It must surely have been of some quaint book of travel that this old English song-writer was thinking when he thus discoursed on the pleasant debt we owe to books, when in the stirring days of Frobisher, Drake and Raleigh, men’s minds were expanding to all sorts of possibilities, and they read with avidity of the Eldorado of the west, and of the headless men, or those whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. Such as were in all good faith held to be fairly represented by our illustration (fig. 1) from one of these old books. The writers of the day described too the wondrous creatures that peopled the torrid plains of Africa or India, or the lands of Prester John, or far Cathay; where so many things were new and true and wonderful that it seemed as if all things were possible, and a mermaid no more an unreasonable probability than a milkmaid.

Of Maundevile we have already made mention. It would be manifestly undesirable to dwell at the length that the ample materials to hand would permit. We will mention but one or two other books as samples of the bulk.

Munster’s “Cosmography” is a book that all bibliophiles whose tastes incline in this direction should see. Sebastian Munster, the learned author, died of the plague at Basel in the year 1552, at the comparatively early age of sixty-three, almost immediately after he had completed his book. The copy before us we see was published at Basel in the year of his death. Everyone consulting such a book should always begin at the very beginning, as the old titles, as we have already indicated, are often full of interest and beauty. In the instance before us the centre of the page is filled up with the title, given with that elaborate fulness that is so characteristic of early books. The upper part of the page is devoted to the secular and spiritual princes of the Roman Empire, the former crowned, the latter wearing their mitres, and each having a shield of arms. Amongst the secular princes we find those of Cyprus, Ungar, Sicilia, Bohem, Neapol and Polon. The sides of the page are taken up with panels containing the rulers of Turkey, Tartary and such-like outlandish places, and at the bottom is a very comprehensive picture indeed. In the foreground, resting against a tree, is a man in grievous extremity, naked and forlorn, and to him advances a warlike savage with bow and arrow and, worse still, a manifest inclination to use them to the detriment of the traveller. Behind the prostrate figure is an elephant, while in rear of the savage are three trees, marked respectively Piper, Muscata and Gariofili. In the background is a river, or arm of the sea, from which dolphins emerge, and on the further shore are two towns and a range of mountains.

The book is very freely illustrated with maps, portraits, pictures of towns, animals, plants, and so forth. Some of the figures are really very good; there is one of the Moufflon, for instance, that is full of character and truth, while others are hopelessly wrong. The same pictures come over and over again at intervals in the text, thus a man with a great sword going to chop off the head of a man kneeling before him, stands for martyrdom or the doom of the traitor, and reappears impartially on all occasions where the text suggests such ideas. The same battle-scene often crops up to illustrate the various conflicts described, and there is a standard figure of a bishop with mitre and pastoral crook that serves as a portrait of divers ecclesiastics. The same lantern tower that does duty for Lucerne reappears for Alexandria. It argues a quaint simplicity all round when the author could gravely furnish and his readers as gravely accept these few stock illustrations for all the varying conditions.

It is very interesting to see that in the map of Africa⁠[9] the Nile takes its rise from three large lakes far south of the equator, but the map of the world is an extraordinary production, and shows, sources of the Nile notwithstanding, a strange ignorance of elementary facts. The South Atlantic is almost entirely filled up from Brazil to Africa by a great sea monster. In the map of Africa a gigantic elephant is introduced, a proceeding that was rather popular with these older writers, and which is satirized in the well-known lines of Swift—

Even in the days of Plutarch a kindred device was not unknown, as we find him in the “Theseus” writing, “as geographers crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts and unapproachable bogs.” Elsewhere in this map of Africa we see trees with enormous parrots (miles long if we judge them by the general scale of the map) perched in their branches, and the reputed home of the monoculi, the one-eyed men, is indicated by the introduction of one of them. In South America in the same way the home of the Canibali is marked by a hut of tree trunks and branches from which hang suspended, as in a larder, a human leg and a man’s head. Many old beliefs obtain curious illustration, thus in one of the quaint pictures we see a man using the divining rod to detect subterranean water. That Swift knew the book seems probable from his happy allusion to the elephants in lieu of towns, and this probability grows almost into a certainty, when we read, in his “Tale of a Tub,” his assertion that sea-men have a custom, when they meet a whale, of flinging him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from doing damage to the ship. In the “Cosmography” there is the picture of a ship to which a whale is approaching somewhat too closely for the nerves of the crew, and they are, therefore, represented as throwing a tub overboard for it to play with. Neither the substitution of elephants for towns nor the notion of the ship-preserving tub are, however, the exclusive copyright of the Munster limners. The former are seen in various other old maps and the tub incident is introduced into the “Ship of Fools” and other old books.

