In 1641 Hartlib was in correspondence with Alexander Henderson. The reader already knows how "the Scottish business," or the King's difficulty with the Scots, led to the calling of the Long Parliament, and how for six or seven months (Nov. 1640-June 1641) that business intertwined itself with the other proceedings of the Parliament, and Henderson and the other Scottish Commissioners, lay and clerical, were in London all that time, nominally looking after that business, but really co-operating with Pym and the other Parliamentary leaders for the Reform of both kingdoms, and much lionized by the Londoners accordingly (Vol. II. pp. 189-192). Well, Hartlib, who found his way to everybody, found his way to Henderson. lie probably saw a good deal of him, if not of the other Scottish Commissioners; for, after Henderson had returned to Scotland, at least three letters from Hartlib followed him thither. Here is the beginning of the third: "Reverend and Loving Brother in Christ: I hope my two former letters were safely delivered, wherein I gave you notice of a purpose taken in hand here to make Notes upon the Bible. What concurrence you think fit to give in such a work I leave to your own piety to determine. Now I have some other thoughts to impart to you, which lie as a burthen on my heart." The thoughts communicated to Henderson are about the wretched state of the Palatinate, with its Protestantism and its University of Heidelberg ruined by the Thirty Years' War, and the "sweet-natured Prince Elector" in exile; but Hartlib slips into Durie's idea, and urges theological correspondence of all Protestant divines, in order to put an end to divisions. The letter, which is signed "Your faithful friend and servant in Christ," is dated "London, Octob. 1641." All this we know because Hartlib kept a copy of the letter and printed it in 1643. "The copy of a Letter written to Mr. Alexander Henderson: London, Printed in the yeare 1643," is the title of the scrap, as I have seen it in the British Museum. Even so we should not have known it to be Hartlib's, had not the invaluable Thomason written "By Mr. Hartlib" on the title-page, appending "Feb. 6, 1642" (i.e. 1642-3) as the date of the publication.
"A Reformation of Schooles, designed in two excellent Treatises: the first whereof summarily sheweth the great necessity of a generall Reformation of Common Learning, what grounds of hope there are for such a Reformation, how it may be brought to passe. The second answers certaine objections ordinarily made against such undertakings, arid describes the severall parts and titles of workes which are shortly to follow. Written many yeares agoe in Latine by that reverend, godly, learned, and famous Divine, Mr. John Amos Comenius, one of the Seniours of the exiled Church of Moravia; and now, upon the request of many, translated into English and published by Samuel Hartlib for the general good of the Nation. London: Printed for Michael Sparke, Senior, at the Blue Bible in Greene Arbour: 1642" (small ito. pp. 94).—This is, in fact, a reproduction in English of the views of Comenius in his Didactica Magna, &c. As I find it registered in the books of the Stationers' Company "Jan. 12, 1641" (i.e. 1641-2), it must have been out early in 1642.
These traces of Hartlib in the years 1641 and 1642 are significant, and admit of some comment:—In the Description of the Kingdom of Macaria, I should say, Hartlib broke out for himself. He had all sorts of ideas as to social and economic improvements, and he would communicate a little specimen of these, respecting Husbandry, Fishery, and Commerce, to the reforming Parliament. But he was still faithful to Durie and Comenius, and three of his recovered utterances of 1641-2 are in behalf of them. His Brief Relation and his Letter to Henderson refer to Durie and his scheme of Protestant union. It is not impossible that Hartlib was moved to these new utterances in the old subject by Durie's own presence in London; for, as we have mentioned (Vol. II. p. 367), there is some evidence that Durie, who had not been in London since 1633, came over on a flying visit after the opening of the Long Parliament. It is a coincidence, at least, that the publisher of Hartlib's Brief Relation about Durie brought out, at the very same time, a book of Durie's own tending in the same direction. [Footnote: "Mr. Dureus his Eleven Treatises touching Ecclesiastical Peace amongst Protestants" is the title of an entry by Mr. Crooke in the Stationers' Registers, of date Feb. 15, 1640.] Quite possibly, however, Durie may have still been abroad, and Hartlib may have acted for him. In the other case there is no such doubt. When, in Jan. 1641-2, Hartlib sent to the press his new compilation of the views of Comenius under the title of A Reformation of Schools, there was good reason for it. Comenius himself was at his elbow. The great man had come to London.
