merely copies 

 of the inferior cuts in the later editions of the Herharius zu 

 Teutsch, and, with the exception of Parkinson's Paradisus, all 

 the English sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century herbals 

 borrowed their illustrations from Flemish or German sources. 

 Fuchs had two sets of blocks for his Herbal, one for the folio 

 edition of 1542 and the other for the octavo edition of 1545. 

 It was the blocks for the latter which were borrowed by Turner's 

 printer, and it has been suggested that it was his desire to 

 secure these beautiful illustrations which led him to have his 

 herbal printed at Cologne.^ Over 400 of Fuchs's blocks were 

 used in the complete edition of Turner's Herbal, and, of the 

 rest, some are copied from the smaller figures in MattioU's ^ 

 commentary on Dioscorides. 



Turner dedicated the first part of his Herbal (1551) to the 

 Duke of Somerset, uncle to Edward VI., and at that time 

 Lord Protector. The preface is delightful and I quote a part 

 of it :— 



" To the mighty and christiane Prince Edward, Duke of 

 Summerset, Erie of Herford, Lorde Beauchampe, and Uncle unto 

 the Kynges maiesty, Wyllyam Turner his servant wysheth 

 increase in the knowledge of Goddes holy worde and grace to 

 lyue thereafter. Although (most myghty and Christian Prince) 

 there be many noble and excellent actes and sciences, which no 



1 It was for the same reason that Henry Lyte's translation of Dodoens 

 was printed abroad. 



2 Pierandrea Mattioli (1501-1577) was physician successively to the 

 Archduke Ferdinand and to the Emperor Maximihan II. With the exception 

 of Fabio Colonna he was the greatest of the Italian herbaUsts. 



