No More Learning

As
practically all the vices are beaten, the devil, out of chagrin, falls
so sick that he makes a will after the manner of the sixteenth
century mock Testaments!
Other writers were hardly less versatile than Dekker. Samuel
Rowlands attempted every type of popular literature except essays
and character sketches, which were no occupation for bread-
winners. As Drayton? , Nashes and Lodge* had attracted attention
by religious compositions, Rowlands began his career with The Be-
traying of Christ (1598). In this trifle, he produces fully-developed
that polished flow of verse which is one of his contributions to the
literature of his age. The other contribution, the witty portrayal
of the 'humours' of eccentricity and class spirit, is found in his
next production, The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head-
Vaine, which appeared in 1600. Latinised verse was now the
fashion; so Rowlands gibbets the bad manners of Londoners under
personalities: first, in classical epigrams, which give admirable
glimpses of conduct, and then in satire of the school of Hall, in
which we have more detailed portraits. Among others, we see
the countryman filled with contempt for the citizen and led by
his arrogance to commit absurd blunders; the censorious spirit,
slovenly, poor and quarrelsome, pulling everyone's reputation to
pieces; and the two drunkards who strengthen each other in their
vice by enumerating the benefits of wine after the manner of
burlesque encomiums.
In 1602, Rowlands reverted to an older type in Tis Merrie
when Gossips meete. The gay gossip of the alehouse had been for
centuries a commonplace of popular literatures, and Sir John
Davies had brought something of that spirit into his 'a wife widow
and maid'in A Poetical Rapsody (1602). Rowlands's poem shows
us a middle-aged widow who has gathered from life a store of
worldly wisdom and a connoisseur's appreciation of burnt sack.
She meets two acquaintances, a wife and a maiden, who are re-
luctantly induced to join her in the private room of a tavern.
Claret is ordered, and the usual feminine conference on men
begins. The value of the poem, however, does not consist in the
egoistic views of these women, but in the dramatic development of
their characters. The widow, a judge of ales and wine, is inclined
to flaunt her independence; the wife is at first indifferent and
Ante, vol. II, chap. v, pp. 85–87 and bibl. , pp. 482-4.
? Harmonie oj the Church, 1591.
3 Clirists Teares, 1593.
• Prosopopeia, 1596.
o Ante, vol. II, p. 387; vol. II, p. 88, and bibl. , pp. 185—9.
>


## p. 358 (#380) ############################################

358 London and Popular Literature
a
preoccupied with domestic cares; the maid is timid and inclined
to be shocked. But, as the wine percolates through their veins,
they discuss old times and their present fortunes with the utmost
freedom. When the conversation turns from dances to husbands,
they talk faster and interrupt each other more frequently. Anon,
sausages and sack are called for; even the maid begins to put in
her say, while the widow talks so loudly that the eavesdropping
attendant bursts out laughing. The incensed lady delivers a
voluble and incoherent reprimand, and they stagger down the
stairs after a friendly competition as to who should pay the bill.
This brilliant sketch met with immediate popularity. Seven
editions were called for during the century, and Rowlands now
definitely abandoned standard literature. He turned his hand to
coney-catching pamphlets and, trading on Greene's reputation,
entitled his tract Greenes Ghost haunting Coniecatchers, in which
he contributes a few new facts to the subject, but, for the most part,
fills his pages with picaresque anecdotes of farcical encounters and
triumphs of mother wit. Then he combined the old idea of the
dance of death with the new taste for type satire in Looke to it
for Ile Stabbe ye (1604). Death is represented as threatening
a number of typical wrongdoers, each of whom has his malpractices
briefly characterised in two six-lined stanzas. Rowlands still writes
the same clear smooth verse; but most of the characters had been
the veriest commonplaces for a century. Yet there are a few
interesting figures grouped under the heading of death’s vengeance,
including the king who spills his subjects' blood to enhance his own
glory'; the miser, now distinguished from the usurer; the husband-
man who keeps almanacs to calculate the rainy weather and is
never happy unless the price of grain is highề; and the spendthrift,
blinded to the dangers of the future, who neglects his family but is
always 'a good fellow to his friend. ' In this poem, Death was
employed merely as a figure-head; but, two years later, he pro-
duced a poem directly on that subject. For centuries, death, in
popular imagination, had played a double part; on the one
hand, as a gruesome monarch, on the other, as an antic or jester.
Rowlands incorporates both these conceptions in the moral
dialogue A terrible Battell betweene the two consumers of the
whole world: Time and Death. Time and Death hold conference
on the worldly-minded victims whom they have struck down in their
sins, and review the brevity and temptations of life. The beginning
1 This idea is found in Erasmus: Bellum Erasmi, T. Berthelet, 1533.
2 Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour : the character of Sordido.