Education, and especially University Education, was one of the subjects that Parliament was anxious to take up. In the intellectual world of England, quite apart from politics, there had for some time been a tradition of dissatisfaction with the existing state of the Universities and the great Public Schools. In especial, Bacon's complaints and suggestions on this subject in the Second Book of his De Augmentis had sunk into thoughtful minds. That the Universities, by persistence in old and outworn methods, were not in full accord with the demands and needs of the age; that their aims were too professional and particular, and not sufficiently scientific and general; that the order of studies in them was bad, and some of the studies barren; that there ought to be a bold direction of their endowments and apparatus in the line of experimental knowledge, so as to extract from Nature new secrets, and sciences for which Humanity was panting; that, moreover, there ought to be more of fraternity and correspondence among the Universities of Europe, and some organization of their labours with a view to mutual illumination and collective advance: [Footnote: "De Augmentis:" Bacon's Works, I. 487 et seq., and Translation of same, III. 323 et seq. (Spedding's edition).] all these Verulamian speculations, first submitted to King James, were lying hid here and there in English intellects, in watch for an opportunity. Then, in a different way, the political crisis had brought Oxford and Cambridge, but especially Oxford, under severe revision. Had they not been the nurseries of Episcopacy, and of other things and principles of which England was now declaring herself impatient? All this, which was to be more felt after the Civil War had begun and Oxford became the King's headquarters, was felt already in very considerable degree during the two-and-twenty months of preliminary struggle between the King and the Parliament (Nov. 1640-Aug. 1642). Why not have a University in London? There was Gresham College in the city, in existence since 1597, and doing not ill on its limited basis; there was Chelsea College, founded by Dean Sutcliffe of Exeter in 1610, "to the intent that learned men might there have maintenance to answer all the adversaries of religion" but which, after a rickety infancy, and laughed at by Laud as "Controversy College," had been lost in lawsuits: why not, with inclusion or exclusion of these and other foundations, set up in London a great University on the best modern principles, abolishing the monopoly of Oxford and Cambridge?
Of these rumours, plans, or possibilities, due notice had been sent by the zealous Hartlib to Comenius at Leszno. Ought not Comenius to be on the spot? What had he been hoping for and praying for but a "Collegial Society" somewhere in some European state to prepare the necessary "Apparatus of Pammethodic Books" and so initiate his new system of Universal Didactics, or again (to take the other and larger form of his aspiration), a visible co-operation of kindred spirits throughout Europe towards founding and building the great "Temple of Pansophia" or "Universal Real Knowledge"? What if these Austro-Slavic dreams of his should be realized on the banks of the Thames? People were very willing thereabouts; circumstances were favourable; what was mainly wanted was direction and the grasp of a master-spirit! Decidedly, Comenius ought to come over.—All this we learn from Comenius himself, whose account of the matter and of what followed had better now be quoted. "The Pansophiæ Prodromus," he says, "having been published, and copies dispersed through the various kingdoms of Europe, but many learned men who approved of the sketch despairing of the full accomplishment of the work by one man, and therefore advising the erection of a College of learned men for this express business, in these circumstances the very person who had been the means of giving the Prodromus to the world, a man strenuous in practically prosecuting things as far as he can, Mr. S. H. [strenuus rerum quâ datur [Greek: ergodioktæs], D. S. H.], devoted himself laboriously to that scheme, so as to bring