_Stanza 4._—See Note to Stanza 4 of Poem XXXIII.
The word bezoar comes from two Arabic roots which signify the
annihilator of poison. Murray gives several examples of its use by
seventeenth and eighteenth century writers in the sense of an antidote,
chiefly to snake bites. Topsell, for instance, in his book on Serpents
(1607), remarks that “the juice of apples being drunk, and endive, are
the proper Bezoar against the venom of a Phalangie”—whatever that may
be. The word was also applied to various substances held as antidotes,
especially to a concretion found in the stomach of some animals, formed
of concentric layers of animal matter deposited round some foreign
substance. This concretion was called the bezoar stone. The original
sort was the lapis bezoar orientale obtained from the wild goat of
Persia, which was in later times called the bezoar goat; also from
various antelopes, &c. The lapis bezoar occidentale, obtained from the
llamas of Peru, was less valued. The chamois yielded German bezoar. “The
stone,” says Frampton, in his “Joyful News,” “is called the Bezaar,
being approved good against Venome”; and Hawkins, in his “Voyage to the
South Seas,” talks about “the becunia and other beasts which breed the
beazer stone.”