72 The Botanical Renaissance [ch. 



wage-books are preserved, showing the weekly earnings of 

 compositors, engravers and book-binders, throughout a 

 period of three centuries. In short, the Maison Plantin 

 beggars description, and a visit there is an infallible recipe 

 for transporting the imagination back to the time of the . 

 Renaissance, when printing was in its first youth, and was 

 treated with the reverence due to one of the fine arts. 



The first Belgian botanist of world-wide renown was 

 Rembert Dodoens [or Dodonaeus] (Text-fig. 36). He was 

 a contemporary of Plantin, having been born at Malines in 

 1517 1 . He studied at Louvain, and visited the universities 

 and medical schools of France, Italy and Germany, even- 

 tually qualifying as a doctor. He was successful in his 

 profession, being physician to the Emperors Maximilian II 

 and Rudolph II, and finally becoming Professor of Medicine 

 at Leyden, where he died in 1585. His interest in the 

 medical aspect of botany led him to write a herbal, and, 

 in order to illustrate it, he obtained the use of the wood- 

 blocks which had been employed in the octavo edition of 

 Fuchs' work. To these a number of new engravings were 

 added. The book was published in Dutch in the year 

 J 554 by Vanderloe, under the title ' Cruydeboeck.' The 

 text is not a translation of Fuchs, as is sometimes supposed, 

 although Dodoens took Fuchs as his model for the order 

 of description of each plant. The method of arrangement 

 is his own, and he indicates localities and times of flowering 

 in the Low Countries, information which clearly could not 

 have been derived from the earlier writer. Almost simul- 

 taneously with the first Dutch edition, a French issue 

 appeared under the title of ' Histoire des Plantes.' The trans- 

 lation was carried out by Charles de l'Ecluse, with whose 

 own work we shall shortly deal. Dodoens supervised the 

 production of the book, and took the opportunity to make 

 some additions. It became known in England through 

 Lyte's translation, which will be discussed in a later section 

 of this chapter. 



The last Dutch edition of the herbal, for which the 

 author himself was responsible, was printed by Vanderloe 

 in 1563. The publisher then parted with Fuchs' blocks, 



1 There has been some uncertainty about this date, but Meerbeck (see 

 Appendix II) seems to have proved that 15 17 is correct. 



