The Rhyming Farmer

Thomas Tusser. Edited by Dorothy Hartley. (" Country Life." 21s.) THOMAS TOSSER has always been reckoned an attractive figure, though his name is now better known than his writings.

An early Elizabethan farmer, musician and rhymester, what he lost upon the land he made up out of the inkpot, and what his lines lack in poetry they make up in pregnant good sense and vivid power to depict life as it was in the east of England. He farmed in Essex, in Suffolk, in Cambridgeshire, and " for- ward to Lincolnshire way."

His will is dated from Chesterton within earshot of the University bells. He had nothing to leave but the money he was owed, for this prophet of husbandry failed in its practice, and the yield of his books he must have spent on comfortable living. His Hundred Points of Good Husbandry sold in great numbers, and he followed it up with five hundred further points. Reprint after reprint followed one another during his lifetime ; the sale of his books went on and on till his language and methods became archaic.

Miss Hartley has done well in collating the various versions of his work, slightly altering the wording here and 'there to make it more accessible to the 'modern reader, whom she amuses by copious and entertaining notes and delights by illustrations reproduced from contemporary illuminations, many of them printed by permission of the British Museum. She is indeed to be congratulated upon the beautiful book she has produced.

Tusser was born at Rivenhall, in Essex, " of lineage good, of gentle blood." His love of music and his beautiful voice caused his father to send him as a choir boy to Wallingford. A boy with a good voice was at this time liable to be moved about " like a posting horse " from place to place. " The better brest, the lesser rest." Men were commissioned to pick up such boys from all round the country. They exploited their talents and treated them shamefully. Tusser's only happy recol- lection of his singing boyhood belonged to London, where, under Redford the organist of St. Paul's, " for cunning and vertue unsurpassed," he got a great deal of musical instruction and of kindness. This devotee of the land always kept a liking for London where men live " as bee in hive." They must be in to please indeed, he wrote, " who cannot prais thy friendly wais." How pleasant the old city must have been, when the pastures near enough to walk in were celebrated for a " wilde creeping pinke," and the path from Redriffe (Rotherhithe) to Greenwich was bordered by Sweet Williams " esteemed for their beauty to deck up gardens and the bosoms of the beautiful." After London he found Eton " hell " and Cam- bridge " heaven " : some more years were passed in the household of Lord Paget of Beaudesert in the study and practice of music, and then he began his outdoor life.

A farmer's lot in the sixteenth century must have been a wonderfully happy one. No doubt he worked late and early, - but he played as hard as he worked. " The Feasts of the Plough " were constantly looked forward to by everyone.

The fire in the hall, the company, the atmosphere of welcome, the pains taken to " win the prais of the labouring man " and the care bestowed not only upon the beasts but the pets, fill the reader's heart with a kind of joy that belongs to the past. Sick animals cannot be " too much stroken and made of." The dog is a member of the household, &c., &c.

Perhaps Tusser enjoyed himself too heartily and that is why he failed ! Then as now the temptation to live beyond one's income was very fierce :

" Lash not out too lashingly

For fear of creeping penury."

He cautions, but did he take his own advice ? It was obviously his instinct to be too easy with " ruirmagate Robins," and we are sure that he gave everyone who worked for him a great deal of the best food. " A good cook is half a physician," he said, and " without spoon meat " a working man will never think he has " his bellyfull."

" Serve willingly God, that so richly doth give, shew love to thy neighbour, and lay for to live."

It matters more to keep well than to get rich, and his ideas on the subject are not altogether out of date. All refuse should be immediately taken to a distance out of doors.

" Sluttes corner avoided, shall further thy health." A variety of diet is good, and it is a great thing to keep warm.

Times were rough. Even kind Tusser is for beating slug. gards. Someone must "raise the lubberly" ; "both snorting Hob and Margery " get no sympathy from him. Yet he pauses to assure Margery that if she will try to do better he will threaten no more. On the whole, household servants seem to have been treated very well.

In one of her notes Miss Hartley gives us a charming little scene from a merrymaking of the period :

" After, the hen is boiled with Bacon and Pancakes and Fritters are made. She that is noted for lying a-Bed long has the first Pancake presented to her, which commonly falls to the Dog's Share, for no one will own it. . . . Thus Youth was shamed and feasted with very little cost, and always their Feasts were accom. panied with Exercise."

Where children are concerned Tusser's cruel experience has made him kind. Children should be brought up hardy but

" Not rod in madbraine's hand is that can help, but gentle skill doth make the proper whelps."

His advice to the housewife is to indulge the baby, to " bless as a mother," but occasionally to " give rope-ripe the twig," specially if she has any difficulty in getting him to church.

Tusser is a religious man : so much we learn from a long poem entitled " My Belief." But what, one wonders, was his attitude towards the Reformation ? He does not say. He seems to lean to the old religion, but he takes no definite stand, and he does not allude to persecution unless the great emphasis he lays upon Mercy as a divine attribute suggests its general condemnation " THIS IS MY STEDFAST CREED, MY FAITH, AND ALL MY TRUST,

that in the heavens there is a God, most mighty, mild, and just : A God above all Gods, a King above all Kings, the Lord of Lords, chief Governor, of heaven and earthly things.

A Holy Catholike Church on earth I graunt there is

and those which frame their lives by that shall never speed amiss, The Head whereof is Christ, His word the chiefest post, Preserver of this Temple great, is God the Holy Ghost."

Perhaps theology did not interest him, or perhaps his interest led him to fight shy of technical theology. Anyhow, while he avows his faith he does not confide in us the particulars of his creed.