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11.

Whilst this hard truth I teach, methinks I see The monster London laugh at me;

I should at thee too, foolish city,

If it were fit to laugh at misery;
But thy estate I pity.

12.

Let the wicked men from out thee go,
And all the fools that crowd thee so,
Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
A village less than Islington wilt grow,
A solitude almost.

OF AGRICULTURE.

The first wish of Virgil (as you will find anon by his verses) was to be a good philosopher; the second, a good husbandman: and God (whom

he seemed to understand better than most of the most learned heathens) dealt with him, just as He did with Solomon; because he prayed for wisdom in the first place, He added all things else, which were subordinately to be desired. He made him one of the best philosophers, and best husbandmen; and, to adorn and communicate both those faculties, the best poet: He made him, besides all this, a rich man, and a man who desired to be no richer:

"O fortunatus nimium, et bona qui sua novit!" To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world as it is man's, into the world as it is God's.

But, since nature denies to most men the capacity or appetite, and fortune allows but to a very few the opportunities or possibility of applying themselves wholly to philosophy, the best mixture of human affairs that we can make, are the employments of a country life. It is, as Columella calls it, "Res sine dubitatione proxima, et quasi consanguinea sapientiæ," the nearest neighbour, or rather next in kindred, to philosophy. Varro says, the principles of it are the same which Ennius made to be the principles of all nature, earth, water, air, and the sun. It does certainly comprehend more parts of philosophy, than any one profession, art, or science, in the world besides: and therefore Cicero says, the pleasures of a husbandman, "mihi ad sapientis vitam proxime videntur accedere," come very nigh to those of a philosopher. There is no other sort of life that affords so many branches of praise to a panegyrist: the utility of it, to a man's self; the usefulness, or rather necessity, of it to all the rest of mankind; the innocence, the pleasure, the antiquity, the dignity.

The utility (I mean plainly the lucre of it) is not so great now in our nation, as arises from merchandise and the trading of the city, from whence many of the best estates and chief honours

* "London has a great belly, but no palate." Hobbes' Hist. Civil War, p. 169, quoted by Hurd.

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of the kingdom are derived: we have no men now fetched from the plough to be made lords, as they were in Rome to be made consuls and dictators; the reason of which I conceive to be from an evil custom, now grown as strong among us as if it were a law, which is, that no men put their children to be bred up apprentices in agriculture, as in other trades, but such who are so poor, that, when they come to be men, they have not wherewithal to set up in it, and so can only farm some small parcel of ground, the rent of which devours all but the bare subsistence of the tenant: whilst they who are proprietors of the land are either too proud, or, for want of that kind of education, too ignorant, to improve their estates, though the means of doing it be as easy and certain in this as in any other track of commerce. If there were always two or three thousand youths, for seven or eight years, bound to this profession, that they might learn the whole art of it, and afterwards be enabled to be masters of it, by a moderate stock; I cannot doubt but that we should see as many aldermen's estates made in the country, as now we do out of all kinds of merchandising in the city. There are as many ways to be rich, and, which is better, there is no possibility to be poor, without such negligence as can neither have excuse nor pity; for a little ground will, without question, feed a little family, and the superfluities of life (which are now in some cases by custom made almost necessary) must be supplied out of the superabundance of art and industry, or contemned by as great a degree of philosophy.

As for the necessity of this art, it is evident enough, since this can live without all others, and no one other without this. This is like speech, without which the society of men cannot be preserved; the others, like figures and tropes of speech, which serve only to adorn it. Many nations have lived, and some do still, without any art but this: not so elegantly, I confess, but still they live; and almost all the other arts, which are here practised, are beholden to this for most of their materials.

The innocence of this life is the next thing for which I commend it; and if husbandmen preserve not that, they are much to blame, for no men are so free from the temptations of iniquity. They live by what they can get by industry from the earth; and others, by what they can catch by craft from men. They live upon an estate given them by their mother; and others, upon an estate cheated from their brethren. They live, like sheep and kine, by the allowances of nature; and others, like wolves and foxes, by the acquisitions of rapine. And, I hope, I may affirm (without any offence to the great) that sheep and kine are very useful, and that wolves and foxes are pernicious creatures. They are, without dispute of all men, the most quiet and least apt to be inflamed to the disturbance of the commonwealth: their manner of life inclines

them, and interest binds them, to love peace: in our late mad and miserable civil wars, all other trades, even to the meanest, set forth whole troops, and raised up some great commanders, who became famous and mighty for the mischiefs they had done; but I do not remember the name of any one husbandman, who had so considerable a share in the twenty years' ruin of his country, as to deserve the curses of his countrymen.

