Making Hiss-tory Encountering Snakes in the 17th Century
Snakes have been a part of Earth's history for over 100 million years, and have long been an object of both fascination and repulsion for humans. In Milton's time, snakes held significant cultural weight, influencing art and literature as well as perceptions of the natural world. Like his peers, he would have encountered snakes through the pages of bibles, travelogues, natural history books, works of heraldry and more. While Herpetology, the study of reptiles and amphibians, was not yet a distinct scientific discipline, this period saw the collection and observation of these animals, often within the context of curiosity cabinets and early museums. Influenced by the expansion of global trade, individuals began to collect and document both indigenous and exotic snakes, laying the groundwork for future scientific study. It was a period of observation, collection, and early attempts at understanding reptiles and amphibians within the broader context of natural history.
Publications such as Topsell's The Historie of Serpents and Charas' New Experiments Upon the Viper, along with Robert Hooke's detailed anatomical drawings, laid foundations for the development of herpetology as a distinct scientific field. At the same time, these works depicted as equally real, alongside snakes such as the viper, a "monstrous Serpent of four or five Yards long... very large and furious," and the Ethiopian dragons, inherited from ancient Greek mythology and believed to kill elephants "by winding themselves about the Elephant's Legs, and then thrusting their Heads up their Nostrils, fling them, and suck their Blood till they are dead:
What emerges from these works is a kind of natural history tinted by supernatural inheritance. Topsell was a cleric, not a scientist (the word scientist was yet to be coined) and his tendency to describe animals in moral terms carried through to the 18'" century, when one of the foremost natural scientists of the day, Charles Owens, spoke of the "Divine Wisdom in the works of Nature,' and the immutability of species in their "Eternal Design," even as he progressed the scientific observation of snakes. He acknowledged the limits of knowledge and advocated the rewards of observation, especially of looking more closely at what is commonly overlooked. Although his motive is theological, its end and effect are almost scientific.
All of these writers were working at a time when it was difficult to verify sources, and the world was deeply strange. They were working without the massive contextual advantage that modem life sciences give us when studying zoology - and, lacking the taxonomies and genetic techniques we take for granted, were always in danger of misinterpreting and misapplying what they knew. But although their works abounds with fanciful ideas, it also offers an early glimmer of modern science. For all its imperfection, it represents a vast collection of would-be observational data, and it even includes rudimentary rules for sifting truth from supposition. Milton, as a keen student of contemporary science throughout his life, would have been familiar with these works. From pamphlets to printers' devices, this exhibition includes a selection of serpents that Milton would have seen in the 11th century, as well as some of the later depictions he inspired. These remarkable reptiles slither through the collection at Milton's Cottage, courtesy of the many copies of Paradise Lost on display. During the Lunar Year of the Snake we invite you to discover more about these fascinating creatures, and the many ways they have been represented across the centuries.
Milton's Cottage Trust, 21 Deanway, Chalfont St Giles. Buckinghamshire. HP8 4JH Chanty registration number. 1163039
A cake!
From every beast, more duteous at her call,
Than at Circcan call the herd disguised.
He, bolder now, uncall'd before her stood,
But as in gaze admiring. Oft he bow'd
His turret crest, and sleek cnamell'd neck,
Fawning, and lick'd the ground whereon she trod.
His gentle dumb expression tum'd at length
The eye of Eve to mark his play; he, glad
Of her attention gain'd, with serpent tongue
Organic, or impulse of vocal air,
His fraudulent temptation thus began:
'Wonder not, sovran mistress, if perhaps
Thou cunt, who art sole wonder; much less arm.
Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with disdain,
Displeased that I approach thee thus, and gaze
Insatiate, I thus single, nor have fear'd
Thy awful brow, more awful thus retired.
Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair,
Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine,
By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore,
With ravishment behdd, there best beheld
Where universally admired; but here
In this enclosure wild, these beasts among,
Beholders rude, and shallow to discern
Half what in thee is fair, one man except,
Who sees thee? (and what is one?) who shouldst be seen.
A Goddess among Gods, adored and served
By Angels numberless, thy daily train.'
So glozed the Tempter, and his proem tuned;
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Nor unamazcd, she thus in answer spake:
'What may this mean? Language of man pronounced
By tongue of brute, and human sense expresed!
The first at least of these I thought denied
To beasts, whom God on their creation-day
Created mute to all articulate sound; T
he latter I demur, for in their looks
Much reason, and in their adions, oft appears.
Thee, Serpent, subtlest beast of all the field