The great value of these monsters, terrestrial or marine, in filling up bare spaces, and in giving an additional interest and reality, may be very well seen in the accompanying illustration (fig. 2)—a view of the Azores, where the strange water-monster fills up very adequately indeed a space where Nature failed to deposit an island. It is impossible to decide its species; at first sight it suggests the notion of a sawfish or water-unicorn. The old draughtsman was unwilling that any of it should be lost to us, so instead of placing it in the water, it, with perhaps the exception of the missing lower jaw, is entirely on the surface. The mysterious something that crosses it suggests the idea that the creature is going bathing, and has thrown its towel, schoolboy-fashion, over its back; but on fuller reflection we take it that that is meant to indicate the wave and turmoil that the creature makes in the otherwise placid sea as it rushes through it, or rather over it.

The figure is a facsimile of a drawing of a portion of the Azores, St. George and Flores being omitted by us. It is extracted from Sir Thomas Herbert’s book, “Some Yeares Travels into Africa and Asia the Great, especially the famous Empires of Persia and Industant.” The edition we consult was printed in London in the year 1677. After the usual dedicatory letter we find the following appeal to the reader:—

Personally we have much pleasure in paying the suggested tribute of courteous thanks, and we think that any of our readers who may encounter the book will in like manner confess their obligations to the old writer for his labours. We would fain hope that the trip had many brighter spots in it than he seems quite willing to allow.

It has been the custom with many writers to depreciate the labours of Marco Polo,⁠[10] and to impute to him a lack of trustworthiness; but it appears to us, after a careful perusal of his book, that such censure is scarcely deserved. He made mistakes, but he is poles asunder from such writers as Maundevile or Pinto.⁠[11] His travels in the east are narrated with much fidelity, and are almost entirely free from the gross misstatements that are met with so freely in many books of travel, not only at this early date but for centuries afterwards. The original was probably written in the Venetian dialect, but the earliest manuscript now known, that of 1320, is in Latin. A copy of this is in the magnificent library of the British Museum, another is in the Royal Berlin Library, another in the Paris Library, and some few others are in private collections. Other MSS. of it exist, and it was also freely printed on the advent of the printing press, as for instance, at Basle in 1522; in Venice in 1496, 1508, 1597, and 1611; in Brescia in 1500; Paris, 1556; Nuremberg, 1477; Strasburg, 1534; Leipzig, 1611; Lisbon, 1502; Seville, 1520; London, 1597, 1625; Amsterdam, 1664. As these various editions were in the languages of the respective places of publication it indicates a widespread interest, and it may be taken as a proof, too, that the book was held to possess solid value: no book of the Munchausen type can show such a record as this. An excellent English edition, very freely illustrated by notes, is that of William Marsden, published in 1818: to this the editor prefixes a very complete biography of the old author.