as many of the more forward spirits into it as possible. And so it happened at length that, having won over one and another, he, in the year 1641, prevailed on me also by great entreaties to go to him. My people having consented to the journey, I came to London on the very day of the autumnal equinox [Sept. 22, 1641], and there at last learnt that I had been invited by the order of the Parliament. But, as the Parliament, the King having then gone to Scotland [Aug. 10], was dismissed for a three months' recess [not quite three months, but from Sept. 9 to Oct. 20], I was detained there through the winter, my friends mustering what Pansophic apparatus they could, though it was but slender. On which occasion there grew on my hands a tractate with this title, Via Lucis: Hoc Est, &c.. [The Way of Light]: That is, A Reasonable Disquisition how the Intellectual Light of Souls, namely Wisdom, may now at length, in this Evening of the World, be happily diffused through all Minds and Peoples. This for the better understanding of these words of the oracle in Zachariah XIV. 7, It shall come to pass that at evening time it shall be light. The Parliament meanwhile having reassembled, and our presence being known, I had orders to wait until they should have sufficient leisure from other business to appoint a commission of learned and wise men from their body for hearing us and considering the grounds of our design. They communicate also beforehand their thoughts of assigning to us some College with its revenues, whereby a certain number of learned and illustrious men, called from all nations, might he honourably maintained, either for a term of years or in perpetuity. There was even named for the purpose the Savoy in London; Winchester College out of London was named; and again, nearer the city, Chelsea College, inventories of which and of its revenues were communicated to us; so that nothing seemed more certain than that the design of the great Verulam, concerning the opening somewhere of a Universal College, devoted to the advancement of the Sciences, could be carried out. But the rumour of the Insurrection in Ireland, and of the massacre in one night of more than 200,000 English [Oct.-Nov.], and the sudden departure of the King from London [Jan. 10, 1641-2], and the plentiful signs of the bloody war about to break out, disturbed these plans, and obliged me to hasten my return to my own people. It happened, however, that letters came to me from Sweden, which had been sent to Poland and thence forwarded to England, in which that magnanimous and energetic man, Ludovicus de Geer, invited me to come to him in Sweden, and offered immediate means of furthering my studies and those of any two or three learned men I chose to associate with me. Communicating this offer to my friends in London, I took my departure, but not without protestations from them that I ought to let my services be employed in nothing short of the Pansophic Design." [Footnote: Autobiographic Introduction to the "Second Part" of the Opera Didactica of Comenius (1657), containing his Didactic writings from 1642 to 1650.] This is very interesting, and, I have no doubt, quite accurate. [Footnote: I have not been able to find in the Lords or Commons Journals for 1641 and 1642 any traces of those communications between Comenius and the Parliament of which he speaks. There may be such, for the Indexes are not perfect; and there is not the least reason to doubt the word of Comenius.] And so, through the winter of 1641-2 and the spring of 1642, we are to imagine Hartlib and Comenius going about London together, Hartlib about forty years of age and Comenius about fifty, the younger man delighted with his famous friend, introducing him to various people, and showing him the chief sights (the law-chambers and house of the great Verulam not omitted, surely), and all the while busy with Pansophic talk and the details of the Pansophic College. We see now the reason of Hartlib's publication in Jan. 1641-2 of Comenius's two treatises jointly in a book called A Reformation of Schools. It was to help in the business which had brought Comenius to London.