And if great delights be joined with so much innocence, I think it is ill done of men, not to take them here, where they are so tame, and ready at hand, rather than hunt for them in courts and cities, where they are so wild, and the chase so troublesome and dangerous.

We are here among the vast and noble scenes of nature; we are there among the pitiful shifts of policy: we walk here in the light and open ways of the Divine bounty; we grope there in the dark and confused labyrinths of human malice: our senses are here feasted with the clear and genuine taste of their objects, which are all sophisticated there, and for the most part overwhelmed with their contraries. Here, pleasure looks (methinks) like a beautiful, constant, and modest wife; it is there an impudent, fickle, and painted harlot. Here, is harmless and cheap plenty; there, guilty and expenseful luxury.

I shall only instance in one delight more, the most natural and best-natured of all others, a perpetual companion of the husbandman; and that is, the satisfaction of looking round about him, and seeing nothing but the effects and improvements of his own art and diligence; to be always gathering of some fruits of it, and at the same time to behold others ripening, and others budding: to see all his fields and gardens covered with the beauteous creatures of his own industry; and to see, like God, that all his works are good:

"Hinc atque hinc glomerantur Orcades; ipsi Agricolæ tacitum pertentant gaudia pectus."

On his heart-strings a secret joy does strike. The antiquity of his art is certainly not to be contested by any other. The three first men in the world, were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier; and if any man object, that the second of these was a murderer, I desire he would consider, that as soon as he was so, he quitted our profession, and turned builder. It is for this reason, I suppose, that Ecclesiasticus forbids us to hate husbandry; 66 because," says he, "the Most High has created it." We were all born to this art, and taught by nature to nourish our bodies by the same earth out of which they were made, and to which they must return, and to pay at last for their sustenance.

Behold the original and primitive nobility of all those great persons, who are too proud now,

* Ecclus. vii. 15: "Hate not laborious work, neither

husbandry, which the Most High has ordained.”

not only to till the ground, but also to tread upon it. We may talk what we please of lilies, and lions rampant, and spread eagles, in fields d'or or d'argent; but, if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable, would be the most noble and ancient arms.

All these considerations make me fall into the wonder and complaint of Columella, how it should come to pass that all arts or sciences (for the dispute, which is an art, and which a science, does not belong to the curiosity of us husbandmen), metaphysic, physic, morality, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, etc., which are all, I grant, good and useful faculties (except only metaphysic, which I do not know whether it be anything or no); but even vaulting, fencing, dancing, attiring, cookery, carving, and such like vanities, should all have public schools and masters, and yet that we should never see or hear of any man, who took upon him the profession of teaching this so pleasant, so virtuous, so profitable, so honourable, so necessary an art.

A man would think, when he was in serious humour, that it were but a vain, irrational, and ridiculous thing, for a great company of men and women to run up and down in a room together, in a hundred several postures and figures, to no purpose and with no design; and therefore dancing was invented first, and only practised anciently, in the ceremonies of the heathen religion, which consisted all in mummery and madness; the latter being the chief glory of the worship, and accounted divine inspiration: this, I say, a severe man would think; though I dare not determine so far against so customary a part, now, of good breeding. And yet, who is there among our gentry that does not entertain a dancing-master for his children, as soon as they are able to walk? But did ever any father provide a tutor for his son, to instruct him betimes in the nature and improvements of that land which he intended to leave him? That is at least a superfluity, and this a defect, in our manner of education; and therefore I could wish (but cannot in these times much hope to see it) that one college in each university were erected, and appropriated to this study, as well as there are to medicine and the civil law: there would be no need of making a body of scholars and fellows, with certain endowments, as in other colleges; it would suffice, if, after the manner of halls in Oxford, there were only four professors constituted (for it would be too much work for only one master, or principal, as they call him there) to teach these four parts of it: First, Aration, and all things relating to it. Secondly, Pasturage. Thirdly, Gardens, Orchards, Vineyards, and Woods. Fourthly, all parts of Rural Economy, which would contain the government of Bees, Swine, Poultry, Decoys, Ponds, etc., and all that which Varro calls "villaticas pastiones," together with the sports of the field (which ought to be looked upon not only as plea

