HARTLIB, SAMUEL (c. 1599—c. 167o), English writer on education and agriculturist, was born towards the close of the i6th century at Elbing in Prussia, his father being a refugee mer chant from Poland. His mother was the daughter of a rich English merchant of Danzig. About 1628 Hartlib went to Eng land, where he carried on a mercantile agency. An enthusiastic admirer of Comenius, he published in 1637 his Conatuum Co menianorum praeludia, and in 1639 Comenii pansophiae prodro mus et didactics dissertatio. In 1641 appeared his Relation of that which path been lately attempted to procure Ecclesiastical Peace among Protestants, and A Description of Macaria, contain ing his ideas of what a model State should be. During the Civil War Hartlib devoted himself to agriculture, publishing various works by himself, and printing at his own expense several treatises by others on the subject. In 1652 he issued a second edition of the Discourse of Flanders Husbandry by Sir Richard Weston (1645) ; and in 1651 Samuel Hartlib, his Legacy, or an Enlarge ment of the Discourse of Husbandry used in Brabant and Flanders, by Robert Child. For his various labours Hartlib received a pen sion from Cromwell, as he had spent all his fortune on his experi ments. He planned a school for the sons of gentlemen, to be conducted on new principles, and this probably was the occasion of his friend Milton's Tractate on Education, addressed to him in 1644, and of Sir William Petty's Two Letters on the same subject, in 1647 and 1648. At the Restoration Hartlib lost his pension. Apparently he is referred to by Andrew Marvell as alive in 167o and fleeing to Holland from his creditors.
See H. Dircks, A Biographical Memoir of Samuel Hartlib (1865).