Part 5

Their other Work was thus announced in one of the original numbers of the Spectator, which came out in small folio weekly numbers, and a portion of each number was appropriated to advertisements. It was thus advertised in that of May 5th, 1711:--"The Retired Gardener. Vol. i. Being a Translation of Le Jardinier Solitaire; or, Dialogues between a Gentleman and a Gardener: containing the methods of making, ordering, and improving a fruit and kitchen garden; together with the manner of planting and cultivating flowers, plants, and shrubs, necessary for the adorning of gardens, &c. Vol. ii. containing the manner of planting and cultivating all sorts of flowers, plants, and shrubs, necessary for the adorning of gardens; in which is explained, the art of making and disposing of parterres, arbours of greens, wood works, arches, columns, and other pieces and compartments usually found in the most beautiful gardens of country seats. The whole enriched with variety of Figures, being a Translation from the Sieur Louis Liger. To this volume is added, a Description and Plan of Count Tallard's Garden, at Nottingham. The whole revised by George London and Henry Wise. Printed for Jacob Tonson, at Shakspeare's Head, over against Catherine-street in the Strand." This book, after giving the mode of culture of most flowers, generally gives what the author calls _its history_. I will merely give its history of one flower:--"On a day when they were keeping holiday in heaven, Flora summoned all the deities that preside over gardens, and, when they were met, addressed herself to them in this manner: 'You, who have always been the shining ornaments of my court, I have now called together, to consult in a matter of great importance. I know I am the sovereign of all the flowery kind; but for the more firm establishment of my empire, I am thinking to choose them a Queen of a spotless and unblemished reputation; but will do nothing of this nature without your counsel and assistance.' To these words, all the deities that were present, having first filled the court with murmurs, answered in this manner: 'Great goddess, be pleased to reflect a little on the animosities such a choice may create among the rival flowers; even the worthless Thistle will pretend to deserve the crown, and if denied, will perhaps grow factious, and disturb your peaceful reign.' 'Your fears are groundless,' replied the goddess; 'I apprehend no such consequence; my resolution is already fixed; hear, therefore, what I have determined:--In the deep recesses of a wood, where formerly the oaks were vocal, and pronounced oracles to mortals, at the foot of a little hill is a grotto, whose structure is nature's master-piece, there a wood nymph passed her quiet days; she was extremely beautiful, and charmed all that beheld her; her looks, her mien, and her behaviour had something of more than human; and indeed she was the daughter of a Dryad, and of a sylvan god. Her chastity and devotion equalled her beauty, she was perfectly resigned to the will of heaven, and never undertook any thing without having first implored our assistance; her heart was pure, and her hands undefiled. This nymph is dead, and my intention is to raise a flower from her precious remains, to be Queen of all the flowery race. The applauding gods straight prepared for the ceremony; _Priapus_ put on a grave countenance; _Vertumnus_ loaded himself with perfumes of an excellent scent; _Pomona_ heaped up canisters with all sorts of richest fruits; _Venus_ was attended with a train of smiles and graces; _Vesta_ promised wonders; and _Bacchus_ supplied rivers of nectar, and crowned vast goblets with that divine liquor. In this equipage they left their celestial mansions, and repaired to the grotto, where they saw the dead body of the nymph stretched along on a soft couch of turf, and approaching it with profound awe and silence, prepared to pay the sacred rites; and Flora, having thrice bowed herself to the ground, was heard to pronounce this prayer:--'Almighty Jupiter, great ruler of the universe, exert thy creating power, and from the dead corpse of this lovely nymph let a plant arise, and bear no less lovely flowers, to be Queen of all thou hast already created.' Scarce had she made an end, when, behold a wondrous change! The nymph's extended limbs were turned into branches, and her hair into leaves; a shrub sprung up, adorned with sprouting buds, which straight unfolding, disclosed a fragrant and vermilion flower; a sudden light filled all the grotto, and the well-pleased goddess breathed thrice on the new-born babe, to spread it into life, and give it an odorous soul. Then seeing the vegetable Queen adorned with every grace, she kissed her thrice, and, breaking the general silence, revealed her secret joy. 'Approach,' said she, 'at my command, oh, all ye flowers, and pay your grateful homage to your Queen, the ROSE, for that is the name I give her.' Then taking a crown in her hand, that had been made on purpose in heaven, she placed it on the head of the new-made majesty; while to complete the ceremony, the attending gods sung joyful _Io Pæans_, amidst a symphony of flutes, harps, and all other tuneful instruments, with which the air resounded, while Flora and her bright celestial train ascended back rejoicing into heaven."[38]

JOHN JAMES, who translated Le Blond's "Theory and Practice of Gardening, wherein is fully handled all that relates to fine gardens, commonly called Pleasure-gardens," cuts, 4to. 1712.

