PREFACE. vii 



cally considered it is valuable, seeing that notices 

 of it have (very needlessly) been considered as 

 requisite in tracing the history of the steam engine, to 

 which it has not the most remote relation, and from 

 which it will doubtless, in future, be excluded by all 

 intelligent writers. 



It is a little remarkable that no fuller account of the 

 Life of Samuel Hartlib is to be found than is supplied 

 by the brief compilations in popular biographies, with 

 occasional notices in bibliographical works and maga- 

 zines. Yet in the early portion of the 1 7th century 

 John Evelyn had been solicited to supply necessary 

 information for a biography; and later, Mr. Todd 

 observed in his Life of Milton that it was a desider- 

 atum in our literature. Warton likewise declares that 

 Hartlib deserved well of the public ; and the Eev. 

 Walter Harte, in his Essays on Agriculture, acknow- 

 ledges his great merits. Sir Bgerton Brydges also made 

 an attempt to promote an interest in this inquiry, He 

 is likewise favourably noticed in Tracts on Practical 

 Agriculture and Gardening ; by A Country Gentleman ; 

 8vo. 1768, and in A history of English Gardening, 

 chronologically arranged, 8vo. 1829. And later writers 

 have not been wanting to express the satisfaction which 

 collected information would afford. Mr. James Cross- 

 ley, in editing '^ The Diary and Correspondence of Dr. 

 John Worthington,'' pubHshed by the Chetham Society 

 in 1847, has preserved many of Hartlib's letters, and 