Master Peter Heylyn, geographer, who flourished during the reigns of Charles I., Cromwell, and Charles II., tells us of many marvellous journeys in his volume, and introduces much that is curious in his notes of the natural history of the countries visited. India was in those days an inscrutable and little-known land, where the wildest imagination had full play and was in but little danger of being dispossessed by cold reality. Wonderful, however, as the tales were that came to Heylyn’s ears he found some of them almost beyond credit, and after telling us of “men with dogges heads: of men with one legge onely, of such as live by sent; of men that had but one eye, and that in their foreheads; and of others whose eares did reach unto the ground,” he is careful to add—“But of these relations and the rest of this straine I doubt not but the understanding reader knoweth how to judge and what to believe.” He tells us, too, of an Indian people that by eating dragon’s heart and liver attain to the understanding of the languages of beasts, who can make themselves, when they will, invisible, and who have “two tubbes, whereof the one opened yields winde, and the other raine,” but here, too, he hesitates to take the responsibility of these tales and leaves their credence or rejection to the faith or scepticism of his readers. In the Moluccas, too, he hears of many wonders: a river, for instance, that is plentifully stored with fish, yet the water so hot that it immediately scalds the skin off any beast that is thrown into it; of men with “tayles”; of fruit, that whosoever eateth shall for the space of twelve hours be out of his wits; of “a tree which all the day-time hath not a floure on it, but within half an hour after sunne-set is full of them.” These, however, and several other wonders of the land, he concludes by embracing in one simple category—“All huge and monstrous lies.” He tells of a people of Libya, the Psylli, so venomous in themselves that they could poison a snake! One can fancy the immense disgust of some poisonous reptile of death dealing powers when he found that he had at length met more than his match, and that his attempt on the life of one of these very objectionable Libyans was recoiling with fatal effect upon himself.

The America of those days was a very different place from the America of to day. Primeval forest covered much of the land, the red man and the buffalo were in full possession, and the pilgrim fathers had but lately landed on its shores from the little “Mayflower.” As the remote is always associated with the wonderful, and monstrosities and marvels flourish in such congenial soil, Heylyn finds in America no less than in Asia and Africa a rich crop of marvels. Into these we need not, however, go; those who care to seek out this old author will find much of quaint interest, tradition blending with solid history and fable with fact in his pages.

Sir Walter Raleigh’s book on Guiana—“The discoverie of the large, rich and bewtiful Empire of Gviana, with a relation of the great and golden City of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, performed in the year 1595,” gives much curious information, and should not be overlooked. We may read in it of the Amazons, the Cannibals, the headless people, and other strange creatures of this wondrous land. Hakluyt’s blackletter folio, “The Principal Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land to the most remote and farthest distant Quarters of the earth at any time within the compasse of these fifteen hundred yeeres,” published in 1589, and “Purchas his Pilgrimage, or Relations of the World, Asia, Africa, and America, and the Hands adiacent,” published in London in the year 1614, are both quaint and interesting old books. Struys’ “Perillous and most Unhappy Voiages through Moscovia, Tartary, Italy, Greece, Persia, and Japan,” is another delightful old volume. It was published in the year 1638, and is illustrated by divers curious plates. To this list we need only add the “Natvrall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies,” by Joseph Acosta, published in 1604, and “Intreating of the Remarkable things of Heaven, of the Elements, Mettalls, Plants, and Beasts which are proper to that Country.” Where we have given a date it is simply that of the copy that has come under our own cognisance; many of those works were of sufficient popularity to run through several editions, sometimes several years apart; still the dates we give will afford an approximate notion of the age of the books in question. This slight sketch of mediæval books of travel might very readily be extended; we do but introduce them as illustrations and samples of the mass of material available.

The medical treatises of our forefathers were very numerous. Such books as Potter’s “Booke of Phisicke and Chirurgery,” or Cogan’s “Haven of Health,” may advantageously be consulted. The copy of the first of these that lies open before us as we write is dated “the yeare of our Lorde God, 1610,” and like almost all these old books is more or less of a compilation, full of divers interesting matters “necessary to be knowne and collected out of sundry olde written bookes.” Cogan is very frank on this point. He says, “Yet one thing I desire of all them that shall reade this booke; if they finde whole sentences taken out of Master Eliot his Castle of Heath, or out of Schola Salerni, or any other author whatsoever, that they will not condemne me of vaine glorie, as if I meant to set forth for mine owne workes that which other men have devised; for I confess that I have taken verbatim out of other wher it served for my purpose, but I have so interlaced it with mine owne, that (as I think) it may be the better perceived, and therefore seeing all my travaile tendeth to common commodity I trust every man will interpret all to the best.” His statement that his ingenious interweaving of other men’s work with his own makes the plagiarism and appropriation the more readily detected, is somewhat difficult to follow.

