I have said that authors produce their usefulness in privacy, and that their good is not of immediate application, and often unvalued by their own generation.  On this occasion the name of EVELYN always occurs to me.  This author supplied the public with nearly thirty works, at a time when taste and curiosity were not yet domiciliated in our country; his patriotism warmed beyond the eightieth year of his age, and in his dying hand he held another legacy for his nation.  EVELYN conveys a pleasing idea of his own works and their design.  He first taught his countrymen how to plant, then to build:  and having taught them to be useful without doors, he then attempted to divert and occupy them within doors, by his treatises on chalcography, painting, medals, libraries.  It was during the days of destruction and devastation both of woods and buildings, the civil wars of Charles the First, that a solitary author was projecting to make the nation delight in repairing their evil, by inspiring them with the love of agriculture and architecture.  Whether his enthusiasm was introducing to us a taste for medals and prints, or intent on purifying the city from smoke and nuisances, and sweetening it by plantations of native plants, after having enriched our orchards and our gardens, placed summer-ices on our tables, and varied even the salads of our country; furnishing “a Gardener’s Kalendar,” which, as Cowley said, was to last as long “as months and years;” whether the philosopher of the Royal Society, or the lighter satirist of the toilet, or the fine moralist for active as well as contemplative life—­in all these changes of a studious life, the better part of his history has not yet been told.  While Britain retains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the “Sylva” of EVELYN will endure with her triumphant oaks.  In the third edition of that work the heart of the patriot expands at its result; he tells Charles II. “how many millions of timber trees, besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted at the instigation and by the sole direction of this work.”  It was an author in his studious retreat who, casting a prophetic eye on the age we live in, secured the late victories of our naval sovereignty.  Inquire at the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson have been constructed, and they can tell you that it was with the oaks which the genius of EVELYN planted.[A]

[Footnote A:  Since this was first printed, the “Diary” of EVELYN has appeared; and although it could not add to his general character, yet I was not too sanguine in my anticipations of the diary of so perfect a literary character, who has shown how his studies were intermingled with the business of life.]