Hartlib, Samuel (Samuel Hartlieb; c. 1600–1662)

HARTLIB, SAMUEL (Samuel Hartlieb; c. 1600–1662)

HARTLIB, SAMUEL (Samuel Hartlieb; c. 1600–1662), English reformer. Samuel Hartlib was a scientific "intelligencer" who helped to place England on the map of the emerging Republic of Letters. He was born at Elbing (Elblag) in Poland around 1600 into a distinguished mercantile family, and received an extensive education in Germany and at Cambridge (1625–1626) under John Preston (1587–1628), master of Emmanuel College. He retreated to London in 1628 as the Habsburg armies advanced toward the Baltic coast and, after 1630, spent the rest of his life there.

Hartlib began to cultivate his international network of correspondents, assisted by his friend John Dury (1596–1672), a Calvinist minister whom he had met at Elbing. Together they shared the vision of reconciling Protestant divisions and consorting with a fraternity whose goal was to establish a model Protestant religious community. Hartlib's manuscript diary delineates his obsession for the processes of learning that had already led him to admire and reflect on the works of Francis Bacon. His correspondence with the Czech educational philosopher Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670) had begun in 1632, and one of Hartlib's earliest publications was a sketch of pansophy (or encyclopedic learning) that Comenius had sent him. His second, expanded edition of this work (Pansophia Prodromus, 1639), became a prospectus for Comenius in England.

This involvement with Comenius established Hartlib's reputation as an agent of learning. Hartlib believed that Christian solidarity arose out of relations of exchange. God had given all humans a "talent" that should not be "hidden under a bushel" but distributed for the common good. These talents would best be released by a reformation of learning (or Reformation of Schooles as Hartlib entitled his translation of Comenius's Prodromus in 1642). In October 1641, Hartlib published a small utopian treatise entitled Macaria (after an offshore island in Thomas More's Utopia, 1515). Its authorship used to be ascribed to him, but it was evidently written by Gabriel Plattes (1600–1655). It described a commonwealth in which government and people collaborated in prosperity generated by the practical application of diffused knowledge. Pansophy's ultimate goal was a millennial recovery of the knowledge that humanity had lost after Eden. In a pact signed by Comenius, Hartlib, and Dury on 13 March 1642, they committed themselves to a secret fraternity for the advancement of religious pacification, education, and the reformation of learning. This delineated Hartlib's goals for the rest of his life.

During the English Civil War (1642–1649), Hartlib stayed in London, acting as an agent for the parliamentary cause. His proposed reformation of learning induced John Milton (1608–1674) to write his treatise On Education (1644), which he dedicated to Hartlib. Following the parliamentary victory in 1646, Hartlib devoted himself to establishing an "Office of Address" with elements borrowed from a similar agency established in Paris. It was designed as a labor exchange and a means of spreading knowledge on "matters of religion, of learning, and ingenuities." Although never officially instituted, Hartlib was voted an annual pension by the Commonwealth and became "a conduit pipe towards the Publick. . . ." He employed scriveners and translators to copy letters and treatises to others. What is sometimes now called the "Hartlib Circle" was a diverse group of enthusiasts who shared interests in the possibilities of technical change. His surviving papers, rediscovered in London in 1933, testify to the extent of Hartlib's network, although his influence remained mostly behind the scenes. His most visible impact lay in the numerous pamphlets that he published. Their greatest effect was in agriculture, where the advantages of planting new leguminous crops, experimenting with fertilizers and manures, using seed drills and new plows, and advocating the possibilities of apiculture (raising bees) and silk cultivation (in Virginia) were advocated. It is difficult to determine Hartlib's overall impact, because he readily adopted the dominant ideas and language of others and his agenda evolved over time, but his adoption of other people's ideas also involved the perception that, by spreading knowledge, the public good would be served and the coming of the millennium achieved. His commitment to that goal was distinctive, even though it would eventually be carried forward in very different ways after his death by the Royal Society of London.

See also Agriculture ; Bacon, Francis ; Comenius, Jan Amos ; Education ; English Civil War and Interregnum ; English Civil War Radicalism ; Milton, John ; More, Thomas ; Republic of Letters ; Utopia .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Greengrass, M. "Samuel Hartlib and the Commonwealth of Learning." In The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, edited by John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie. Vol. 4, pp. 304–322. Cambridge, U.K., 2002.

Greengrass, M., and M. P. Leslie, eds. The Hartlib Papers on CD-ROM. 2nd ed. Sheffield, U.K., 2002.

Leslie, Michael, and Timothy Raylor. Culture and Cultivation in Early Modern England: Writing and the Land. Leicester, U.K., 1992.

Turnbull, G. H. Hartlib, Dury, and Comenius: Gleanings from Hartlib's Papers. Liverpool, U.K., 1947.

Webster, Charles. The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform, 1626–1660. London, 1975.

——. Samuel Hartlib and the Advancement of Learning. Cambridge, U.K., 1970.

Mark Greengrass