rias, pecuniæ acervum. Lusit cum magnatibus, sub serum deambulavit in hortulis, venatus est in leporario, et cepit aves aliquot aucupio. Cæna peracta est pari celebritate qua prandium. Accensis luminibus inducta sunt musica instrumenta, puellæ atque nobiles adolescentes saltarunt, exhibitæ sunt fabulæ, dehinc comessatio quæ hilaritate atque invitationibus ad potandum producta est in multam noctem. Ille vero largiter se vino obruit præstantissimo; et postquam collapsus in somnum altissimum, jussit eum Dux vestimentis prioribus indui, atque in eum locum reportari, quo prius fuerat repertus: ibi transegit noctem totam dormiens. Postridie experrectus cæpit secum de vita illa Ducali cogitare, incertum habens fuissetne res vera, an visum quod animo esset per quietem observatum. Tandem collatis conjecturis omnibus atque argumentis, statuit somnium fuisse, et ut tale uxori liberis ac viris narravit. Quid interest inter diem illius et nostros aliquot annos? Nihil penitus, nisi quod hoc est paulo diuturnius somnium, ac si quis unam duntaxat horam, alter vero decem somniasset."g To an irresistible digression, into which the magic of Shakspeare's name has insensibly seduced us, I hope to be pardoned for adding another narrative of this frolic, from the ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY by Democritus junior, or Robert Burton, a very learned and ingenious writer of the reign of king James the First. “When as by reason of unseasonable weather, he could neither hawke nor hunt, and was now tired with cards and dice, and such other domesticall sports, or to see ladies dance with some of his courtiers, he would in the evening walke disguised all about the towne. It so fortuned, as he was walking late one night, he found a country fellow dead drunke, snorting on a bulke: hee caused his followers to bring him to his palace, and then stripping him of his old clothes, and attyring him in the court-fashion, when he wakened, he and they were all ready to attend upon his Excellency, and persuaded him he was some great Duke. The poore fellow admiring how he came there, was served in state all day long: after supper he saw them dance, heard musicke, and all the rest of those court-like pleasures. But late at night, when he was well tipled, and againe faste asleepe, they put on his old robes, and so conveyed him to the place where they first found him. Now the fellowe had not made there so good sport the day before, as he did now when he returned to himselfe ; all the jest was, to see how he looked upon it. In conclusion, after some little admiration, the poore man told his friends he had seene a vision, constantly believed it, would not otherwise be persuaded, and so the joke ended." If this is a true story, it is a curious specimen of the winter-diversions of a very polite court of France in the middle of Heuterus, Rer. Burgund. lib. iv. p. 150. edit. Plantin. 1584. fol. Heuterus says, this story was told to Vives by an old officer of the duke's court. h Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part ii. § 2. pag. 232. fol. Oxon. 1624. There is an older edition in quarto. [Printed in 1621, but dated from the Author's study at Christ Church, Oxon, Dec. 5, 1620.-PARK.] the fifteenth century. The merit of the contrivance, however, and comic effect of this practical joke, will atone in some measure for many indelicate circumstances with which it must have necessarily been attended. I presume it first appeared in Vives's Epistle. I have seen the story of a tinker disguised like a lord in recent collections of humorous tales, probably transmitted from Edwards's story-book, which I wish I had examined more carefully. I have assigned Edwards to queen Mary's reign, as his reputation in the character of general poetry seems to have been then at its height. I have mentioned his sonnets addressed to the court-beauties of that reign, and of the beginning of the reign of queen Elizabeth1. If I should be thought to have been disproportionately prolix in speaking of Edwards, I would be understood to have partly intended a tribute of respect to the memory of a poet, who is one of the earliest of our dramatic writers after the reformation of the British stage. i Viz. Tit. A. xxiv. MSS. Cott. (See supr. p. 237.) I will here cite a few lines. Hawarde is not haugte, but of such smylynge cheare, That wolde alure eche gentill harte, hir thinge coye, Hir noble stature may compare with At the end "Finis R. E." I have a faint I heard a wife sing to her child, that long before had wept: She sighed sore, and sang full sweete, to bring the babe to rest, That would not cease, but cried still, in sucking at her brest. She was full wearie of her watch, and greeved with her childe; She rocked it, and rated it, till that on Then did she say, now haue I found this The falling out of faithfull frendes re- The close of the second stanza is prettily conducted. Then kissed she her little babe, and sware by God aboue, The falling out of faithfull frendes, renuyng is of loue. [Sir Egerton Brydges, in his republication of Edwards's Miscellany, considers this poem, even without reference to the age which produced it, among the most beautiful morceaux of our language. The happiness of the illustration of Terence's apophthegm, the facility, elegance and tenderness of the diction, and the exquisite turn of the whole, he deems above commendation; while they show to what occasional polish and refinement our literature even then had arrived. Pref. p. vi. -PARK.] SECTION LIII. Tusser. Remarkable circumstances of his life. His Husbandrie, one of our earliest didactic poems, examined. ABOUT the same time flourished Thomas Tusser, one of our earliest didactic poets, in a science of the highest utility, and which produced one of the most beautiful poems of antiquity. The vicissitudes of this man's life have uncommon variety and novelty for the life of an author, and his history conveys some curious traces of the times as well as of himself. He seems to have been alike the sport of fortune, and a dupe to his own discontented disposition and his perpetual propensity to change of situation. He was born of an ancient family, about the year 1523, at Rivenhall in Essex; and was placed as a chorister, or