JACOB BOBART, ETC.
(Vol. vii., p. 428.)
Of old Jacob Bobart, who originally came from Brunswick, Granger (Biog. Hist., vol. v. p. 287., edit. 1824) gives us the following account:
"Jacob Bobart, a German, whom Plot styles 'an excellent gardener and botanist,' was, by the Earl of Danby, founder of the physic-garden at Oxford, appointed the first keeper of it. He was author of Catalogus Plantarum Horti Medici Oxoniensis, scil. Latino-Anglicus et Anglico-Latinus: Oxon. 1648, 8vo. One singularity I have heard of him from a gentleman of unquestionable veracity, that on rejoicing days he used to have his beard tagged with silver. The same gentleman informed me, that there is a portrait of him in the possession of one of the corporation at Woodstock. He died the 4th of February, 1679, in the eighty-first year of his age. He had two sons, Tillemant and Jacob, who both belonged to the physic-garden. It appears that the latter succeeded him in his office."
There is a very fine print of the elder Bobart, now extremely scarce, "D. Loggan del., M. Burghers, sculp." It is a quarto of the largest size. Beneath the head, which is dated 1675, is this distich:
"Thou German prince of plants, each year to thee
Thousands of subjects grant a subsidy."
In John Evelyn's Diary, under the date Oct. 24, 1664, is the following entry:
"Next to Wadham, and the physic garden, where were two large locust-trees, and as many platani (plane-trees), and some rare plants under the culture of old Bobart."
The editor of the last edition, after repeating part of Granger's note, and mentioning the portrait, adds:
"There is a small whole-length in the frontispiece of Vertumnus, a poem on that garden. In this he is dressed in a long vest, with a beard. One of his family was bred up at college in Oxford; but quitted his studies for the profession of the whip, driving one of the Oxford coaches (his own property) for many years with great credit. In 1813 he broke his leg by an accident; and in 1814, from the respect he had acquired by his good conduct, he was appointed by the University to the place of one of the Esquire Beadles."
Vertumnus, the poem mentioned in the above note, was addressed to Mr. Jacob Bobart, in 1713, by Dr. Evans. It is a laudatory epistle on the botanical knowledge of the Bobarts; and we learn from it that Jacob, the younger, collected a Hortus Siccus (a collection of plants pasted upon paper, and kept dry in a book) in twenty volumes.
"Thy Hortus Siccus ...
In tomes twice ten, that world immense!
By thee compiled at vast expense."
The broadsides about which H. T. Bobart inquires are of the greatest possible rarity. They were the production of Edmund Gayton, the author of Festivious Notes on Don Quixote, &c. Copies may be seen in the Ashmolean Library, under the press-marks Nos. 423. and 438., but I think not in any other repository of a like nature.
Among the Ashmolean MSS. (No. 36, art. 296.) is a poem of 110 lines "Upon the most hopeful and ever-flourishing Sprouts of Valour, the indefatigable Centrys of the Physick-Garden." This, I apprehend, is a MS. copy of the first broadside mentioned by your correspondent.
I shall merely add, the Bobarts, father and son, were personal friends of Ashmole and Ray, and that, in all probability, among their correspondence much curious and minute information might be obtained.
Edward F. Rimbault.