gardening, and the conduct of a household, which were extremely popular, and which now throw a most valuable light on the social life of the times. The cheerful chatty admonitions of Gervase Markham probably supply us with as close a reproduction as we possess of what the ordinary talk of educated persons was in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and in this respect are safer guides than the emphatic scenes of the dramatists and the extravagant diatribes of the pamphleteers. The following sentences are taken from Markham's Farewell to Husbandry: In the month of December put your sheep and swine to the peese-ricks, and fat them for the slaughter and market. Now kill your small porks and large bacons, lop hedges and trees, saw out your timber for building, and lay it to season; and if your land be exceedingly stiff, and rise up in an extraordinary furrow, then in this month begin to plough up that ground whereon you mean to Sow clean beans only. Now cover your dainty fruit-trees all over with canvas, and hide all your best flowers from frosts and storms with rotten old horse litter. Now drain all your corn-fields, and, as occasion shall serve, so water and keep moist Now beyour meadows. come the fowler with piece, nets and all manner of Sir Henry Wotton After an original portrait season. engine, for in this month no fish is out of Now fish for the carp, the bream, pike, trench, barbel, peel and salmon. And, lastly, for your health, eat meats that are hot and nourishing; drink good wine that is neat, spirity, and lusty; keep thy body well clad and thy house warm. Forsake whatsoever is phlegmatic, and banish all care from thy heart, for nothing is now more unwholesome than a troubled spirit. The great interest in horticulture, too, produced a number of very charming herbals or garden-books, which possessed a certain literary importance. Of these the best was that produced in 1597 by John Gerard (1545-1612), the barber-surgeon, and completed after his death by T. Johnson in 1633. This is richly illustrated with accurate portraits of plants, and forms one of the most interesting and precious books of the Jacobean age. VOL. II 2 B It is well to close our survey of the prose of this period with a brief account of the man in whom its intellectual character seems to be concentrated and sublimated. The central ambition of the prose-writers of the early seventeenth century in England was the collection of knowledge; they rested not from their "unwearied pain of gathering." The searching after antiquities, the collation of authorities, the branding of imposture, the rectification of records, these were the most passionate occupations of intellectual men. It must always be recognised that the genuine love of James I. for books and the knowledge that resides in books, mightily spurred on the zeal of his subjects. To be a scholar was a fashionable employment; it was to be like the King; so that Bacon was not speaking an idle word when, in The Advancement of Learning, he praised "the perfection of your Majesty's learning, which as a phoenix might call whole vollies of wits to follow you." The greatest of these "wits," a man of colossal acquirements and singularly noble character, was JOHN SELDEN, before whom all the scholars of the Jacobean age bowed down as to their "monarch in letters." But, although Selden was one of the first men of his time, a giant of erudition and of policy, he was not a great writer of English. In this, too, he was typical COVNTREY of his time. He stood for the His Contentments. IN TWO BOOKES: The firft,containing the whole art ofriding! Likewife in two newe Treatifes the arts of hunting, By G. M. The Second intituled, past, not for the future. aim was, in view of the fragility of life, to allow as little knowledge as possible to die with a man; he had no care to add by the creative art to the sum of what would give pleasure to future generations. His Titles of Honour starts before the Flood, and his History of Tithes goes back to the "prorogations" of Melchisedek. He was the first authority of his age on jurisprudence; he stood in the forefront of Europe in the study of Anglo-Saxon, of the oriental languages, of Talmudic law, but why should we specify, since he was "of stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages"? Yet Clarendon, who worshipped him, was obliged to admit that, in the particular of writing English, Selden was "harsh and obscure," and, further, that he was typical of the scholars of his age in a little undervaluing the beauty of a style and too much propensity to the language of antiquity." His disdain has been fatal to his influence. Selden had no faith in the power of the English language and no enthusiasm for its cultivation. The result is that a man whose whole life was spent