It was a great chagrin to Hartlib when the London plan came to an abrupt end, and Comenius transferred himself to Sweden. Thither we must follow him, for yet one other passage of his history before we leave him:— "Conveyed to Sweden in August of the year 1642," proceeds Comenius, "I found my new Mæcenas at his house at Nortcoping; and, having been kindly received by him, I was, after some days of deliberation, sent to Stockholm, to the most illustrious Oxenstiern, Chancellor of the Kingdom, and Dr. Johannes Skyte, Chancellor of the University of Upsal. These two exercised me in colloquy for four days; and chiefly the former, that Eagle of the North (Aquila Aquilonius). He inquired into the foundations of both my schemes, the Didactic and the Pansophic, so searchingly that it was unlike anything that had been done before by any of my learned critics. In the first two days he examined the Didactics, with at length this conclusion: 'From an early age,' said he, 'I perceived that our Method of Studies generally in use is a harsh and crude one [violentum quiddam]; but where the thing stuck I could not find out. At length, having been sent, by my King of glorious memory [Gustavus Adolphus], as ambassador into Germany, I conversed on the subject with various learned men. And, when I had heard that Wolfgang Ratich was toiling at an amended Method, I had no rest of mind till I had got that gentleman into my presence; who, however, instead of a talk on the subject, offered me a big volume in quarto to read. I swallowed that trouble; and, having turned over the whole book, I saw that he detected not badly the maladies of our schools, but the remedies he proposed did not seem sufficient. Yours, Mr. Comenius, rest on firmer foundations. Go on with the work.' I answered that I had done all I could in those matters, and must now go on to others. 'I know said he, 'that you are toiling at greater affairs, for I have read your Prodromus Pansophiæ. We will speak of that to-morrow: I must to public business now.' Next day, beginning to examine, but with greater severity, my Pansophic Attempts, he opened with this question, 'Are you a man, Mr. Comenius, that can bear contradiction? [Potesne contradicentem ferre?]' 'I can,' replied I, 'and therefore that Prodromus or Preliminary Sketch was (not by me either, but by friends) sent out first, that it might meet with judgment and criticism. Which if we admit from all and sundry, why not from men of mature wisdom and heroic reason?' He began, accordingly, to discourse against the hope of a better state of things conceived as lying in a rightly instituted study of Pansophia, first objecting political reasons of deep import, and then the testimonies of the divine Scriptures, which seem to foretell for the latter days of the world rather darkness and a certain deterioration of things than light and amended institutions. To all which he had such answers from me that he closed with these words, 'Into no one's mind do I think such things have come before. Stand upon these grounds of yours: either so shall we come some time to agreement, or there will be no way at all left. My advice, however, is (added he) that you proceed first to do a good stroke in the School business, and to bring the study of the Latin tongue to a greater facility, and so prepare a broader and clearer way for those bigger matter.' The Chancellor of the University did not cease to urge the same; and he suggested this as well: that, if I were unwilling to remove with my family into Sweden, at all events I should come nearer to Sweden by taking up my abode in Prussia, say in Elbing. As my Mæcenas, to whom I returned at Nortcoping [Ludovicus de Geer], thought that both advices ought to be acquiesced in, and earnestly begged me that nothing should be done otherwise than had been advised, whether in respect of the place of my abode, or of priority to be given to any other task, I agreed at length, always with the hope that within a year or two there would be an end of the hack-work."—In fact, Comenius went to Elbing in Prussia (Hartlib's native place, as the reader may remember), to be supported there by the generosity of Ludovicus de Geer, with subsidies perhaps from Oxenstiern, and to labour on at a completion of his system of School Education, with a view to its application to Sweden.—"But this good- nature of mine in yielding to the Swedes vehemently displeased my English friends; and they sought to draw me back from any bargain by a long epistle, most full of reasons. 'A sufficient specimen,' they argued, 'had been given in Didactics; the path of farther rectification in that department was open enough: not yet so in Real Science. Others could act in the former department, and everywhere there were rising up Schoolmasters provoking each other to industry by mutual emulation; whereas the foundations of Pansophia were not yet sufficiently laid bare. Infinitely more profit would redound to the public from an explanation of the ways of true Wisdom than from little trifles about Latin.' Much more in the same strain; and S. H. [Samuel Hartlib] added, 'Quo, moriture, ruis? minoraque viribus audes?' in this poetical solecism [Comenius calls the hexameter a solecism, I suppose, on account of the false quantity it contains in the word minora], reproaching my inconsiderateness. Rejoiced by this recall into the road-royal, I sent on this letter to Sweden; and, nothing doubting that they would come round to the arguments there expressed, I gave myself up wholly to my Pansophics, whether to continue in them, or that, at all events (if the Swedish folk did wish me to dwell on in my Scholastics and it were my hap to die in that drudgery), the foundations of Pansophia, of the insufficient exposition of which I heard complaints, might be better dug down into, so that they might no longer be ignored. But from Sweden the answer that came was one ordering me to persevere in the proposal of first finishing the Didactics; backed by saws to this effect: 'One would rather the better, but the earlier must be done first,' 'One doesn't go from the bigger to the smaller, but wicey warsey,' and all the rest of it. Nothing was left me but to obey, and plod on against my will in the clay of logomachies for eight whole years. Fortunately this was not till I had printed at Dantzic, in the year 1643, my already-made efforts at a better detection of the foundations of Pansophia, under the title of 'Pansophiæ Diatyposis Ichnographica et Orthographica,' reprinted immediately at Amsterdam and Paris." [Footnote: Introd. to Part II. of Opera Didactica.]