sures, but as parts of housekeeping), and the domestical conservation and uses of all that is brought in by industry abroad. The business of these professors should not be, as is commonly practised in other arts, only to read pompous and superficial lectures, out of Virgil's Georgics, Pliny, Varro, or Columella; but to instruct their pupils in the whole method and course of this study, which might be run through perhaps, with diligence, in a year or two: and the continual succession of scholars, upon a moderate taxation for their diet, lodging, and learning, would be a sufficient constant revenue for maintenance of the house and the professors, who should be men not chosen for the ostentation of critical literature, but for solid and experimental knowledge of the things they teach; such men, so industrious and public-spirited, as I conceive Mr Hartlib* to be, if the gentleman be yet alive: but it is needless to speak further of my thoughts of this design, unless the present disposition of the age allowed more probability of bringing it into execution. What I have further to say of the country life, shall be borrowed from the poets, who were always the most faithful and affectionate friends to it. Poetry was born among the shepherds:

"Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine Musas

Ducit, et immemores non sinit esse sui."
The Muses still love their own native place;
"T has secret charms, which nothing can deface.

The truth is, no other place is proper for their work; one might as well undertake to dance in a crowd, as to make good verses in the midst of

noise and tumult.

As well might corn, as verse, in cities grow;

In vain the thankless glebe we plough and sow; Against th' unnatural soil in vain we strive; 'Tis not a ground, in which these plants will thrive. It will bear nothing but the nettles or thorns of satire, which grow most naturally in the worst earth; and therefore almost all poets, except those who were not able to eat bread without the bounty of great men, that is, without what they could get by flattering of them, have not only withdrawn themselves from the vices and vanities of the grand world,

"Pariter vitiisque jocisque Altius humanis exeruere caput," into the innocent happiness of a retired life; but have commended and adorned nothing so much by their ever-living poems. Hesiod was the first or second poet in the world that remains yet extant (if Homer, as some think, preceded him, but I rather believe they were contemporaries);

* "A gentleman of whom it may be enough to say that he had the honour to live in the friendship of Mede and Milton. The former of these great men addressed some letters to him, and the latter his 'Tractate on Education."-Hurd,

and he is the first writer too of the art of huзbandry: "He has contributed," says Columella, "not a little to our profession;" suppose, he means not a little honour, for the matter of his instructions is not very important: his great antiquity is visible through the gravity and simplicity of his style. The most acute of all his sayings concerns our purpose very much, and is couched in the reverent obscurity of an oracle. IIλéov mov Tarròs, The half is more than the whole. The occasion of the speech is this: his brother Perses had, by corrupting some great men (BaσiXéas dwpopávovs, great bribe-eaters, he calls them), gotten from him the half of his estate. "It is no matter," says he; "they have not done me so much prejudice as they imagine:"

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Νήπιοι, οὐδ ̓ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντὸς,
Οὐδ ̓ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχῃ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγ'
ὄνειαρ,

Κρύψαντες γὰρ ἔχουσι θεοὶ βίον ἀνθρώποισι.”
Unhappy they, to whom God has not revealed,
By a strong light which must their sense control,
That half a great estate 's more than the whole:
Unhappy, from whom still concealed does lie,
Of roots and herbs, the wholesome luxury.

This I conceive to be honest Hesiod's meaning. From Homer we must not expect much concerning our affairs. He was blind, and could neither work in the country, nor enjoy the pleasures of it; his helpless poverty was likeliest to be sustained in the richest places; he was to delight the Grecians with fine tales of the wars and adventures of their ancestors; his subject removed him from all commerce with us, and yet, methinks, he made a shift to show his goodwill a little. For though he could do us no honour in the person of his hero Ulysses (much less of Achilles), because his whole time was consumed in wars and voyages; yet he makes his father Laertes a gardener all that while, and seeking his consolation for the absence of his son in the pleasure of planting, and even dunging his own grounds. Ye see, he did not contemn us peasants; nay, so far was he from that insolence, that he always styles Eumæus, who kept the hogs, with wonderful respect, dîov popßor, the divine swineherd; he could have done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon. And Theocritus (a very ancient poet, but he was one of our own tribe, for he wrote nothing but pastorals) gave the same epithet to an husbandman :