with books, and who had one of the most stupendous minds of the century, is hardly included among English authors at all. Of his ponderous works, the only important examples which are not in Latin are the two technical treatises which have already been mentioned, and it is noticeable that the The English Hufwife: Containing the inward and outward vertues which ought to be in a compleate Woman: as her Phificke, Cookery, Banqueting-ftuffe, Distillation, Perfumes, Wooll, Hemp, Flaxs, Dairies, Brewing, Baking, and allother thingsbelonging to an Honshold. пр A worke very profitable and neceffary for the generall A une ie fernierai. Printed at London by I B. for R. Jackson, and are to be fold at his shop neere Fleer-fitteet Conduit. 1 6 15. Title page of Markham's " Country Contentments," 1615 book which bears the name of Selden and is best known to readers, that collection of his Table Talk, where, as Coleridge said, he makes "every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom," was actually put down in the language of a slightly later age by his secretary, Richard Milward (1609-1680), and is far simpler in style than any undoctored specimen of Selden's prose. John Selden (1584-1654) was the son of a minstrel at West Tarring, in Sussex, where he was born on December 16, 1584. He was taught in the Free School of Chichester and at Hart Hall, Oxford. In 1602 he came up to London to study the law, and became acquainted with Sir Robert Cotton, who employed him to copy records and trained him to be an antiquary. In 1613 we find him annotating Drayton's Polyolbion, and intimate with Jonson and Browne. His Titles of Honour was published in 1614, and his History of Tithes in 1618; the latter was suppressed at the King's command. Later, Selden took a very prominent part in legislative reform, and was imprisoned on several occasions. In 1630, after one of these confinements, he withdrew, to recruit his health, to the Earl of Kent's house at Wrest, which now became his residence. His later career belongs to political and legal history. After the Earl of Kent died. in 1639, Selden continued to reside at Wrest, and according to Aubrey was secretly married to the Countess, who left him her property when she died in 1651. We are told that Selden had "a long nose inclining to one side, a full popping eye"; that his conversation was of an astonishing fulness, but not so agreeable to listen to as it would have been had his mind been less charged with knowledge, for " his memory at every moment tripped up his speech." Selden was a prodigious collector of MSS., and 8000 of his volumes are now in the Bodleian Library. He died at his house of White Fryars on November 30, 1654. From the Table Talk, where "the sense and motion are wholly Selden's, and most of the words," we may quote some sentences about Pleasure: Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain, the enjoying of something I am in great trouble for till I have it, 'Tis a wrong way to proportion other men's pleasures to ourselves; 'tis like a little child using a little bird, "O poor bird, thou shalt sleep with me"; so lays it in his bosom, and stifles it with his hot breath: the bird had rather be in the cold air. And yet too 'tis the most pleasing flattery, to like what other men like. 'Tis most undoubtedly true, that all men are equally given to their pleasure; only thus, one man's pleasure lies one way, and another's another. Pleasures are all alike simply considered in themselves: he that hunts, or he that governs the Commonwealth, they both please themselves alike, only we commend that, whereby we ourselves receive some benefit; as if a man place his delight in things that tend to the common good. He that takes pleasure to hear sermons, enjoys himself as much as he that hears plays; and could he that loves plays endeavour to love sermons, possibly he might bring himself to it as well as to any other pleasure. At first it may seem harsh and tedious, but afterwards 'twould be pleasing and delightful. So it falls out in that which is the great pleasure of some men, tobacco; at first they could not abide it, and now they cannot be without it. Whilst you are upon Earth, enjoy the good things that are here (to that end were they given), and be not melancholy, and wish yourself in heaven. If a king should give you the keeping of a castle, with all things belonging to it, orchards, gardens, &c., and bid you use them; withal promise you that, after twenty years to remove you to the Court, and to make you a Privy Counsellor; if you should neglect your castle, and refuse to eat of those fruits, and sit down, and whine, and wish you were a Privy Counsellor, do you think the King would be pleased with you? END OF VOLUME II Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO JUN 17 1920 |