48 A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 



thereof is not next to my heart.'' And candidly professes 

 but to have "played the husbandman/' to gratify a 

 public necessity, rather than his own individual taste. 

 Such was the deliberate statement he made after more 

 than twenty years experience, and active employment 

 in such comparative drudgery, working, as he must 

 have done, so thoroughly against the grain, in defiance 

 of his natural bias and religious fervor. He does not, 

 however, appear to have succeeded as a theological 

 writer, although he must have devoted his energies to 

 appropriate preparatory studies for above twenty years 

 previous to his thus expressing the conviction of 

 his heart. He is certainly not, at the present time, 

 generally supposed to have contemplated any such 

 change of occupation. It is more than likely, 

 whatever might have been his own estimation of 

 his abilities, in 1652, that the result of his publica- 

 tion, combined with the advice of trusty friends, as- 

 sured him that his sphere of usefulness would be 

 materially curtailed if he seriously persisted in abandon- 

 ing the one pursuit for the other : in which eminent 

 authors already abounded, while he had opened for 

 himself a field calculated to yield unbounded treasure. 

 In this respect Hartlib^s is far from being an isolated 

 case, either in his own or in the present day. It is the 

 fate of genius in the varied walks it pursues, to despise 

 difficulties, seeing the remote as present, and the pre- 

 sent as to be overleaped at one bound. But it is with 



