WORLIDGE, JOHN. 



them the profit they might derive from such 

 foresighted enterprise, "What can be more 

 pleasant than to have the bounds and limits of 

 your own property preserved, and continued 

 from age to age by the testimony of such grow- 

 ing and living witnesses, in the spring yielding 

 a reviving cordial to your winter-chilled spirit, 

 giving you an assurance of the approaching 

 summer by their pregnant buds and musical 

 inhabitants'? In the summer, what more 

 delectable than the curious prospect of the 

 variety of greenness, dark shades, and retire- 

 ment "from the scorching sunbeams 1" He 

 M-ell knew, too, what some of my northern 

 friends are only now proving to be practically 

 the case, that "woods also finely refrigerate 

 the air in the summer's parching heats, and 

 qualify the dry and injurious winds, both in 

 winter, spring, and autumn." He devotes a 

 long chapter to the profits and pleasures of 

 fruit trees, and ridicules very quaintly the ob- 

 jection too commonly made to such plantations, 

 viz., " that their fruit would be stolen." "When," 

 he says, "they become more common, they 

 will be little regarded by these filchers, or if 

 they do borrow a few sometimes in their 

 pockets, or to make a few apple-pies withal, 

 yet that is a poor discouragement to an inge- 

 nious spirit, and much like that rustick humour 

 of one that would not improve a very good 

 piece of ground for that purpose with fruit 

 trees, because the parson would have the deci- 

 mation of it, and so denied himself the nine 

 parts, because the parson should not have the 

 remainder." 



Of the ploughs employed 150 years since, he 

 mentions the double-wheeled or Hertfordshire 

 plough, the turnwrest or Kentish plough, 

 " which surpasseth for weight and clumsiness" 

 the one-wheeled plough, the plain plough, and 

 the trenching plough. 



Woolridge gives also sundry directions for 

 angling, fowling, bird-catching, horse-breeding, 

 and sundry other rural affairs, and finally he 

 winds up with a Kalendarium Rusticum. In 

 these he gives various monthly directions, of 

 which one specimen will suffice, of the mode 

 of farming then commonly adopted. In May 

 he directs the farmer " to kill ivy, to feed down 

 or mow rank corn ; to sow barley, buckwheat, 

 pease, hemp, and flax, clover-grass, St. Foyn, 

 and other French grasses ; to pare and burn 

 land, and wean lambs." He every month, as 

 if in rivalry of the almanac-makers of former 

 generations, treated the farmer to some poetry, 

 often of a most absurd description ; thus, in the 

 month of March, after having told them that 

 "this month ushers in the most welcome sea- 

 son of the year," and that " now gentle Zephyrus 

 fans the sweet buds, and the caelestial drops 

 water fair Flora's garden," he could not help 

 adding some of his own poetry, telling them 

 what must have been indeed novel informa- 

 tion, that now 



" The lofty mountains standing on a row. 

 Which hut of late were perriwieg'd with snow, 

 Doff their old coats, and now are daily seen 

 To gtand on tiptoes all in swagpering green ; 

 Meadows and gardens are prankt up with bud?, 

 And chirping birds now chant it in the woods." 



Woolridge laboured hard, however, in spite 



WORLIDGE, JOHN. 



of occasional absurdities of expression, to .ele- 

 vate the science of agriculture; and that it was 

 deemed a science in the 17th century, is evi- 

 dent in this opening address to the farmer, 

 when he says, " Agriculture hath been (not 

 undeservedly) esteemed a science that prin- 

 cipally teaches us the nature and divers pro- 

 perties and qualities, as well of the several 

 soils, earths, and places, as of the several pro- 

 ductions or creatures, whether vegetable, ani- 

 mal, or mineral, that naturally proceed or are 

 artificially produced from, or maintained by, 

 the earth." This he promises the husbandman 

 he will do "after a plain and familiar method." 

 He soon, however, begins to illustrate his 

 "plain and familiar method," by talking of the 

 "secret, mystical, and mechanick indagations 

 of nature, the universal spirit, or spirit of mer- 

 cury and of salt ;" and gives us but a mean 

 opinion of his natural philosophy, by gravely 

 telling us that "soon will horse-hairs receive 

 life lying in rain-water but a few days in the 

 heat of the sun in spring-time." 



But in spite of these occasional mistakes, 

 the book of Woolridge was perhaps the most 

 practical, and therefore the most useful book 

 which had yet appeared treating of agriculture 

 and rural affairs. The very publication of 

 such an expensive folio, of 326 pages, betrays 

 the increasing thirst for knowledge of the cul- 

 tivators of those days, and the same remarks 

 apply generally to those of Platte and of Hart- 

 lib ; in truth, both agriculture and agricultural 

 writers could hardly fail to keep pace with the 

 rapid increase to the general slock of know- 

 ledge which the age in which they flourished 

 received to so remarkable an extent; and this 

 improvement was not, as my brother, Mr. 

 George Johnson remarks (Hist, of Gard.), in 

 only one branch of knowledge, but in the whole 

 circle of the arts and sciences. The reforma- 

 tion was not confined to religion. By deliver- 

 ing the human mind from servile thraldom, and 

 teaching man, instead of bowing blindly to 

 custom, merely on account of its antiquity, to 

 have a self-dependence, it gave an impulse to 

 improvement which no tyrant opposition of 

 either bigotry, indolence, or self-surficiency 

 could check. Such men as Bacon, Peiresc, 

 and Evelyn arose, and whilst the first traced 

 the path which men of science should tread, the 

 two latter lent their talents and their wealth to 

 sustain them in the pursuit. Bacon, it has 

 been truly observed, was the first who taught 

 men that they were but the servants and inter- 

 preters of nature, capable of discovering truth 

 in no other way than by observing and imitat- 

 ing her operations ; that facts must be collected 

 instead of speculations formed, and that the 

 materials for the foundations of true systems 

 of knowledge were to be discovered, not in the 

 books of the ancients, not in metaphysical 

 theories, not in the fancies of men, but by care- 

 ful, and laborious, and patient experiments 

 and observations in the external world. Peiresc 

 was a munificent man of letters; his advice, 

 his purse were open to the votaries of every 

 art and every science ; his library was stored 

 with the literature of every age and nation, his 

 garden with the rarest and most useful exotics, 

 and these last he delighted to spread over the 



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