Introductory Note
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) was educated at Westminster School and later at Trinity
College, Cambridge, from which he was ejected with most of the Masters and Fellows for
refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant in 1644. In the same year he crossed to
France in the suite of Lord Jermyn, Queen Henrietta Maria's chief officer, and remained
with the royal family in exile for twelve years. After the Restoration he became a doctor
of medicine, and was one of the first members of the Royal Society. He is buried in
Westminster Abbey.
Cowley's most popular work in his own day was the collection of love poems called
"The Mistress," and his so-called "Pindaric Odes" were also highly
esteemed. With the decline of the taste which produced the poetry of the
"Metaphysical School" to which he belonged, Cowley ceased to be read; nor is it
likely that the frigid ingenuity which marks his poetic style will ever again come into
favor. His "Essays," on the other hand, are written with great simplicity and
naturalness, and exhibit his temperament in a most pleasing light. He is one of the
earliest masters of a clear and easy English prose style, and few writers of the familiar
essay surpass Cowley in grace and charm. His essay "Of Agriculture" is a
delightful example of his quality. "We may talk what we please," he cries in his
enthusiasm for the oldest of the arts, "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."
The Essay
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 seem'd 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 desir'd. He made him one of the best philosophers and the 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!"1
[Footnote 1: "O fortunate exceedingly, who knew his own good fortune."
Adapted from Virgil, "Georgics," II., 458.]
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 humane2 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 sapientiae," 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.
[Footnote 2: Human.]
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 fetcht from the plow 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
merchandizing 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 beholding 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' ruine of his country, as to deserve the curses
of his countrymen.
And if great delights be joyn'd 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 humane3 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 expenceful luxury.
[Footnote 3: Human.]
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, he 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 Agricolae tacitum pertentant gaudia pectus.4
On his heart-string a secret joy does strike.
[Footnote 4: "On this side and on that gather the Orkneys; joys pervade the silent
breast of the farmer." - A parody of Virgil's "Aeneid", I. 500, 503.]
The antiquity of his art is certainly not be contested by any other. The three first
men in the world, were a gardener, a plowman, and a grazier; and if any man object, that
the second of these was a murtherer. I desire he would consider, that as soon as he was
so, he quitted our profession, and turn'd 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 lillies, 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, &c. 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 antiently, 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, &c. and all that which Varro calls villaticas pastiones,5 together
with the sports of the field (which ought to be looked upon not 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 taxation6 for
their diet, a 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.
[Footnote 5: The keeping of farm animals, etc.]
[Footnote 6: Charge]
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 plow 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 and 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 Attius humanis exeruere caput,7
[Footnote 7: "They have raised their head above both human vices and
vanities." - Ovid, "Fasti," I. 300.]
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: "and 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 stile. The most acute of
all his sayings concerns our purpose very much, and is couched in the reverend obscurity
of an oracle.
The half is more than the whole8. The occasion of the speech is this: his
brother Perses had, by corrupting some great men (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.
[Footnote 8: Hesiod, "Works and Days," 40.]
Unhappy they, to whom God ha'n't reveal'd, By a strong light which must their sense
controul, That half a great estate's more than the whole. Unhappy, from whom still
conceal'd does lye, 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 shew 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 during his
own grounds. Ye see, he did not contemn us peasants; nay, so far was he from the
insolence, that he always stiles Eumaeus, who kept the hogs, with wonderful respect, ulov
upoPBov, the divine swine herd; he could ha' done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon. And
Theocritus (a very antient poet, but he was one of our own tribe, for he wrote nothing but
pastorals) gave the same epithete to an husbandman. The divine husbandman replied to
Hercules, who was but ulos 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 Maecenas 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 rustique 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 eves of his
window call him up in the morning, and when he goes aboard, only two dogs go along with
him for his guard: at last, when he brings Aeneas into his royal cottage, he makes him say
this memorable complement, greater than even yet was spoken at the Escurial, the Louvre,
or our Whitehal:
- Haec (inquit) limina victor Alcides subiit, haec illum regia cepit: Aude, hospes,
contemnere opes: et te quoque dignum Finge Deo, rebusque veni non asper agenis.
This humble roof, this rustic court, (said he) Receiv'd Alcides, crown'd 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 Maecenas 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,9 could not be
tempted to forsake his Sabin, or Tiburtin mannor, 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.
[Footnote 9: "That he may assist us in writing letters."]
Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, Planius et melius Chrysippo
et Crantore dicit.10
[Footnote 10: "Who says, more plainly and better than Chrysippus and Crantor, what
is beautiful, what base, what useful, what the opposite of these." Horace,
"Epist." I. 2. 4. Chrysippus and Crantor were noted philosophers.]
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 unskillful 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 Latine
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.
"Be your own palace or the world's your gaol."
But for artificial evils, for evils that spring from want of thought, thought must find
a remedy somewhere. There has been no period of time in which wealth has been more
sensible of its duties than now. It builds hospitals, it establishes missions among the
poor, it endows schools. It is one of the advantages of accumulated wealth, and of the
leisure it renders possible, that people have time to think of the wants and sorrows of
their fellows. But all these remedies are partial and palliative merely. It is as if we
should apply plasters to a single pustule of the small - pox with a view of driving out
the disease. The true way is to discover and to extirpate the germs. As society is now
constituted these are in the air it breathes, in the water it drinks, in things that seem,
and which it has always believed, to be the most innocent and healthful. The evil elements
it neglects corrupt these in their springs and pollute them in their courses. Let us be of
good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which
never come. The world has outlived much, and will outlive a great deal more, and men have
contrived to be happy in it. It has shown the strength of its constitution in nothing more
than in surviving the quack medicines it has tried. In the scales of the destinies brawn
will never weigh so much as brain. Our healing is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it
is not in monarchies, or aristocracies, or democracies, but will be revealed by the still
small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a wider and wiser
humanity.
Source:
English essays from Sir Philip Sidney to Macaulay. With introductions and notes.
New York, Collier [c1910], The Harvard classics v. 27.
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