## p. 359 (#381) ############################################

Burlesques
359
of the poem has an almost Miltonic? grandeur. Then, suddenly,
the tone changes. Time comically complains that he is credited
with many of Death's escapades, and a dispute follows. Each
claims to be the greater. Death scornfully insists that no man
fears Time, while Time accuses Death of stabbing like a coward, and
then compares his head to an oil-jar, his arms to a gardener's rake,
his legs to a pair of crane stilts and his voice to the hissing of
a snake. After an interchange of even more outrageous insults,
a reconciliation is effected? .
The literary resourcefulness of the age is also illustrated by a
number of pamphlets - which ridicule romantic ballads. The
Heroical adventures of the Knight of the Sea (1600) was followed
by Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy The Knight of the Burning
Pestle in 1611 and by Moriomachia in 1613. In this clever prose
burlesque, interspersed with rimes, Robert Anton tells how the
queen of the fairies transforms a submissive and apathetic cow into
a knight errant to do her business in the world. The knight's adven-
tures are as futile as those of Sir Thopas, but they serve the further
purpose of satirising society. The hero blunders into encounters
which set off the bluff kindness of the common folk beside
the arrogance and vanity of the wealthy with their bought titles
and pampered menials. At Moropolis (London), the adventurer
visits the frivolous shows and sham prodigies of the city, and
he catches some glimpses of city vice which much amaze his
ingenuous soul. The burlesque ends in a mock-heroic contest.
The Knight of the Sun enters the lists against the Knight of the
Moon, but is worsted, and the earth is plunged in darkness. Amid
the disorder which ensues, 'fogging solliciters,' 'extorting brokers,'
‘peaking pandars,' tapsters and others appear in their true
characters. The tract has something in it suggestive of Candide
as well as of Hudibras. In 1615, Rowlands brought out The
Melancholic Knight, a verse monologue proceeding from a
character disgusted with the commercialism of his own age and
ravished by the enchanted world of medieval romance. He is
a studious reader of fly-sheets and broadsides which tell of dragons
and other monstrosities, and has himself composed the rhyme of
Sir Eglamour. ' But this poem is really a burlesque imitated from
The Knight of the Sea and its author proves to be a poltroon who
despises money because he is in debt, refuses charity to beggars
(the mark of the upstart nobleman of that age), grinds his tenants
to clothe his wife bravely and smokes and spits all day long while
1 Vide E. Gosse, intro. to works of Rowlands, 1880 (Hunterian Club).
3 See bibl. for list of Rowlands's works.


## p. 360 (#382) ############################################

360 London and Popular Literature
1
nursing his melancholy. Don Quixote had been published in 1605,
and its popularity may have stimulated this type of literature. But
the real impulse came from the reaction of the ‘nineties' against
Elizabethan idealism. The love of mythical and heroic literature
was not, indeed, dead but was relegated to the uneducated and
the old-fashioned. Verse satirists had already inveighed against
the Spenserian school and the versified legends of old time. Now,
less academic writers, following the city love of cynicism and
ridicule, reproduced the same satire in a more humorous form.
The atmosphere of the capital made itself felt in many ways,
apart from experiments in style and the study of types. There are
constant allusions to noted and notorious characters of the city,
such as Lanum, Garret, Singer, Pope, Backstead, Field and Hobson.
Tarlton became so famous that Gabriel Harvey was proud to
have jested with him, and Fitzgeoffrey and Stradlingº honoured
him in Latin epigrams. Some of these characters became the
heroes of jest-books, in which old stories were told anew and
associated with their names. Yet, even in this field, the popular
interest in London gives a touch of freshness. The compiler of
the Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele has managed to
centre all his detached anecdotes round the attractive and novel
personality of literary bohemians“. Skoggan and Eulenspiegel
were traditional figure-heads, in which gipsy cunning blended with
bucolic ineptitude. In George Peele, however, we find a consistent
character devoted to pleasure and prodigality, who has discarded
the inane antics of earlier jest-books, and governs his vagaries by
the desire to escape a creditor or gain a dinner. But his frauds
are still perpetrated with the heartlessness of an earlier age, and
the book does not bear witness to the civilitie' of London so
convincingly as John Taylor's Wit and Mirth (1635), in which
the current witticisms of taverns, ordinaries and bowling-greens
are worked up into 'yêrks' and 'clinches. Here we find the
educated man's amusement at the clown's misuse of new Latinised
words such as Dogberry mutilated, and the Londoner's contempt for
provincial arrogance. The phantasy on a bowling-alley contains
conceits as elaborate as those of Overbury and Breton, and other
6
1 Affanide, 1601.
? Epigrammata, 1607.
Vide bibl. For origin of Jest-books vide ante vol. II, chap. v, pp. 91–95.
• The book was probably compiled after the dramatist's death. One episode, at
least, is taken from A C. Mery Talys, and the conception of the character is similar to
that of George Pyeboard in The Puritan (1607). As the earliest known edition of the
jests has the same date, the question of imitation cannot be settled.
6 Cf. Rowlands's Letting of Humours Blood, 1600.
6 E. g. Jest no. 100, 'A toy to mocke an Ape.