Cogan did, however, plagiarism notwithstanding, take up a somewhat special ground that supplied the raison d’être of his book, since he tells us that “it was chiefly gathered for the comfort of students, and consequently of all those that have a care for their health.” There are repeated references to the Oxford scholars: thus, under the head of quinces he gives a receipt for marmalade, “because the making of marmalade is a pretty conceit, and may perhaps delight some painefull student that will be his own Apothecarie.” Elsewhere we are told of “Cinamon-water” that “it hath innumerable vertues, wherefore I reckon it a great treasure for a student to have by him in his closet, to take now and then a spoonfull.” One gets some interesting side-light thrown on the University life of that day—Cogan’s book we may mention was published in 1636,—as for instance when we are told that “when foure houres bee past after breakefast a man may safely take his dinner, and the most convenient time for dinner is aboute eleaven of the clocke before noone. At Oxford in my time they used commonly at dinner boyled beefe⁠[12] with pottage, bread, and beere and no more. The quantitie of beefe was in value one halfepenny for one man, and sometimes if hunger constrained they would double their commons.” Judging by the “battels” we have had the felicity of paying we may take it that this tariff has undergone considerable alteration since 1636.

The working and superintendence of the printing press has up to comparatively recent years been considered such essentially masculine labour that it is rather curious to find on the title-page of Cogan’s book that it was “printed by Anna Griffin for Roger Ball, and are to be sold at his shop without Temple-Barre at the Golden Anchor.”

As the ingredients used as remedies by our ancestors came largely from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, we get in these medical works a good deal, indirectly, of natural history lore. Thus Cogan strongly commends the eating of cabbage leaves as a “preservative of the stomache from surfetting and the head from drunkennesse.” “Raw Cabage with Vinegar so much as he list.” The philosophy of the thing is that “the Vine and the Coleworts be so contrarie by Nature that if you plant Coleworts neare to the rootes of the Vine of it selfe it will flee from them, therefore it is no maruaile if Coleworts be of such force against drunkennesse.” Macer tells of the virtue of fennel as a restorative of youth, and bases his treatment on the assertion that “Serpentis whan thei are olde and willing to wexe stronge, myghty, and yongly agean thei gon and eten ofte fenel and thei become yongliche and myghty.” Coles, in his “Adam in Eden,” commends the Eyebright as a remedy for weak eyes, on the all-sufficient ground that goldfinches, linnets, and other birds eat of this plant to strengthen their sight.

Many of these prescriptions of our grandfathers’ great-grandfathers would have supplied ample justification for action on the part of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, had so invaluable a society been extant in those good old times of bull-baiting, cock-throwing brutality. Thus, in one remedy, the first step is to “take a red cock, pluck him alive, and bruise him in a mortar,” in another we must take a cat, cut off her ears and tail and mix the blood thereof with a little new milk, while the victim to tight boots must find relief for his blistered heel by skinning a mouse alive and laying the skin, while still warm, upon the injured spot. Scores of such instances of selfish indifference to suffering could readily be adduced.

We need scarcely pause to dwell on books dealing with cookery, distillation, gardening, and such like household economics, though it will be readily seen how in these again the natural history knowledge—or want of it—of our ancestors finds room for its display, but pass on to the books that deal with animals and the works of nature generally, from the theological point of view.

The “Bestiare Divin” of Guillaume, a Norman priest, is a very good example of the attempts that were made by the ecclesiastics to show that all the works of Nature were symbols and teachers of great Divine truths. The MS. of Guillaume dates from the thirteenth century, and is at present preserved in the National Library in Paris. The work has been very well reproduced in a French dress by Hippeau, a compatriot of the author of it. The statements of the compiler of such a book as the one under consideration are essentially unreliable, since it was very difficult for him to ascertain the truth, and he had in addition no great desire to be literally exact, and was at any moment prepared to sacrifice the actual facts for what he would consider a higher stratum of truth. He could not be accurate if he would, and would not if he could. Hence Hippeau, in estimating the value of the book, very justly says: “N’oublions pas que les pères de l’Eglise se préoccupèrent toujours beaucoup plus de la pureté des doctrines qu’ils avaient à développer, que de l’exactitude scientifique des notions sur lesquelles ils les appuyaient;” and we have already seen that Augustine considered the significance that could be wrung out of a statement of very much more importance than any adherence to the facts of the case. “Dans la vaste étendue des Cieux, au sien des mers profondes, sur tous les points du globe terrestre, il n’est par un phénomène, pas une étoile, pas un quadrupède, pas un oiseau, pas une plante, pas une pierre, qui n’éveille quelque souvenir biblique, qui ne fournisse la matière d’un enseignement moral, qui ne donne lieu à quelqu’effusion du cœur, qui n’ait à révéler quelque secret de Dieu.” It is evident that whatever of value or interest may be evolved on the strength of such sentiments, the result can hardly be called natural history—a decision that we have already arrived at in our consideration of the “Speculum Mundi.”

