46 



is known, but whose works shew him to have been an honest, 

 unassuming, humane, religious, most industrious, and inge- 

 nious man. We only know that he had a garden on Mil- 

 bank, and another near Vauxhall; and that he died, I be- 

 lieve, about 1745. He dates his Letter on the Cy thesis, 

 from New Palace Yard, 1730. He was a native of Hamp- 

 shire; for in his Fruit Gardener, speaking of walnut-trees, 

 he says, "The best I ever saw are those that grow upon 

 chalk. Such are those that grow about Ewell, near Epsom, 

 and in many places of my own native county of Hampshire, 

 there being one cut down some few years ago in the Park 

 belonging to the Right Honourable the Lady Russell, at 

 Stratton, that did spread, at least, fifty yards diameter." He 

 acknowledges, without murmuring, his meanness of fortune, 

 and his having industriously submitted " to the meanest la- 

 bours of the scythe, spade, and wheel-barrow." He became, 

 however, eminent in his day, and added much to the beauty 

 and magnificence of the gardens of many of our chief nobility 

 and gentry. He wrote a history of the art he so loved, and 

 therefore his classic History of Gardening, prefixed to his 

 Ichnographia Rustica, merits the perusal of every one at- 

 tached to gardens; and paints in strong colours his own 

 devotion to that art; and which he thus concludes: "In 

 short, next to the more immediate duties of religion, 'tis in 

 the innocency of these employs, thus doing, thus planting, 

 dressing, and busying themselves, that all wise and intelli- 

 gent persons would be found, when Death, the king of 

 terrors, shall close their eyes, and they themselves be obliged 

 to bid an eternal farewell to these and all other sublunary 

 pleasures;" and he who was thus fond of breathing the sweet 

 and fragrant air of gardens, thus expresses his own (perhaps 

 expiring) wish in the lines of Cowley : 



Sweet shades, adieu ! here let my dust remain, 

 Covered with flowers, and free from noise and pain; 



