Scarce any Plant is growing here.
Which against Death some weapon does not bear.
Let Cities boast that they provide
For life the ornaments of Pride;
But ’tis the Country and the Field
That furnish it with Staff and Shield.
The Garden. Chertsey, 1666.
VIII.
TRYON. 1634–1703.
ONE of the best known of the seventeenth century humane Hygeists, was born at Bibury, a village in Gloucestershire. His father was a tiler and plasterer, who by stress of poverty was forced to remove his son, when no more than six years of age, from the village school, and to set him at the work of spinning and carding, (the woollen manufacture being then extensively carried on in Gloucestershire). At eight years of age he became so expert, he tells us, as to be able to spin four pounds a day, earning two shillings a week. At the age of twelve he was made to work at his father’s employment. At this period he first learned to read. He next took to keeping sheep. With the sum of three pounds, realised by the sale of his four sheep, he went to London to seek his fortune, when seventeen years old, and bound himself apprentice to a “castor-maker,” in Fleet Street. His master was an Anabaptist—“an honest and sober man;” and, after two years’ apprenticeship, Tryon adopted the same religious creed. All his spare time was now devoted entirely to study; and, with the usual ardour of scholars who depend upon their own talents and exertions, he scarcely gave any time to food or sleep. The holiday period, too, spent by his fellow-apprentices in eating and drinking, and gross amusements, was utilised in the same way. Science, and Physiology in particular, attracted his attention.
At the age of twenty-three he first adopted the reformed diet, “my drink being only water, and food only bread and some fruit, and that but once a day for some time; but afterwards I had more liberty given me by my guide, Wisdom, to eat butter and cheese; my clothing being mean and thin; for, in all things, self-denial was now become my real business.” This strict life he maintained for more than a year, when he relapsed, at intervals, during the next two years. At the end of this period he had become confirmed in his reform, and he remained to the end strictly akreophagist, and, indeed, strictly frugal, “contenting myself with herbs, fruits, grains, eggs, butter and cheese for food, and pure water for drink.” About two years after his marriage he made voyages to Barbadoes and to Holland in the way of trade—“making beavers.” He finally settled himself in England, and at the age of forty-eight he published his first book on Dietetics.