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The epistle dedicatory signed by J.E. [John Evelyn]. Cf. BM.[16], 126 pages. 89 Wing. Signature in ink of Alexander Boswell (1706-1782): "Alexr Boswel 1738". Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, 8th Laird of Auchinleck was a judge of the supreme courts of Scotland, the father of the author and biographer James Boswell, and grandfather of songwriter Sir Alexander Boswell. James Boswell inherited his father's estate and so this copy was James Boswell's as well. This book has two book plates, with similar motifs, of David Murray. "David Murray Ballymenoch Suum Cuioque." John Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist. Evelyn's diaries, or memoirs, are largely contemporaneous with those of his rival diarist, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time (the deaths of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, the last Great Plague of London, and the Great Fire of London in 1666). Over the years, Evelyn's Diary has been overshadowed by Pepys's chronicles of 17th-century life. He was born into a family whose wealth was largely founded on gunpowder production. In London he witnessed important events such as the trials and executions of William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford and Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. Having briefly joined the Royalist army and arrived too late for the Royalist victory at the Battle of Brentford in 1642, he went abroad to avoid further involvement in the English Civil War. In October 1644 Evelyn visited the Roman ruins in Fréjus, Provence, before traveling on to Italy. He attended anatomy lectures in Padua in 1646 and sent the Evelyn Tables back to London. These are thought to be the oldest surviving anatomical preparations in Europe; Evelyn later gave them to the Royal Society, and they are now in the Hunterian Museum. In 1644, Evelyn visited the English College at Rome, where Catholic priests were trained for service in England. In the Veneto he renewed his acquaintance with the famous art collector Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel and toured the art collections of Venice with Arundel's grandson and heir, later Duke of Norfolk. He acquired an ancient Egyptian stela and sent a sketch back to Rome, which was published by Father Kircher, SJ in Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1650), albeit without acknowledgment to Evelyn. In Florence he commissioned the John Evelyn Cabinet (1644?46), an elaborate ebony cabinet with pietra dura and gilt-bronze panels, which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was in his London house at his death, then returned to Wotton, and is very likely the "ebony cabinet" in which his diaries were later found. He married Mary Browne, daughter of Sir Richard Browne the English ambassador in Paris in 1647. In 1652, Evelyn and his wife settled in Deptford (present-day south-east London). Their house, Sayes Court (adjacent to the naval dockyard), was purchased by Evelyn from his father-in-law, Sir Richard Browne, in 1653; Evelyn soon began to transform the gardens. In 1671, he encountered master wood-worker Grinling Gibbons (who was renting a cottage on the Sayes Court estate) and introduced him to Sir Christopher Wren. After the Restoration Evelyn's career really took off. In 1660, Evelyn was a member of the group that founded the Royal Society. The following year, he wrote the Fumifugium (or The Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated), the first book written on the growing air pollution problem in London. . .In his dedication to Henry Bennet, the first Earl of Arlington, Evelyn vouches for the three narratives? veracity, having obtained them from eyewitnesses, whose identities he withholds to protect them. Keynes identifies the eyewitness of the first impostor as Persian Pietro Cesij, the eyewitness of the second impostor, Shabtai Zvi, as Sir Paul Rycaut, the English consul in Turkey, who feared publishing it under his own name. "Evelyn's book is concluded by a brief account of 'The history of the late final . . .
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