10S 



Jacob Bobart, the elder, is an admirable portrait, by 

 D. Loggan, taken at his age of eighty-one, and engraved by 

 Burghers. Granger says it is extremely scarce. Beneath 

 the head, which is dated 1675, is this distich: — 



Thou Germane prince of plants, each year to thee, 

 Thousands of subjects grant a subsidy. 



It is a venerable countenance, of deep thought. Richard- 

 son re-engraved this among his Illustrations to Granger. 

 Granger mentions also a whole-length of Bobart in a garden, 

 dog, goat, &c. 4to. The Encycl. of Gardening says, " Bo- 

 bart's descendants are still in Oxford, and known as coach 

 proprietors." Do none of them possess the original painting? 

 The munificence of the Earl of Danby placed Bobart in the 

 physic garden at Oxford, in 1632, as supervisor; and this 

 garden flourished many years under his care, and that of his 

 son Jacob, whose zeal and diligence Dr. Pulteney records. 

 The elder Bobart was the author of the Hortas Oxoniensis, 

 1648. Wood, in his Athenae, informs us, that "Jacob 

 Bobart died in his garden-house, in February, 1679, where- 

 upon his body was buried in the church of St. Peter, Oxon." 



duced, as it were, out of chaos and death ; proving the infinite power, wis- 

 dom, and goodness, of the great cause of all being!" I must trespass on 

 my reader, by again quoting from Salmonia: — "I envy no quality of the 

 mind or intellect in others; not genius, power, wit, or fancy; hut if I could 

 choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I 

 should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for it makes life 

 a discipline of goodness — creates new hopes, when all earthly hopes vanish; 

 and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous 

 of lights; awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls 

 up beauty and divinity: makes an instrument of torture and of shame the 

 ladder of ascent to Paradise; and, far above all combinations of earthly 

 hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of palms and amaranths, the gar- 

 dens of the blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and 

 the sceptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair!" 