Poor Comenius! He had a long life before him yet; but at this point we must throw him off, shunted into his siding at Elbing, to plod there for four years (1642-1646) at his Didactics, while he would fain have been soaring among his Pansophics. [Footnote: Though, as he has told us, his drudgery at the Didactics continued for eight years in all, there was a break of these eight years in 1646 when he returned to Sweden to report proceedings to his employers.] Letters from his London friend, Hartlib, would reach him frequently in Elbing, and would doubtless encourage him in the humbler labour since he could not be at the higher. For Hartlib himself, we find, also laid aside the Pansophics for a time, seeing no hope for them in London without the presidency of Comenius, but continued to interest himself in the Didactics. In fact, however, he was never without interests of some kind or another. Thus, in Feb. 1642-3, or when Comenius may have been about a year at Elbing, Hartlib was again at the Durie business. "A Faithfull and Seasonable Advice, or the Necessity of a Correspondence for the Advancement of the Protestant Cause: humbly suggested to the Great Councill of England assembled in Parliament: Printed by John Hammond, 1643," is the title of a new tract, of a few pages, which we know to be Hartlib's. [Footnote: In the copy in the King's Library, British Museum, there is the MS. note "Ex dono Authoris, S. Hartlib" with the date "Feb. 6, 1642," (i.e. 1642-3).] Then, in July 1643, the Westminster Assembly met; and what an accession of topics of interest that brought to Hartlib may be easily imagined. There was the excitement of The Solemn League and Covenant (Aug.-Sept.), with the arrival in London of the Scottish Commissioners, including Hartlib's friend Henderson, to take part in the Assembly; there was the beginning of the great debate between Independency and Presbyterianism; nay, in Nov. 1643, Durie was himself appointed a member of the Assembly by the Parliament (Vol. II. p. 517), and so drawn over from the Continent for a long period of service and residence in England.
