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." T OF AGRICULTURE HE 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 neathens) 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 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 humane 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 1" O fortunate exceedingly, who knew his own good fortune.”—Adapted from Virgil, "Georgics," II., 458. 2 Human. 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 in- • nocence, 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 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 easie 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 supplyed 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 |