This, once beautiful monument has suffered so much by the weather, that no just idea can now, on inspection, be formed of the north and south sides; but this defect is supplied from very fine drawings[[56]] in the Pepysian library, at Cambridge. On the east side is Tradescant’s arms; on the west a hydra, and under it a skull; on the south, broken columns, Corinthian capitals, &c. supposed to be ruins in Greece, or some other Eastern country; and on the north, a crocodile, shells, &c. and a view of some Egyptian buildings; various figures of trees, &c. in relievo, adorn the four corners of the monument.
In a visit made by Sir W. Watson and Dr. Mitchell to Tradescant’s garden, in 1749, an account of which, is inserted in Philos. Trans. vol. xlvi. p. 160, it appears that it had been many years totally neglected, and the house belonging to it empty and ruined, but though the garden was quite covered with weeds, there remained among them manifest footsteps of its founder.[[57]] They found there the Borago latifolia sempervirens of Caspar Bauhine; Polygonatum vulgare latifolium, C. B; Aristolochia clematitis recta, C. B. and Dracontium of Dodoens. There were then remaining two trees of the Arbutus, which from their being so long used to our winters, did not suffer by the severe cold of 1739-40, when most of their kind were killed in England. In the orchard there was a tree of the Rhamnus catharticus, about 20 feet high, and nearly a foot in diameter. There are at present no traces of this garden remaining.
The Tradescants were usually called Tradeskin by their contemporaries, and the name is uniformly so spelled in the parish register of Lambeth, and by Flatman the painter, who in a poem mentions Tradescant’s collection;
“Thus John Tradeskin starves our wond’ring eyes,
”By boxing up his new-found rarities.“
The following is a list of the portraits of the Tradescant family now in the Ashmolean Museum; both father and son are in these portraits called Sir John, though it does not appear that either of them were ever knighted.
1. Sir John Tradescant, sen. a three quarters piece, ornamented with fruit, flowers, and garden roots.
2. The same, after his decease.
3. The same, a small three-quarters piece, in water colours.
4. A large painting of his wife, son and daughter, quarter-length.