The Elizabethan zoo: A book of beasts both fabulous and authentic (Nonpareil books)

196 Pages·1979·14.901 MB·English

by  Edward Topsell

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A BOOK OF BEASTS
FABULOUS & AUTHENTIC
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THE ELIZABETHAN ZOO
Selected from
Philemon Holland’s Translation of
Pliny 1601 and Edward Top sell’s
ft Hiflorie of Foure*Footed Beafles”
i6oy, & his (t Hi florie of Serpents”
1608 & edited hy M. St Clare Byrne

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This is a nonpareil book published by
David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.
306 Dartmouth Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
Copyright © 1979 by David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.
First published in 1926 by
Frederick Etchells & Hugh MacDonald, London.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
[Topsell, Edward] 1572-1625?
The Elizabethan zoo.
“Selected from Philemon Holland’s translation of
Pliny, 1601 and Edward Topsell’s ‘Historie of foure-footed
beastes’, 1607, & his ‘Historie of serpents’, 1608 &
edited by M. St. Clare Byrne.”
Reprint of the 1926 ed. published by F. Etchells &
H. MacDonald, London in series: The Hazlewood books.
1. Animal lore. 2. Animals, Mythical. I. Plinius
Secundus, C. Naturalis historia. II. Byrne, Muriel
St. Clare. III. Title. IV. Series: Hazlewood books.
QL89.T6 1979 398.2^45 79-88477
isbn 0-87923-300-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 0-87923-299-4 (softcover)
This book has been printed on acid-free paper and sewn in
signatures. The paper will not yellow with age, the binding will
not deteriorate, and the pages will not fall out.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
INTRODUCTION
This is not a “child’s book of bad beasts’’: it is composed
of selections from the most serious and substantial books of
zoology that were available for educated Englishmen in
Shakespeare’s day. Designed originally to edify, to lead men
to “passe away the Sabbaoths in heavenly meditations upon
earthly creatures,” these books contain much to amuse and
entertain the modern reader. They represent the real beginning
of modern zoology, yet there is in them a sufficient residuum
of mediaeval credulity, anecdote and legendary lore to delight
the twentieth century with their quaintness and comicality.
These extracts have been taken from Edward Topsell’s
Historie of Foure'Footed Beastes (1607), and his Historie of
Serpents (1608). This main source has been supplemented
here and there by additional matter taken from Philemon
Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History (1601). Top'
sell’s books were practically translations, made from the
work of the great Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner (1516'
1565). He added a portentous list of several hundred other
“authorities” whom he had also consulted, and tells us in
his preface that he has “taken many things out of those
writers named by Gesner which he omitted.” To all intents
and purposes, however, his work is the first translation to
make accessible to English readers the Historia Animalium,
which was itself the most voluminous and the most scientific
zoological treatise possessed by late sixteenth and early seven'
teenth century Europe. Gesner had read omnivorously in all
the great continental libraries, he had travelled in search of
knowledge, specimens and first'hand reports; and his re'
sultant Historia Animalium was an amalgam of everything
INTRO that the age knew or credited concerning natural and “uo
DUCTION
natural” history.
Topsell in his entirety amounts to over a thousand large
folio pages, closely printed. His account of the horse, for
example, runs him into no less than one hundred and fifty
two of these, many of which are frankly tedious, except per'
haps to a horse doctor. He deals, in all, with some hundred
and twenty animals and serpents, and his introductions and
epistles are prolix to a degree. Selection was therefore essential
if he was to be introduced to the modern reader in an accept'
able form, and the present volume consists of only twenty'four
accounts of animals, all of which, with two or three excep'
tions, are abridged—some slightly, some very considerably.
(See Notes.) The remaining four—the Phoenix, the Dolphin,
the Whale and the other sea'monsters, together with part of
the Crocodile, have been taken from Pliny.
In this book the honours have been divided as far as
possible between the real and the fabulous beasts. It would
lave been amusing to make from Topsell a book of the
fantastic and picturesque passages only: to do this, however,
would have been to convey an entirely false impression not
only of Topsell but of sixteenth century zoology, and of the
knowledge thereof possessed by the educated man of that
time. Superstition and fact, myth and observation are all in'
extricably mingled in Elizabethan literature: so too in Topsell
the mating elephant turns its head to the east, and readers are
seriously taken to task by the clergyman'translator for the
“impiety” of disbelieving in the unicorn, while the cat and
its habits are observed and described with real accuracy.
To give both a fair and adequate idea of the jumble of
fact and fancy to be found in Topsell and to choose a varied
vi
collection of interesting animals has been the chief aim in INTRO/
DUCTION
making these selections. It is not, in consequence, a zoologist’s
book, nor a scholar’s book. Its volume is so small in com/'
oarison with the giant bulk of its originals that to send it
brth as representative of the extent and comprehensiveness
of Elizabethan zoology would be an impertinence. In its
entirety it is only about as long as Topsell’s account of the
horse. Lovers of Topsell in all his expansiveness will doubt'
less lament the loss of many of their favourite anecdotes; but
those who have yet to make his acquaintance will probably
find enough for a beginning. Topsell’s philology is unfailingly
copious, his mythology exhaustively comprehensive, and his
anecdotal powers almost superhuman: and of these aspects of
his work the limitations of space—and perhaps also of time—
forbid more than a few specimens. His book was written for
an age with greater leisure than ours, “when the days were
longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs),
when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked
slowly in the winter evenings.” All, therefore, that can be
claimed for these selections is that, taken in their entirety, they
represent and illustrate the methods, substance and variety of
the natural history of Shakespeare’s day.
M. ST CLARE BYRNE.
vn
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in 2018 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
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