The same industry, application, economy of time and labour, which have rendered them useful in the one sphere of employment, have been found equally available in the other.
Most of the early English writers were men of affairs, trained to business; for no literary class as yet existed, excepting it might be the priesthood.

Chaucer, the father of English poetry, was first a soldier, and afterwards a comptroller of petty customs.

The office was no sinecure either, for he had to write up all the records with his own hand; and when he had done his "reckonings" at the custom-house, he returned with delight to his favourite studies at home--poring over his books until his eyes were "dazed" and dull.
The great writers in the reign of Elizabeth, during which there was such a development of robust life in England, were not literary men according to the modern acceptation of the word, but men of action trained in business.

Spenser acted as secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland; Raleigh was, by turns, a courtier, soldier, sailor, and discoverer; Sydney was a politician, diplomatist, and soldier; Bacon was a laborious lawyer before he became Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor; Sir Thomas Browne was a physician in country practice at Norwich; Hooker was the hardworking pastor of a country parish; Shakspeare was the manager of a theatre, in which he was himself but an indifferent actor, and he seems to have been even more careful of his money investments than he was of his intellectual offspring.

Yet these, all men of active business habits, are among the greatest writers of any age: the period of Elizabeth and James I.standing out in the history of England as the era of its greatest literary activity and splendour.
In the reign of Charles I., Cowley held various offices of trust and confidence.