M. STEVENSON published in small 4to. 1661, a book called The Twelve Months, being a Treatise on Husbandry and Gardening.

The Rev. HENRY STEVENSON, of East Retford, published "The Young Gardener's Director," 1716, 12mo. He has introduced Mr. Evelyn's advice as to having salads in each month. There is a neat cut of flower-knots, and the frontispiece exhibits a curious old garden. In the preface he says, "not to mention the profit to a family, nothing conduces more to a man's health, especially to one that lives a sedentary life. If these observations and experiments I have made in gardening, be of use to any by drawing him to a way of diversion that will preserve his health, and perhaps put him upon a meditation on the great works of the creation, let him give the Creator the praise." He also published "The Gentleman Gardener Instructed;" eighth edition, 12mo. 1769.

DAVID STEVENSON, in 1746, published in 12mo. The Gentleman Gardener Instructed. Is this the same book as the above?

STEPHEN SWITZER, of whose private history so very little is known, but whose works shew him to have been an honest, unassuming, humane, religious, most industrious, and ingenious man. We only know that he had a garden on Milbank, and another _near_ Vauxhall; and that he died, I believe, about 1745. He dates his Letter on the Cythesis, from New Palace Yard, 1730. He was a native of _Hampshire_; 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 labours 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 attached 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 intelligent 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; Let evergreens the turfy tomb adorn, And roseate dews (the glory of the morn) My carpet deck; then let my soul possess The happier scenes of an eternal bliss.

He asks "What solid pleasure is there not to be found in gardening? Its pursuit is easy, quiet, and such as put neither the body nor mind into those violent agitations, or precipitate and imminent dangers that many other exercises (in themselves very warrantable) do. The end of this is health, peace, and plenty, and the happy prospect of felicities more durable than any thing in these sublunary regions, and to which this is (next to the duties of religion) the surest path." His attachment to some of our own poets, and to the classic authors of antiquity, discovers itself in many of his pages; and his devout turn of mind strongly shines throughout. His allusion to Homer, in vol. iii. page 7, sufficiently shews how ardently this industrious servant, this barrow wheeler, must have searched the great writers of ancient times, to discover their attachment to rural nature, and to gardens. His candid and submissive mind thus speaks:--"If we would, therefore, arrive at any greater perfection than we are in gardening, we must cashiere that mathematical stiffness in our gardens, and imitate nature more; how that is to be done, will appear in the following chapters, which though they may not be, as new designs scarce ever are, the most perfect, it will at least excite some after-master to take pen and pencil in hand, and finish what is here thus imperfectly begun, and this is my comfort, that I shall envy no man that does it. I have, God be praised, learned to admire, and not envy every one that outgoes me: and this will, I hope, go a great way in making me easy and happy under the pressures of a very narrow fortune, and amidst the ruffles of an ill-natured world. I have tasted too severely of the lashes of man, to take any great satisfaction in any thing but doing my duty."[39] In his devout and magnificent Essay on the Sun, he says, "'tis admirable that this planet should, through so many ages of the world, maintain an uninterrupted course, that in so many thousands of revolving years, it should retain the same light, heat, and vigour, and every morning renew its wonted alacrity, and dart its cherishing beams on these dull and gloomy scenes of melancholy and misery, and yet that so few of us rightly consider its power, or are thankful to Divine Omnipotence for it. The great Roscommon (not greater than good) speaks of it with divine transport, and exhorts mankind to admire it, from the benefits and celestial beams it displays on the world:--

Great eye of all, whose glorious ray Rules the bright empire of the day; O praise his name, without whose purer light Thou hadst been hid in an abyss of night."[40]

Switzer (as appears from the Preface to his Iconologia) was so struck with the business and pleasures of a country life, that he collected, or meant to collect, whatever he could respecting this subject, scattered up and down as they were in loose irregular papers and books; but this work, we regret to say, never made its appearance. That he would have done this well, may be guessed at from so many of his pages recording what he calls "the eternal duration" of Virgil's works, or those of "the noble and majestic" Milton:--

Flowers worthy of Paradise, which no nice art In beds, and curious knots, but nature boon Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain.

