| Citation |
NHG-P.764.039
21 Sep 1764:11,12,13,21,22 (416)
IN PRAISE OF COUNTRY EMPLOYMENT.
Extracted from a new System of Agriculture, lately published
in London.
. . . [76 lines, 79 lines, and 20 lines, mostly about
agriculture]
Let us now see another author on the same head.
Cowley. Edit 4. P. 98.
"The first wish of Virgil was to be a good philosopher; the
second a good husbandman. And God 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 to be desired:
He made him one of the best philosophers and best
husbandmen; and to adorn and communicate both these
faculties, the best poet: He made him besides all this, a
rich man, and a man who desired to be no richer.
. . . [45 lines]
The antiquity of this art is certainly not to be contested
by any other. The first three men in the world were a
gardner, a plowman, and a grazier; 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 out of the same earth they were made of;
and to which at last they must return, and pay for their
sustenance.
These considerations make me fall into the wonder and
complaint of Columella, how it should come to pass that all
arts or sciences, metaphysic, physic, morality, mathematics,
logic, rhetoric; nay even vaulting, fencing, dancing,
cooking, dressing, 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 to possess an
art so virtuous, so profitable, so honorably, so necessary!
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 to instruct
his son betimes in the nature and improvements of that
estate 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 that one college in each
university were erected and appropriated to this study, as
well as there are to medicine and civil law. . . [35 lines,
38 more lines]
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