singing-boy, in the collegiate chapel of the castle of Wallingford in Berkshirea. Having a fine voice, he was impressed from Wallingford college into the king's chapel. Soon afterwards he was admitted into the choir of saint Paul's cathedral in London; where he made great improvements under the instruction of John Redford the organist, a famous musician. He was next sent to Eton-school, where, at one chastisement, he received fiftythree stripes of the rod from the severe but celebrated master Nicholas Udall. His academical education was at Trinity-hall in Cambridge: but Hatcher affirms, that he was from Eton admitted a scholar of King's College in that university, under the year 1543. From the university he was called up to court by his singular and generous patron William lord Paget, in whose family he appears to have been a retainerd. In this department he lived ten years; but being disgusted with the vices, and wearied with the quarrels of the courtiers, he retired into the country, and embraced the profession of a farmer, which he successively practised at Ratwood in Sussex, Ipswich in Suffolk, Fairstead in Essex, Norwich, and other places. Here his patrons were sir Richard South a This chapel had a dean, six prebendaries, six clerks, and four choristers. was dissolved in 1549. It b Udall's English interludes, mentioned above, were perhaps written for his scholars. Thirty-five lines of one of them are quoted in Wilson's Arte of Logike, edit. 1567. fol. 67 a. "Suete maistresse whereas," &c. MSS. Catal. Præpos. Soc. Schol. Coll. Regal. Cant. d Our author's Husbandrie is dedicated to his son Lord Thomas Paget of Beaudesert, fol. 7. ch. ii. edit. ut infr. [It was first inscribed to his father Lord William Paget, 1586.-PARK.] e In Peacham's Minerva, a book of emblems printed in 1612, there is the device of a whetstone and a scythe with these lines, fol. 61. edit. 4to. They tell me, Tusser, when thou wert alive, And hadst for profit turned euery stone, Where ere thou camest thou couldst neuer thriue, Though heereto best couldst counsel every one, well, and Salisbury dean of Norwich. Under the latter he procured the place of a singing-man in Norwich cathedral. At length, having perhaps too much philosophy and too little experience to succeed in the business of agriculture, he returned to London; but the plague drove him away from town, and he took shelter at Trinity college in Cambridge. Without a tincture of careless imprudence, or vicious extravagance, this desultory character seems to have thrived in no vocation. Fuller says, that his stone, which gathered no moss, was the stone of Sisyphus. His plough and his poetry were alike unprofitable. He was by turns a fiddler and a farmer, a grazier and a poet, with equal success. He died very aged at London in 1580*, and was buried in saint Mildred's church in the Poultry 8. Some of these circumstances, with many others of less consequence, are related by himself in one of his pieces, entitled the AUTHOR'S LIFE, as follows. What robes how bare, what colledge fare! Thence for my voice, I must, no choice, The better brest1, the lesser rest, As it may in thy Husbandrie appeare Wherein afresh thou liust among vs here. So like thy selfe a number more are wont, To sharpen others with advice of wit, When they themselues are like the whetstone blunt, &c. [In a volume of epigrams, entitled "The More the Merrier," 1608, by H. P. (qu. Peacham or Parrot) these lines were anticipated in part. Ad Tusserum. Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive, Thou, teaching thrift, thyselfe couldst never thrive: So, like the whetstone, many men are wont To sharpen others, when themselves are blunt.-PARK.] f See Life of Sir Thomas Pope, 2d edit. p. 218. * [If Tusser was born in 1523, he could not die very aged in 1580; as he was only 57. If he went to college in 1543, aged 20, stayed there three years, and then followed the court for ten years, he must have been 33 at least when he married: this brings us to 1556, and the very next year produced the first edition of his Husbandry; which seems too short a space to furnish the practical knowledge discovered in that work.-ASHBY.] See his Epitaph in Stowe's Surv. Lond. p. 474. edit. 1618. 4to. And Fuller's Worthies, p. 334. [Fuller only collects the date of his death to be about 1580.-PARK.] h The livery, or vestis liberata, often called robe, allowed annually by the college. iTo the passages lately collected by the commentators on Shakspeare to prove that breast signifies voice, the following may be added from Ascham's Toxophilus. He is speaking of the expediency of educating youth in singing. "Trulye two degrees of men, which haue the highest But marke the chance, myself to vance, With REDFORD there, the like no where, From PAULES I went, to EATON Sent, The fault but small, or none at all, TO LONDON hence, to CAMBRIDGE thence, That to thy HALL, so passinge all, There ioy I felt, there trim I dwelt, &c. At length he married a wife by the name of Moone, from whom, for an obvious reason, he expected great inconstancy, but was happily disappointed. Through Uenus' toies, in hope of ioies, I chanced soone to finde a Moone, Of cheerfull hew: Which well and fine, methought, did shine, Before I proceed, I must say a few words concerning the very remarkable practice implied in these stanzas, of seizing boys by a warrant for the service of the king's chapel. Strype has printed an abstract of an instrument, by which it appears, that emissaries were dispatched into various parts of England with full powers to take boys from any choir for the use of the chapel of king Edward the Sixth. Under the year 1550, says Strype, there was a grant of a commission "to Philip Van Wilder gentleman of the Privy Chamber, in anie churches or offices under the king in all this realme, shall greatly lacke the vse of singinge, preachers and lawyers, because they shall not, withoute this, be able to rule theyr BRESTES for euerye purpose," &c. fol. 8 b. Lond. 1571. 4to. bl. lett. k Fol. 155. edit. 1586. See also The Authors Epistle to the late lord William Paget, wherein he doth discourse of his owne bringing up, &c. fol. 5. And the Epistle to Lady Paget, fol. 7. And his rules for training a boy in music, fol. 141. |