Though prim regularity, and "parterres embroidered like a petticoat," were in his time in high vogue, yet his pages shew his enlarged views on this subject, and the magnificent ideas he had formed, by surrounding them by rural enclosures, (probably by reading Mr. Addison), perfumed with blossoms, and bespangled with the rich tufts of nature. Nothing, he says, is now so much wanted to complete the grandeur of the British nation, as noble and magnificent gardens, statues, and water-works; long extended shady walks, and groves, and the adjacent country laid open to view, and not bounded by high walls. The pleasant fields, and paddocks, in all the beautiful attire of nature, would then appear to be a part of it, and look as if the adjacent country were all a garden. Walls take away the rural aspect of any seat; wood, water, and such like, being the noble and magnificent decorations of a country villa. Switzer calls water the spirit and most enchanting beauty of nature. He is so struck with "the beautifulness and nobleness of terrace walks," and particularly with that truly magnificent and noble one, belonging to the Right Honourable the Earl of Nottingham, at _Burleigh-on-the-Hill_, that "for my own part I must confess, that that design creates an idea in my mind greater than I am well able to express." In his chapter of "Woods and Groves," he enforces "a particular regard to large old oaks, beech, and such like trees; in which case, one would as soon fire one's house, as cut them down, since it is the work of so many years, I may say ages, to rear them; those ancient trees which our forefathers had all along preserved with much care."[41] In some of the romantic embellishments which he proposed in the midst of a grove, or coppice, he hints at having "little gardens, with caves, little natural cascades and grotts of water, with seats, and arbors of honeysuckles and jessamine, and, in short, with all the varieties that nature and art can furnish." He advises "little walks and paths running through such pastures as adjoin the gardens, passing through little paddocks, and corn fields, sometimes through wild coppices, and gardens, and sometimes by purling brooks, and streams; places that are set off not by _nice art_, but by luxury of nature." And again, "these hedge-rows mixed with primroses, violets, and such natural sweet and pleasant flowers; the walks that thus lead through them, will afford as much pleasure, nay, more so, than the largest walk in the most magnificent and elaborate fine garden."[42] He concludes his interesting Chapter of Woods and Coppices, with these lines of Tickell:--

Sweet solitude! when life's gay hours are past, Howe'er we range, in thee we fix at last: Tost thro' tempestuous seas, the voyage o'er, Pale we look back, and bless the friendly shore. Our own strict judges, our past life we scan, And ask if glory have enlarg'd the span. If bright the prospect, we the grave defy, Trust future ages, and contented die.

The following appear to have been his works:--

1. The Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener's Recreation; or an Introduction to Gardening, Planting, Agriculture, and the other Business and Pleasures of a Country Life. By Stephen Switzer; 1715, 8vo. Another edition in 1717, 8vo. The year afterwards, it was published with the following title:--

2. Icknographia Rustica; or, the Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener's Recreation: containing Directions for the general Distribution of a Country Seat into rural and extensive Gardens, Parks, Paddocks, &c.; and a General System of Agriculture; illustrated by a great variety of Copperplates, done by the first hands, _from the Author's Drawings_. By Stephen Switzer, Gardener: several years Servant to Mr. London, and Mr. Wise. 3 vols. 8vo. 1718.

3. A Compendious Method for Raising Italian Brocoli, Cardoon, Celeriac, and other Foreign Kitchen Vegetables; as also an Account of Lucerne, St. Foyne, Clover, and other Grass Seeds, with the Method of Burning of Clay; 8vo. 1729. Fifth edition, 8vo. 1731, 1s. 6d.[43]

4. An Introduction to a General System of Hydrostaticks and Hydraulicks, wherein the most advantageous Methods of Watering Noblemen's and Gentlemen's Seats, Buildings, Gardens, &c. are laid down. With Sixty Copper Cuts of Rural and Grotesque Designs for Reservoirs, Cataracts, Cascades, Fountains, &c.; 2 vols. 4to. 1729.[44]

5. A Dissertation on the True Cythesus of the Ancients; 8vo. 1731; 1s. 6d. A classic production. At the end, he gives a Catalogue of the Seeds, &c. sold by him at the Flower-pot, _over against the Court of Common Pleas, in Westminster; or at his garden on Millbank_.[45]

6. Country Gentleman's Companion, or Ancient Husbandry Restored, and Modern Husbandry Improved; 8vo. 1732, 1s. 6d.

7. Switzer was the chief conductor of Monthly Papers on Agriculture, in 2 vols. 8vo., and he himself designed the Two Frontispieces. To be sold at his Seed Shop _in Westminster Hall_.

