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Updated: May 28, 2025
Roe recommends the blessed work in which Durie is engaged, says that it seems to him and Durie that "there is nothing wanting but the public declaration of his Majesty and the Church of England" in its favour, and beseeches the Archbishop "to give his countenance to the bearer," described in the margin as "Mr. Hartlib, a Prussian."
But he was keeping the work back, as one requiring leisure, and could only be persuaded to let the announcement of its title appear in the Leipsic catalogue of forthcoming books. By that time, however, Hartlib of London had become so dear a friend to Comenius that he could refuse him nothing.
Here, it will be seen, Milton sends to Rous the same pamphlets he had sent to Patrick Young, and in the same order, only adding the Letter on Education to Hartlib, and the Moseley volume of Poems. Now, all the pieces so enumerated, with the inscription, had duly reached Rous in the Bodleian, with one exception.
It may have come about after Milton had been deserted by his wife in July 1643, and when a few pupils, besides the two nephews he had till then had charge of, were received into his wifeless household. Would not this in itself be an attraction to Hartlib? Was not Milton pursuing a new method with his pupils, between which and the method of Comenius there were points in common?
It consisted of a preface, addressed by Hartlib to Parliament, and 59 pages of text, explaining the said Office of Public Address to be a kind of universal Register House "whereunto all men might freely come to give information of the commodities they have to be imparted to others."
While Hartlib was writing on all things and sundry to young Boyle, the Education subject included, there was another new acquaintance of his, only three years older than Boyle, with whom he seems to have been discussing the Education subject more expressly. William Petty, afterwards so famous as "the universal genius, Sir William Petty," had returned from France at the age of twenty-three.
That he did so act, and that he was little less of an enthusiast for Durie's idea than Durie himself, there is the most positive evidence. Thus, in a series of letters, preserved in the State Paper Office, from Durie abroad to the diplomatist Sir Thomas Roe, of various dates between April 1633 and Feb. 1637-8, there is incessant mention of Hartlib.
Thus, craving pardon for this prolixity of scribbling, I take humbly my leave; remaining always "Your Honour's most obliged and most assured Servant, London: the 10 of Aug. 1640." Three months after the date of this letter the Long Parliament had met, and there was a changed world, with changed opportunities, for Hartlib, as well as for other people.
He came back a tall, slender youth, with a very large head, to be spoken of in London as an encyclopaedia of information, a wonderful mathematician and mechanician, teeming with schemes of all sorts, and yet shrewd, practical, and business-like. He was an invaluable addition to the Invisible College, and a delightful discovery for Hartlib; and he took to Hartlib at once, as every one else did.
We see now the reason of Hartlib's publication in Jan. 1641-2 of Comenius's two treatises jointly in a book called A Reformation of Schools. It was to help in the business which had brought Comenius to London. It was a great chagrin to Hartlib when the London plan came to an abrupt end, and Comenius transferred himself to Sweden.
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