40 A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 



Samuel Hartlib was probably not more tban between 

 fifty and sixty years of age at the time of bis decease^ 

 and it is a singular circumstance tbat a person so dis- 

 tinguished as lie was among a large and learned circle 

 of society, should have died so obscurely, that neither 

 the time of his decease nor even the place of his 

 burial should have been anywhere recorded. Unless, 

 indeed, we attribute the occurrence to his forlorn 

 condition and the strange character of the times, 

 especially during the earlier portion of Charles II /s 

 reign, when party spirit ran high, and all who had 

 become conspicuous as in any way favouring the 

 Commonwealth were liable to censure, if not to dis- 

 grace and penalty. If he went to Oxford, or elsewhere, 

 in hopes to better his situation, as well as his health, 

 such a removal from the metropolis would account in 

 a great measure for this apparent neglect. 



In reviewing the circumstances of his life, it is 

 reasonable to suppose that he enjoyed the advantages 

 of a religious training and a liberal education, his 

 parents being persons of some distinction, honourably 

 connected, and his father extensively engaged in com- 

 mercial enterprise abroad. Hartlib was most likely 

 also intended for trade, as he seems to have been origi- 

 nally employed in some kind of mercantile agency in 

 London, to which fact we are disposed to attribute 

 the business-like tact observable in whatever he 

 undertakes. In his arrangements for schools and 



