Cowley and Evelyn are of rural authors the most attractive. Cowley's Essays are delightful reading. Nor shall I forgive his biographer for destroying the letters of a man of whom King Charles said at his interment in Westminster Abbey, "Mr. Cowley has not left a better in England." The friend and correspondent of the most distinguished poets, statesmen, and gentlemen of his time, himself the first poet of his day, his letters must have been most interesting and important, and but for the unsettled temper of affairs, would doubtless have been added to our polite literature.
Had King Charles remembered Cowley's friend Evelyn, the compliment both to the living and dead would have been just. Evelyn was the best of citizens and most loyal of subjects. A complete list of his writings shows to what excellent uses he gave himself. The planter of forests in his time, he might be profitably consulted as regards the replanting of New England now.
Respecting his planting, and the origin of his Sylva, he writes to his friend, Lady Sunderland, August, 1690:—
"As to the Kalendar your ladyship mentions, whatever assistance it may be to some novice gardener, sure I am his lordship will find nothing in it worth his notice, but an old inclination to an innocent diversion; and the acceptance it found with my dear, and while he lived, worthy friend, Mr. Cowley; upon whose reputation only it has survived seven impressions, and is now entering on the eighth, with some considerable improvement more agreeable to the present curiosity. 'Tis now, Madam, almost forty years since I first writ it, when horticulture was not much advanced in England, and near thirty years since it was published, which consideration will, I hope, excuse its many defects. If in the meantime it deserve the name of no unuseful trifle, 'tis all it is capable of.
"When, many years ago, I came from rambling abroad, and a great deal more since I came home than gave me much satisfaction, and, as events have proved, scarce worth one's pursuit, I cast about how I should employ the time which hangs on most young men's hands, to the best advantage; and, when books and grave studies grew tedious, and other impertinence would be pressing, by what innocent diversions I might sometimes relieve myself without compliance to recreations I took no felicity in, because they did not contribute to any improvement of mind. This set me upon planting of trees, and brought forth my Sylva, which book, infinitely beyond my expectations, is now also calling for a fourth impression, and has been the occasion of propagating many millions of useful timber trees throughout this nation, as I may justify without immodesty, from many letters of acknowledgement received from gentlemen of the first quality, and others altogether strangers to me. His late Majesty, Charles II, was sometimes graciously pleased to take notice of it to me; and that I had by that book alone incited a world of planters to repair their broken estates and woods which the greedy rebels had wasted and made such havoc of. Upon encouragement, I was once speaking to a mighty man then in despotic power to mention the great inclination I had to serve his majesty in a little office then newly vacant (the salary I think hardly £300), whose province was to inspect the timber trees in his majesty's forests, etc., and take care of their culture and improvement; but this was conferred upon another, who, I believe, had seldom been out of the smoke of London, where, though there was a great deal of timber, there were not many trees. I confess I had an inclination to the employment upon a public account as well as its being suitable to my rural genius, born as I was, at Watton, among woods.
"Soon after this, happened the direful conflagration of this city, when, taking notice of our want of books of architecture in the English tongue, I published those most useful directions of ten of the best authors on that subject, whose works were very rarely to be had, all written in French, Latin, or Italian, and so not intelligible to our mechanics. What the fruit of that labor and cost has been, (for the sculptures, which are elegant, were very chargeable,) the great improvement of our workmen and several impressions of the copy since will best testify.
"In this method I thought proper to begin planting trees, because they would require time for growth, and be advancing to delight and shade at least, and were, therefore, by no means to be neglected and deferred, while buildings might be raised and finished in a summer or two, if the owner pleased.
"Thus, Madam, I endeavored to do my countrymen some little service, in as natural an order as I could for the improving and adorning of their estates and dwellings, and, if possible, make them in love with those useful and innocent pleasures, in exchange for a wasteful and ignoble sloth which I had observed so universally corrupted an ingenious education.
"To these I likewise added my little history of Chalcography, a treatise of the perfection of painting and of libraries, medals, with some other intermesses which might divert within doors as well as altogether without."
[3.] To the list of ancient authors, as Cato, Columella, Varro, Palladius, Virgil, Theocritus, Tibullus, selections might be added from Cowley, Marlowe, Browne, Spenser, Tusser, Dyer, Phillips, Shenstone, Cowper, Thomson, and others less known. Evelyn's works are of great value, his Kalendarium Hortense particularly. And for showing the state of agriculture and of the language in his time, Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Husbandry is full of information, while his quaint humor adds to his rugged rhymes a primitive charm. Then of the old herbals, Gerard's is best known. He was the father of English herbalists, and had a garden attached to his house in Holbern. Coles published his Adam in Eden, the Paradise of Plants, in 1659; Austin his Treatise on Fruit Trees ten years earlier. Dr. Holland's translation of the School of Salerne, or the Regiment of Health, appeared in 1649. Thos. Tryon wrote on the virtues of plants, and on health, about the same time, and his works are very suggestive and valuable. Miller, gardener to the Chelsea Gardens, gave the first edition of his Gardener's Dictionary to the press in 1731. Sir William Temple also wrote sensibly on herbs. Cowley's Six Books of Plants was published in English in 1708. Phillips' History of Cultivated Plants, etc., published in 1822, is a book of great merit. So is Culpepper's Herbal.