The “Bestiary” of De Thaun is a book of like nature. Only one copy of the MS. is known, that in the Cottonian collection. Of another of his books, the “Livre des Creatures,” seven copies are extant. The author had as his great patron Adelaide of Louvain, the second queen of Henry I. of England, and to her he dedicated his books. The language in which they are written is very archaic, but an excellent reproduction of the book for English readers has been made by Thomas Wright, F.S.A. We give six lines as an illustration of the original MS., and of its rendering into the rugged English that best gives its character:—

As an example of moral-making we may instance “the ylio, a little beast made like a lizard,” and which we imagine must be the salamander. De Thaun says that “it is of such a nature that if it come by chance where there shall be burning fire it will immediately extinguish it. The beast is so cold and of such a quality that fire will not be able to burn where it shall enter, nor will trouble happen in the place where it shall be. A beast of such quality signifies such men as was Ananias, as was Azarias, as was Misael: these three issued from the fire praising God. He who has faith only will never have hurt from fire.” Of the Aspis he tells us that “it is a serpent cunning, sly and aware of evil. When it perceives people who make enchantment, who want to take and snare it, it will stop very well the ears it has. It will press one against the earth: in the other it will stuff its tail firmly, so that it hears nothing. In this manner do the rich people of the world: one ear they have on earth to obtain riches, the other Sin stops up: yet they will see a day, the day of Judgment. This is the signification of the Aspis without doubt.” In like manner a moral is tacked on to every creature, and all creation is shown to be a text-book wherein man may read to some little degree of the mercy, but much more fully of the penal judgments, of the God the writer thus blindly professes to honour.

The old Armories are a very happy hunting ground for the student who would learn somewhat of the beliefs of our ancestors on matters zoological and botanical, as the writers while introducing the various creatures and plants as charges often take the opportunity to add a few explanatory details for the benefit of those to whom they were unknown. Guillim’s book, “A Display of Heraldrie, manifesting a more easie accesse to the knowledge thereof than has beene hitherto published by any,” is a mine of wealth on this score. The original edition appeared in the year 1611, but it was a very popular work for a long time, and other copies bear the dates 1632, 1638, 1660, 1679, and 1724. Another interesting book of the same class was the “Accedence of Armorie” of Legh, a considerably earlier work, as it first appeared in 1562. This also was a very favourite book and was very frequently reprinted, as for instance in 1568, 1576, 1591, 1597, &c. It is nevertheless now a rare book. Bossewell’s “Works of Armorie,” and many other quaint old volumes of this character might readily be dwelt on, but our aim is but to mention some few books in each section, and we care not to make our list either exhaustive or exhausting.

Having then dwelt at some little length upon various books from which we shall have occasion later on to draw illustrations, we propose now to deal with some few of the creatures more or less familiar to these old writers, commencing with mankind and touching successively upon beasts, birds, fishes, and, finally, reptiles. Guillim in his book before mentioned greatly prides himself upon his “method.” For this he claims credit over and over again. “Whosoever,” he says, for example, “shall address himself to write of Matters of Instruction, or of any other Argument of Importance, it behoveth him that he should resolutely determine with himself in what Order he will handle the same, so shall he best accomplish that he hath undertaken, and inform the Understanding and help the Memory of the Reader.” In the spirit of this teaching we would humbly desire to walk, and having quite resolutely determined the order of our going we will endeavour so far as in us lies to make our labour a profit to those who honour us with their perusal.