Agriculture -- England; Conduct of life; Home economics, Rural
1. The author does not speak of husbandry _only_, but of _other
points_. The other points are the breeding of horses (not a
necessary part of a farmer’s business), the selling of wood and
timber, grafting of trees, a long discourse upon prodigality,
remarks upon gaming, a discussion of “what is riches,” and a
treatise upon practical religion, illustrated by Latin quotations
from the fathers, and occupying no small portion of the work. This
is not the work of a practical farmer, in the narrow acceptation
of the term, meaning thereby one who farms to live; but it is
clearly the work of a country gentleman, rich in horses and in
timber, acquainted with the extravagant mode of life often adopted
by the wealthy, and at the same time given to scholarly pursuits
and to learned and devout reading. Indeed, the prominence given to
religious teaching can hardly fail to surprise a reader who expects
to find in the volume nothing more than hints upon practical
agriculture. One chapter has a very suggestive heading, viz. “A
lesson made in Englysshe verses, that _a gentylmans seruaunte_
shall forget none of his gere _in his inne behynde hym_” (p. 7).
This is obviously the composition of a gentleman himself, and of
one accustomed to take long journeys upon horseback, and to stay at
various inns on the way.[1]
2. Again he says, “it is the best way that euer I coude proue by
experyence, the whiche ... haue assaied _many and dyuers_ wayes,
and done my dyligence to proue by experyence which shuld be the
beste waye.” Certainly this is not the language of one who farmed
for profit, but of the _experimental_ farmer, the man who could
afford to lose if things went wrong, one to whom farming was an
amusement and a recreation, and who delighted in trying various
modes that he might benefit those who, unlike himself, could not
afford to try any way but that which had long been known.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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