CHAPTER IV 



Gerard's herbal 



" If odours may worke satisfaction, they are so soveraigne in plants and 

 so comfortable that no confection of the apothecaries can equall their excellent 

 vertue." — Gerard's Herbal, 1597. 



When one looks at the dingy, if picturesque, thoroughfare 

 of Fetter Lane it is difficult to realise that it was once the site 

 of Gerard's garden, and it is pleasant to remember that the city 

 of London in those far-off days was as noted for the beauty of 

 its gardens as for its stately houses. The owner of this particular 

 garden in Fetter Lane is the most famous of all the Enghsh 

 herbalists. His Herbal,^ which was published in 1597, gripped 

 the imagination of the English garden-loving world, and now, 

 after the lapse of three hundred years, it still retains its hold on 

 us. There are English-speaking people the world over who may 

 know nothing of any other, but at least by name they know 

 Gerard's Herbal. In spite of the condemnation he has justly 

 earned, not only in modern times, but from the critics of his 

 own day, for having used Dr. Priest's translation of Dodoens's 

 Pemptades without acknowledgment, no one can wander in the 

 mazes of Gerard's monumental book without succumbing to 

 its fascination. One reads his critics with the respect due to 

 their superior learning, and then returns to Gerard's Herbal with 

 the comfortable sensation of slipping away from a boring sermon 

 into the pleasant spaciousness of an old-fashioned fairy-tale. 

 For the majority of us are not scientific, nor do we care very 



1 Americans who have the proud distinction of being " of Royal Indian 

 descent " may be interested to know that a copy of Gerard's Herbal in Oxford 

 has been identified as having belonged to Dorothy Rolfe, the mother-in-law 

 of the Princess Pocahontas. 



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