This character of him is given to posterity by his last master, willingly because deservedly, as a lasting testimony of his great regard for so good a servant.
He died March 30th, 1760. Aged 66 years.
| For public service grateful nations raise Proud structures, which excite to deeds of praise; While private services, in corners thrown, Howe’er deserving, never gain a stone. But are not lilies, which the valleys hide, Perfect as cedars, tho’ the valley’s pride? Let, then, the violets their fragrance breathe, And pines their ever-verdant branches wreathe Around his grave, who from their tender birth Upreared both dwarf and giant sons of earth, And tho’ himself exotic, lived to see Trees of his raising droop as well as he. Those were his care, while his own bending age, His master propp’d and screened from winter’s rage, Till down he gently fell, then with a tear He bade his sorrowing sons transport him here. But tho’ in weakness planted, as his fruit Always bespoke the goodness of his root, The spirit quickening, he in power shall rise With leaf unfading under happier skies. |
The next is on the Tradescants, famous gardeners and botanists at Lambeth. In 1657 Mr. Tradescant, junr., presented to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, a remarkable cabinet of curiosities:—
| Know, stranger, ere thou pass, beneath this stone Lye John Tradescant, grandsire, father, son; The last died in his spring; the other two Liv’d till they had travell’d art and nature through; As by their choice collections may appear, Of what is rare, in land, in sea, in air; Whilst they (as Homer’s Iliad in a nut) A world of wonders in one closet shut; These famous antiquarians, that had been Both gard’ners to the ROSE AND LILY QUEEN, Transplanted now themselves, sleep here; and when Angels shall with trumpets waken men, And fire shall purge the world, then hence shall rise, And change this garden for a paradise. |
We have here an epitaph on a grocer, culled from the Rev. C. W. Bardsley’s “Memorials of St. Anne’s Church,” Manchester. In a note about the name of Howard, the author says: “Poor John Howard’s friends gave him an unfortunate epitaph—one, too, that reflected unkindly upon his wife. It may still be seen in the churchyard.—Here lyeth the body of John Howard, who died Jan. 2, 1800, aged 84 years; fifty years a respectable grocer, and an honest man. As it is further stated that his wife died in 1749, fifty years before, it would seem that her husband’s honesty dated from the day of her decease. Mrs. Malaprop herself, in her happiest moments, could not have beaten this inscription.”