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instructions, of a rustic life; who, though he had written, before, whole books of pastorals and georgics, could not abstain, in his great and imperial poem, from describing Evander, one of his best princes, as living just after the homely manner of an ordinary countryman. He seats him in a throne of maple, and lays him but upon a bear's skin; the kine and oxen are lowing in his court-yard; the birds under the eaves of his window call him up in the morning; and when he goes abroad, only two dogs go along with him for his guard: at last, when he brings Eneas into his royal cottage, he makes him say this memorable compliment, greater than ever yet was spoken at the Escurial, the Louvre, or our Whitehall:

"Hæc (inquit) limina victor

Alcides subiit, hæc illum regia cepit:
Aude, hospes, contemnere opes; et te quoque dignum
Finge Deo, rebusque veni non asper egenis."

This humble roof, this rustic court (said he)
Received Alcides, crowned with victory;
Scorn not, great guest, the steps where he has trod;
But contemn wealth, and imitate a god.

should dare to do it in Latin verses (though of another kind), and have the confidence to translate them. I can only say that I love the matter, and that ought to cover many faults; and that I run not to contend with those before me, but follow to applaud them.

THE GARDEN.

TO J. EVELYN, ESQ.†

like to covetousness, as that one which I have I never had any other desire so strong, and so had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them, and study of nature;

And there (with no design beyond my wall) whole and entire to lie,

In no inactive case, and no inglorious poverty.

Or, as Virgil has said, shorter and better for me, that I might there

"Studiis florere ignobilis oti;"

(though I could wish that he had rather said, "Nobilis oti," when he spoke of his own). But several accidents of my ill fortune have disappointed me hitherto, and do still, of that felicity; for though I have made the first and hardest step to it, by abandoning all ambitions and hopes in this world, and by retiring from the noise of all business and almost company, yet I stick still in the inn of a hired house and garden, among weeds and rubbish; and without that pleasantest work of human industry, the improvement of something which we call (not very properly, but yet we call) our own.

The next man, whom we are much obliged to, both for his doctrine and example, is the next best poet in the world to Virgil, his dear friend Horace; who, when Augustus had desired Macenas to persuade him to come and live domestically and at the same table with him, and to be secretary of state of the whole world under him, or rather jointly with him, for he says, "Ut nos in epistolis scribendis adjuvet," could not be tempted to forsake his Sabine, or Tiburtin manor, for so rich and so glorious a trouble. There was never, I think, such an example as this in the world, that he should have so much moderation and courage as to refuse an offer of such great ness, and the emperor so much generosity and out from Sodom, but I am not yet arrived at my goodnature as not to be at all offended with his little Zoar. "Oh! let me escape thither, (is it refusal, but to retain still the same kindness, not a little one?) and my soul shall live." I do and express it often to him in most friendly and not look back yet; but I have been forced to familiar letters, part of which are still extant. stop, and make too many halts. You may wonder, If I should produce all the passages of this exsir (for this seems a little too extravagant and cellent author upon the several subjects which I pindarical for prose), what I mean by all this treat of in this book, I must be obliged to trans-preface; it is to let you know, that though I late half his works; of which I may say more truly than, in my opinion, he did of Homer: "Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid

non,

Planius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit."

I shall content myself upon this particular theme with three only, one out of his Odes, the other out of his Satires, the third out of his Epistles; and shall forbear to collect the suffrages of all other poets, which may be found scattered up and down through all their writings, and especially in Martial's. But I must

not omit to make some excuse for the bold undertaking of my own unskilful pencil upon the beauties of a face that has been drawn before

by so many great masters; especially, that I

I am gone

have missed, like a chemist, my great end, yet I account my affections and endeavours well rewarded by something that I have met with by the by; which is, that they have procured to me some part in your kindness and esteem; and thereby the honour of having my name so advantageously recommended to posterity, by the epistle you are pleased to prefix to the most useful book that has been written in that kind, and which is to last as long as months and years.

