pasties, and the frumentie-pot. But twice a week, according to antient right and custom, the farmer is to give roast-meat, that is, on Sundays and on Thursday-nights. We have then a set of posies or proverbial rhymes, to be written in various rooms of the house, such as "Husbandlie posies for the Hall, Posies for the Parlour, Posies for the Ghests chamber, and Posies for thine own bedchambers." Botany appears to have been eminently cultivated, and illustrated with numerous treatises in English, throughout the latter part of the sixteenth century. In this work are large enumerations of plants, as well for the medical as the culinary garden.

Our author's general precepts have often an expressive brevity, and are sometimes pointed with an epigrammatic turn and a smartness of allusion. As thus,

Saue wing for a thresher, when gander doth die ;

Saue fethers of all things, the softer to lię:

Much spice is a theefe, so is candle and fire;
Sweet sause is as craftie as euer was frier.i

Again, under the lessons of the housewife.

Though cat, a good mouser, doth dwell in a house,
Yet euer in dairie haue trap for a mouse:
Take heed how thou laiest the banek for the rats,
For poisoning thy servant, thyself, and thy brats.'
And in the following rule of the smaller economics.
Saue droppings and skimmings, however
ye doo,
For medcine, for cattell, for cart, and for shoo.m

In these stanzas on haymaking, he rises above his common

manner.

Go muster thy seruants, be captain thyselfe,
Prouiding them weapons, and other like pelfe:
Get bottells and wallets, keepe fielde in the heat,
The feare is as much, as the danger is great.
With tossing, and raking, and setting on cox,
Grasse latelie in swathes, is haie for an oxe.
That done, go to cart it, and haue it awaie:
The battell is fought, ye haue gotten the daie."

A great variety of verse is used in this poem, which is thrown into numerous detached chapters. The HUSBANDRIE is divided into the several months. Tusser, in respect of his antiquated diction, and his argument, may not improperly be styled the English Varro*.

Such were the rude beginnings in the English language of didactic poetry, which, on a kindred subject, the present age has seen brought to perfection, by the happy combination of

n Fol. 95. CH. 44.

• In this book I first find the metre of Rowe's song,

"Despairing beside a clear stream.” For instance.

What looke ye, I praie you shew what?
Termes painted with rhetorike fine?
Good husbandrie seeketh not that,
Nor ist anie meaning of mine.
What lookest thou, speeke at the last,
Good lessons for thee and thy wife?
Then keepe them in memorie fast
To helpe as a comfort to life.
See PREFACE TO THE BUIER
BOOKE, ch. 5. fol. 14. In the same
measure is the COMPARISON BETWEENE
CHAMPION COUNTRIE AND SEVERALL,
ch 52. fol. 108.

OF THIS

[The Preface above cited, contained two Stanzas thus worded, in the edition of 1570, I believe, only

What lookest thou here for to have?
Trim verses, thy fansie to please?
Of Surry, so famous, that crave;
Looke nothing but rudenesse in these.

What other thing lookest thou then,
Grave sentences herein to finde?
Such Chaucer hath twentie and ten,
Ye, thousands to pleasure thy minde.-
PARK.]

* [Barnabe Googe, in his preface to the translation of Heresbach's four books of Husbandrie, 1578, sets Fitzherbert and Tusser on a level with Varro and Columella and Palladius: but the sedate Stillingfleet would rather compare Tusser to old Hesiod, from the following considerations. They both wrote in the infancy of husbandry, in their different countries. Both gave good general precepts, without entering into the detail, siod. though Tusser has more of it than He

They both seem desirous to improve the morals of their readers as well as their farms, by recommending industry and œconomy: and, that which perhaps may be looked upon as the greatest resemblance, they both wrote in verse; probably for the same reason, namely, to propagate their doctrines more effectually. But here the resemblance ends:

judicious precepts with the most elegant ornaments of language and imagery, in Mr. Mason's ENGLISH GARDEN.

SECTION LIV.

AMONG Antony Wood's manuscripts in the Bodleian library at Oxford, I find a poem of considerable length written by William Forrest, chaplain to queen Marya. It is entitled, "A true and most notable History of a right noble and famous Lady produced in Spayne entitled the second GRESIELD, practised not long out of this time in much part tragedous as delectable both to hearers and readers." This is a panegyrical history in octave rhyme, of the life of queen Catharine, the first queen of king Henry the Eighth. The poet compares Catharine to patient Grisild, celebrated by Petrarch and Chaucer, and Henry to earl Walter her husband. Catharine had certainly the patience and conjugal compliance of Grisild: but Henry's cruelty was not, like Walter's, only artificial and assumed. It is dedicated to queen Mary*: and Wood's manuscript, which was once very superbly bound and embossed, and is elegantly written on vellum, evidently appears to have been the book presented by the author to her majesty. Much of its antient finery is tarnished: but on the brass bosses at each corner is still discernible AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA. At the end is this colophon: "Here endeth the Historye of Grysilde the second, dulie meanyng Queene Catharine mother to our most dread soveraigne Lady queene Mary, fynysched the xxv

In folio. MSS. Cod. A. Wood. Num. 2. They were purchased by the University after Wood's death.

b The affecting story of PATIENT GRISILD seems to have long kept up its celebrity. In the books of the Stationers, in 1565, Owen Rogers has a licence to print "a ballat intituled the songe of pacyent Gressell vnto hyr make." REGISTR. A. fol. 132. b. Two ballads are entered in 1565, "to the tune of pacyente Gressell." Ibid. fol. 135. a. In the same year T. Colwell has licence to

day of June, the yeare of owre Lorde 1558. By the symple and unlearned Syr Wylliam Forrest preeiste, propria manu." The poem, which consists of twenty chapters, contains a zealous condemnation of Henry's divorce: and, I believe, preserves some anecdotes, yet apparently misrepresented by the writer's religious and political bigotry, not extant in any of our printed histories. Forrest was a student at Oxford, at the time when this notable and knotty point of casuistry prostituted the learning of all the universities of Europe, to the gratification of the capricious amours of a libidinous and implacable tyrant. He has recorded many particulars and local incidents of what passed in Oxford during that transaction. At the end of the poem is a metrical ORATION CONSOLATORY, in six leaves, to queen Mary.

In the British Museum is another of Forrest's poems, written in two splendid folio volumes on vellum, called "The tragedious troubles of the most chast and innocent Joseph, son to the holy patriarch Jacob," and dedicated to Thomas Howard duke of Norfolk. In the same repository is another of his pieces, never printed, dedicated to king Edward the Sixth, "A notable warke called The PLEASANT POESIE OF PRINCELIE PRACTISE, composed of late by the simple and unlearned sir William Forrest priest, much part collected out of a booke entitled the GOVERNANCE OF NOBLEMEN, which booke the wyse philosopher Aristotle wrote to his disciple Alexander the Great." The book here mentioned is Ægidius Romanus de REGIMINE PRINCIPIUM, which yet retained its reputation and popularity