Add MS 78334

John Evelyn's hortus siccus, which he called his 'hortus hyemalis'. The autograph title-page also bears Evelyn’s motto, `Meliora Retinete’, an emblem of a bleeding heart transfixed with two arrows, a quotation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book I: `Heu mihi quod nullis Amor est medicabilis Herbis;/Nec prosunt Domino quae prosunt omnibus Artes!’, and the later press-mark, `In Chartophyl. 23’. In his diary for 30 July 1645 Evelyn records that he went to the `Garden of Simples' at Padua, and `gave order to the Gardner to make me a Collection of them for an hortus hyemalis, by permission of the Cavalier Dr [Johann] Vestlingius their Praefect, & Botanic Professor, as well as Anatomic’ (Diary, II, p. 466.). It was in effect a tourist souvenir, but personalized by Evelyn. His title-page is followed by a page-long account, headed, `Hortus Hyemalis conficiendo ratio’, on the gathering, preservation and mounting of the specimens of plants; it concludes with a later note, referring to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for Feb. 1698. Evelyn also included a chapter on these collections of dried plants as chapter 3 of the missing third `book’ of the `Elysium Britannicum’ (see Add. MS 78342 below).

The specimens are mounted on the right-hand pages, with numbers and botanical names in Latin (and Greek in some cases) underneath each one. On the left-hand facing pages of the first 29 specimens there are further autograph captions in English with five elements, of which there is a key on f. 2v: the name of the plant, its locations, flowering season, `virtue’ or medical uses, and the page reference to a fuller description in John Parkinson’s herbal, Theatrum botanicum (1640). The left-hand pages are left blank for the remainder of the volume. After f. 146 is a sequence of tree-leaves without identification. Most if not all of these were probably added later; the last has an annotation referring to Sylva. Beal EvJ 159. No former Evelyn MS number.

ff. v+157. Contemporary foliation ff. 1-143, which becomes pagination up to 164. Contemporary [Italian?] binding of olive green morocco, blind-stamped and ruled. 380 x 260mm.