8. The Practical Fruit Gardener; 8vo. Cuts, 1717. Other editions, 8vo. 1724, 1731, Revised and recommended by the Rev. Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Bradley, with their Two Letters of Recommendation.

In this later edition of 1731, are a few additions. In one of its concluding chapters, he mentions "my worthy and ingenious friend, Sir James Thornhill." This pleasing volume, after stating the excellency of fruits, observes, "if fruit trees had no other advantage attending them than to _look_ upon them, how pleasurable would _that_ be? Since there is no flowering shrub excels, if equals that of a _peach_, or _apple tree_ in bloom. The tender enamelled blossoms, verdant foliage, with such a glorious embroidery of festoons and fruitages, wafting their odours on every blast of wind, and at last bowing down their laden branches, ready to yield their pregnant offspring into the hands of their laborious planter and owner."[46]

JOHN TAVERNER published, in 1660, a little Treatise, called The Making of Fish Ponds, Breeding Fish, and _Planting Fruits_. Printed several times, says Wood, in his Athenæ.

RICHARD BRADLEY. The Encyclopædia of Gardening pronounces him "a popular writer of very considerable talent, and indefatigable industry;" and speaks highly of the interesting knowledge diffused through his very numerous works, and gives a distinct list of them; so does Mr. Nicholls, in his Life of Bowyer; and Mr. Weston, in his Tracts, and Dr. Watts, in his Bib. Britt. In Mr. Bradley's "New Improvements of Planting and Gardening," he has added the whole of that scarce Tract of Dr. Beale's, the _Herefordshire Orchards_. One could wish to obtain his portrait, were it only from his pen so well painting the alluring charms of flowers:--"_Primroses_ and _Cowslips_, may be planted near the edges of borders, and near houses, for the sake of their pretty smell. I recommend the planting some of the common sorts that grow wild in the woods, in some of the most rural places about the house; for I think nothing can be more delightful, than to see great numbers of these flowers, accompanied with _Violets_, growing under the hedges, avenues of trees, and wilderness works. _Violets_, besides their beauty, perfume the air with a most delightful odour."[47] Mr. Bradley, it appears, from the Fruit Garden Kalendar, of the Rev. Mr. Lawrence, resided at Camden House, Kensington. They each of them in their letters, in 1717, subscribe themselves, "Your most affectionate friend." Mr. Lawrence frequently styles him "the most ingenious Mr. Bradley." Dr. Pulteney says he "was the author of more than twenty separate publications, chiefly on Gardening and Agriculture; published between the years 1716 and 1730. His 'New Improvement of Planting and Gardening, both Philosophical and Practical,' 8vo. 1717, went through repeated impressions; as did his 'Gentleman's and Gardener's Kalendar,' (which was the fourth part of the preceding book) both at home, and in translations abroad. His 'Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature,' 4to. 1721, was a popular, instructive, and entertaining work, and continued in repute several years. The same may be said of his 'General Treatise of Husbandry and Gardening,' 8vo. 2 vols. 1726; and of his 'Practical Discourses concerning the Four Elements, as they relate to the Growth of Plants,' 8vo. 1727. His '_Dictionarium Botanicum_,' 8vo. 1728, was, I believe, the first attempt of the kind in England." On the whole (says Dr. Pulteney) Bradley's writings, coinciding with the growing taste for gardening, the introduction of exotics, and improvements in husbandry, contributed to excite a more philosophical view of these arts, and diffuse a general and popular knowledge of them throughout the kingdom."[48] Mr. Bradley has given at the end of his curious "Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature," which is embellished with neat engravings, a chapter "Of the most curious Gardens in Europe, especially in Britain." In this chapter he justly observes, that "a gentle exercise in a fresh air, where the mind is engaged with variety of natural objects, contributes to content; and it is no new observation, that the trouble of the mind wears and destroys the constitution even of the most healthful body. All kinds of gardens contribute to health." This volume also preserves the account of Lord Ducie's noted old chesnut tree at Tortworth, supposed to be more than a thousand years old; and of an elm belonging to his lordship, of a truly gigantic growth.[49] Switzer thus speaks of Bradley:--"Mr. Bradley has not only shewn himself a skilful botanist, but a man of experience in other respects, and is every where a modest writer." Mr. Bradley died in 1732. Some writers have dwelt much upon his dissipation; let us remember, however, that

_Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues We write in water._

Mr. Weston, in a communication inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1806, says, "Although this country had a great loss by the death of Evelyn, yet he was succeeded, in twenty years after, by another of equal abilities, and indefatigable in endeavouring to improve the art of gardening, as Bradley's numerous works will testify."