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 fortunatas 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 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 in 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
kind 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
have; and almost all the other arts which are here practised are
beholding to them for most of their materials. The innocence of this
life is in 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 Oreades_; _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; 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 pay at last for their sustenance.
Behold the original and primitive nobility of all those great persons who
are too proud now not only to till the ground, but almost 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 is 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 art.
A man would think, when he’s 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 not to be looked upon only as pleasures, 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), and
he is the first writer, too, of the art of husbandry. He has
contributed, says Columella, not a little to our profession; I 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 reverend obscurity of an oracle.
Πλέν ἥμισυ παντός. The half is more than the whole. The occasion of the
speech is this: his brother Perses had by corrupting some great men
(Βασιλῆας Δωροφάγους, 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.
Νήπιοι, οὐδ’ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ᾕμισυ παντὸς
Οὐδ’ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχη τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μεγ’ ὔνειας,
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 have been 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. Yet, 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, Δῖον ὔφυρβυν, the divine
swine-herd; 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 a husbandman
Εμέιβετο Δῖος ἀγρώτης. The divine husbandman replied to Hercules, who
was but Δῖος himself. These were civil Greeks, and who understood the
dignity of our calling. Among the Romans, we have in the first place our
truly divine Virgil, who, though by the favour of Mæcenas and Augustus he
might have been one of the chief men of Rome, yet chose rather to employ
much of his time in the exercise, and much of his immortal wit in the
praise and 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 courtyard, 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 Æneas
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.
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 Mecænas 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 Tiburtine 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 greatness, and the Emperor so much generosity and good nature as
not to be at all offended with his refusal, but to retain still the same
kindness, and express it often to him in most friendly and familiar
letters, part of which are still extant. If I should produce all the
passages of this excellent author upon the several subjects which I treat
of in this book, I must be obliged to translate 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_, _plenius_, _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 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.