Samuel Hartlib

Samuel Hartlib (ca. 1600 – 10 March 1662) was a German-British polymath. An active promoter and expert writer in many fields, he was interested in science, medicine, agriculture, politics, and education.

Quotes

• There is at Paris likewife another sort of fodder which they call la lucern which is not inferior, but rather preferred before sainfoin. Every day produces some new things concerning it, not only in other countries but in our own.
  • Samuel Hartlib Legacy, (1650), p. 4. cited in: Walter Harte. Essays on Husbandry (1764), Essay II on lucerne. p. 10.

• If the national husbandry of this commonwealth be improved, we may hope, through god's blessing, to see better days, and be able to bear necessary and public burdens to more ease to ourselves, and benefit to human society, than hitherto we could attain to.
  • Samuel Hartlib (1600–1662) cited in: Walter Harte. Essays on Husbandry (1764), p. 3.

About Hartlib

• Samuel Hartlib, a celebrated writer on husbandry in the last century, a gentleman much beloved and esteemed by Milton, in his preface to the work, commonly called his Legacy, laments greatly that no public director of husbandry was established in England By Authority; and that we had not adopted the Flemish custom of letting farms upon improvement... Cromwell, in consequence of this admirable performance, allowed Hartlib a pension of 100l. a year ; and Hartlib afterwards, the better to fulfil the intentions of his benefactor, procured Dr. Beati's excellent annotations on the Legacy, with other valuable pieces from bis numerous correspondents.
  • Walter Harte. Essays on Husbandry (1764), p. 3.