Note 1809 — Chapter VI · PASTORAL LIFE.

Even yet we find the shepherds of Greece retain some smack of classical learning: “After dinner I walked out with a shepherd’s boy to herbarise; my pastoral botanist surprised me not a little with his nomenclature; I traced the names of Dioscorides, and Theophrastus, corrupted, indeed, in some degree by pronunciation, and by the long series annorum, which had elapsed since the time of these philosophers, but many of them were unmutilated, and their virtues faithfully handed down in the oral traditions of the country. My shepherd boy returned to his fold not less satisfied with some paras that I had given him, than I was in finding in such a rustic a repository of ancient science.”—Sibth. in Walp. i. 66, seq. There is in Sir John Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, translated by Robert Mulcaster, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a passage describing the pastoral habits of our ancestors, and the intellectual superiority they engendered, which appears to me so excellent, that I cannot resist the temptation to introduce it here:—“England is so fertile and fruitefull, that comparing quantity to quantity it surmounteth all other landes in fruitefulnesse. Yea, it bringeth forth fruite of itselfe, scant provoked by mann’s industrie and labour. For there the landes, the fieldes, the groves, and the woodes, doe so aboundantlye springe, that the same untilled doe commonly yield to their owners more profite then tilled, though else they bee most fruitefull of corne and graine. There also are fieldes of pasture inclosed with hedges and ditches, with trees planted and growing uppon the same, which are a defence to their heardes of sheepe and cattell, against stormes and heate of the sunne; and the pastures are commonly watered, so that cattell shutte and closed therein have no neede of keeping neither by day, nor by night. For there bee no wolves, nor beares, nor lyons, wherefore their sheepe lye by night in the fields, unkept within their foldes wherewith their land is manured. By the meanes whereof, the men of that countrie are scant troubled with any painefull labour, wherefore they live more spiritually, as did the ancient fathers, which did rather choose to keepe and feede cattell, than to disturbe the quietnesse of the minde with care of husbandrie. And heereof it cometh, that menne of this countrie are more apte and fitte to discerne in doubtfull causes of great examination and triall, than are menne whollye given to moyling in the ground; in whom that rurall exercise engendereth rudeness of witte and minde.” chap. 29.