That Hartlib was interested in all this, and led into new positions and relationships by it, there is very varied proof.—For example, he was one of the witnesses in Laud's trial, which began Nov. 13,1643, and straggled on through the rest of that year and the next. His evidence was wanted by the prosecution in support of that one of the charges against Laud which alleged that he had "endeavoured to cause division and discord between the Church of England and other Reformed Churches." In proof of this it was proposed to show that he had discouraged and impeded Durie in his Conciliation scheme, on the ground that the Calvinistic Churches were alien from the true faith, and that, in particular, he had "caused letters-patent granted by the King for a collection for the Palatinate ministers to be revoked after they had passed the great seal"; and it was to the truth of both these statements that Hartlib, with others, was required to testify. He was, as we know, a most competent witness in that matter; and he gave his evidence duly, though, as I should fancy, with no real ill-will to Laud. [Footnote: See particulars in Prynne's Canterburie's Doome (1646), pp.539-542. Laud, in this part of his defence, names both Durie and Hartlib. He says he did not discourage Durie, but rather encouraged him, as he could prove by letters of Durie's which he had; to which the prosecution replied that the contrary was notorious, and that Durie had "oft complained to his friends" of Land's coldness.]—Now that Episcopacy was done with, and it was to a Parliament and an Assembly mainly Presbyterian that England was looking for a new system of Church-government, Hartlib's anxiety was, as Durie's also was, to make the best of the new conditions, and to instil into them as much of the Durie idea as possible. Might it not even be that a Reformed Presbyterian Church of England would be a more effective leader in a movement for the union of the Protestant Churches of Europe than the Episcopal Church had been? This explains another short tract of Hartlib's, put forth Nov. 9, 1644, and entitled, "The Necessity of some nearer Conjunction and Correspondency amongst Evangelical Protestants, for the Advancement of the National Cause, and bringing to passe the effect of the Covenant." [Footnote: Though the tract, which consists of but eight small quarto pages, is anonymous, it is verified as Hartlib's by the inscription on the British Museum copy, "By Mr. Hartlib, Novemb. 9th." The tract itself bears only "London Printed 1644.">[—Well, but how did Hartlib stand in the great controversy between the Independents and the Presbyterians? This too can be answered. As might be expected, he was in sympathy with the Independents, in as far as their claim for a Toleration was concerned. The reader will remember Edwards's famous Antapologia, published in July 1644, in answer to the Apologetical Narration of the Five Independent Divines of the Assembly, and which all the Presbyterian world welcomed as an absolutely crushing blow to Independency and the Toleration principle. Here, then, is the title of a smaller publication which that big one provoked: "A Short Letter modestly entreating a Friend's judgment upon Mr. Edwards his Booke he calleth an Anti-Apologia: with a large but modest Answer thereunto: London, Printed according to order, 1644." Actually it was out on Sept. 14th, or about two months after Edwards's book. The title exactly indicates the structure of the publication. It consists of a short Letter and a longish Reply to that Letter. The Letter begins, "Worthy Sir, I have heard of Mr. Edwards's Anti-Apologeticall Book, as I needs must doe, for all the City and Parliament rings with it," and it goes on to request from the person addressed his opinion of the hook. At the end of the letter we find the writer's name "Sam Hartlib": and the dating "from my house in Duke's Place in great haste, Aug. 5." And who was the friend addressed? He was a Hezekiah Woodward, B.A. (Oxon.), preacher in or near Aldermanbury, about fifty years of age, long a zealous Puritan, latterly a decided Parliamentarian and champion of the Solemn League and Covenant, and already known as an author by some Puritanic books, and one or two of a pedagogic kind, referable to an earlier period of his life when he had been a London schoolmaster. Hartlib had known him, he says in his letter, for sixteen years, that is to say from his first coming to London in 1628 or 1629. It is this long friendship that justifies him in asking Woodward's opinion of Edwards's book. The opinion is given in a reply to Hartlib, signed "Hezekiah Woodward," and dated "from my house in Aldermanbury, 13 Aug. 1644"; and it is, as far as I remember, quite against Edwards, and a real, though hazy and perplexed, reasoning for Toleration.[Footnote: The publication was duly registered, and has a long appended Imprimatur by Joseph Caryl; and the exact date of the publication (Sept 14) is from a MS. note in the British Museum copy, For a sketch of Woodward and a list of his writings see Wood, Ath. III, 1034- 7.]
MILTON'S TRACT ON EDUCATION: HIS METHOD WITH HIS PUPILS.
It had been Hartlib's chance, he himself tells us, to be "familiarly acquainted with the best of Archbishops, Bishops, Earls, Viscounts, Barons, Knights, Esquires, Gentlemen, ministers, Professors of both Universities, Merchants, and all sorts of learned or in any kind useful men." This he wrote at a considerably later date in his life; [Footnote: In Aug. 1660, See Letter in Dircks's Memoir, p. 4.] but, from what we have already seen, we may vote it substantially true even in 1644. In that year, we know for certain, the circle of Hartlib's friends included Milton.