Among many other arts and excellencies, which

* In reference to the translations from Virgil and Horace, prefixed to this Essay in the original edition. ↑ John Evelyn, the author of the "Diary," and "Sylva, or a Discourse on Forest Trees."

you enjoy, I am glad to find this favourite of mine the most predominant; that you choose this for your wife, though you have hundreds of other arts for your concubines; though you know them, and beget sons upon them all (to which you are rich enough to allow great legacies), yet the issue of this seems to be designed by you to the main of the estate; you have taken most pleasure in it, and bestowed most charges upon its education and I doubt not to see that book, which you are pleased to promise to the world, and of which you have given us a large earnest in your calendar, as accomplished as anything can be expected from an extraordinary wit, and no ordinary expenses, and a long experience. I know nobody that possesses more private happiness than you do in your garden; and, yet no man, who makes his happiness more public, by a free communication of the art and knowledge of it to others. All that I myself am able yet to do, is only to recommend to mankind the search of that felicity, which you instruct them how to find and to enjoy.

OF GREATNESS.

"Since we cannot attain to greatness," says the Sieur de Montaigne, "let us have our revenge by railing at it" this he spoke but in jest. I believe he desired it no more than I do, and had less reason; for he enjoyed so plentiful and honourable a fortune in a most excellent country, as allowed him all the real conveniences of it, separated and purged from the incommodities. If I were but in his condition, I should think it hard measure, without being convinced of any crime, to be sequestrated from it, and made one of the principal officers of state. But the reader may think that what I now say is of small authority, because I never was, nor ever shall be, put to the trial: I can therefore only make my protestation:

If ever I more riches did desire

Than cleanliness and quiet do require:
If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat,
With any wish, so mean as to be great,
Continue, Heaven, still from me to remove
The humble blessings of that life I love.

I know very many men will despise, and some pity me, for this humour, as a poor-spirited fellow; but I am content, and, like Horace, thank God for being so.

"Di bene fecerunt, inopis me quodque pusilli, Finxerunt animi."*

I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast; and, if I were to fall in love again (which is a great passion, and therefore, I hope, I have done with it), it would be, I think, with prettiness, rather

* Horace, Sat. I., iv. 17: "The gods have done well in making me a humble and small-spirited fellow."

than with majestical beauty. I would neither wish that my mistress, nor my fortune, should be a bona roba, nor, as Homer uses to describe his beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter, for the stateliness and largeness of her person; but, as Lucretius says,

"Parvula, pumilio, Xapírwv pía, tota merum sal."

Where there is one man of this, I believe there are a thousand of Senecio's mind, whose ridiculous affectation of grandeur Seneca the elder describes to this effect: Senecio was a man of a turbid and confused wit, who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and sentences, till this humour grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather disease, as became the sport of the whole town: he would have no servants, but huge, massy fellows; no plate or household stuff, but thrice as big as the fashion: you may believe me, for I speak it without raillery, his extravagancy came at last into such a madness that he would not put on a pair of shoes, each of which was not big enough for both his feet: he would eat nothing but what was great, nor touch any fruit but horse-plums and pound-pears: he kept a concubine that was a very giantess, and made her walk too always in chiopins, till at last he got the surname of Senecio Grandio, which, Messala said, was not his cognomen, but his cognomentum: when he declaimed for the three hundred Lacedæmonians, who alone opposed Xerxes's army of above three hundred thousand, he stretched out his arms, and stood on tiptoes, that he might appear the taller, and cried out, in a very loud voice: "I rejoice, I rejoice - we wondered, I remember, what new great fortune had befallen his eminence"Xerxes," says he, "is all mine own. He who took away the sight of the sea with the canvas veils of so many ships"--and then he goes on so, as I know not what to make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the edition, or the orator's own burly way of nonsense.

"

This is the character that Seneca gives of this hyperbolical fop, whom we stand amazed at, and yet there are very few men who are not in some things, and to some degrees, Grandios. Is anything more common than to see our ladies of quality wear such high shoes as they cannot walk in, without one to lead them; and a gown as long again as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next room, without a page or two to hold it up? I may safely say that all the ostentation of our grandees is just like a train, of no use in the world, but horribly cumbersome and incommodious. What is all this but a spice of Grandio? how tedious would this be if we were always bound to it! I do believe there is no king who would not rather be deposed than endure, every day of his reign, all the cere

monies of his coronation.

The mightiest princes are glad to fly often from these majestic pleasures (which is, me

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