## p. 361 (#383) ############################################

Fest-books and Wagering Journeys 361
anecdotes have touches of epigrammatic wisdom such as the
essayists loved to record. The most noticeable feature is the pre-
dominance of the modern repartee—the flash of ridicule or humour
struck out of a word taken in two senses—which is often
associated with Sheridan.
So great was this interest in city personalities, that actors and
public humorists would perform wagers in order to gain money
by publishing accounts of them. Ferris's colourless report of
The Most dangerous and memorable Adventure (1590) in a
wherry boat was followed by Kemp's nine days wonder (1600),
in which the actor vivaciously describes the episodes of his
morris dance from London to Norwich. John Taylor, after an
adventurous career in the navy and a few years' struggle to earn a
living in the decaying profession of waterman, devoted himself to
literary hackwork and undertook wagering journeys, which were
afterwards turned into rollicking pamphlets. It was, perhaps, this
fashion which induced Richard Brathwaite, after trying his hand at
essays and characters, to devote his learning and Goliardic humour
to the narration of a voyage. Adopting the name of a proverbial
drunkard, he described a pilgrimage through the towns and
villages of England in Barnabae Itinerarium or Barnabee's
Journal. Occasionally, he notes local peculiarities; but the story,
mostly, is a record of the vagabond's escapades, which sometimes
meet a vagabond's condign punishment. The booklet is a triumph
of easy rhythmic verse.
The sentiments and ideas of former ages now began to reappear
in connection with localities in and around London. Brainford,
Hogsden (Hoxton), Southwarke, Eyebright and Queen-hive fre-
quently figure in catch-pennies. One publicist, under the name
of 'Kinde-Kit of Kingstone,' borrowed tales from such sources as
the Decameron and the Romance of the Seven Sages, and put
them in the mouths of seven fishwives who take boat for the
western suburbs after a good day's business in London. Each
prose story is introduced by a verse description of the narrator,
after the manner of Skelton, and is followed by the outspoken
comments of the listeners. Another story book, composed in the
same style and manner, represents a journey from Billingsgate
E. g. no. 127.
2 Vide Ben Jonson, The Gipsies, and also the introduction of Barnaby as a
bibacious coachman in The New Inn, or the light Heart. See, also, A Brown Dozen of
Drunkards (ali-ass Drinkhards) whipt and shipt to the Isle of Gulls (1648), and memoir
by J. Haslewood prefixed to ninth ed. of Barnabee's Journal, 1820.
3 Westward for Smelts. Steevens believes in an edition of 1603, but Collier thinks
that of 1620 to be the first.


## p. 362 (#384) ############################################

362 London and Popular Literature
ܪܐ
to Gravesend? . But the most remarkable pamphlet of this class is
Pimlyco? or, Runne Red Cap (1609). The poet describes himself
lying in the grass amid the delights of spring, and watching lovers
sport together, while, in the background, the towers and steeples of
London
Lifted their proud heads bove the skies,
gleaming like gold in the morning sunlight. By chance, he finds
Skelton's Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng; and, while reading the
satire, looks up and beholds a motley crowd of men and women
surging towards Hogsden to consume its ale. The contagious
enthusiasm carries him along, and, with Skelton's poem in his
hand, with those mad times to weigh our times,' he first breaks
out into a burlesque eulogy on Pimlyco ale, and then wittily
describes the insane rush for the pleasures of the resort. Payment
for alehouse fare was vulgarly known as 'shot'; so he represents
the place as a fort which an impetuous army is attacking with this
artillery. In the ranks are all types of society who scramble for
tankards, calling 'Fill, Fill, Fill. ' Poets seek inspiration ; ballad
singers exercise their 'villanous yelping throats. ' Lawyers,
'
usurers, courtiers, soldiers, ‘lads and greasie lownes,' women of
every age and figure, jostle one another in their eagerness to
squander money on tippling. Such a production is far more than
a topical effusion. Pimlyco is a satirical rhapsody on the age's
animal spirits and headlong folly, a burlesque review in which
the genius and method of Cocke Lorell's botes are adapted to the
interests of Jacobean London.
All this while, the exuberant national life continued to find yet
another form of expression in the broadsides and street ballads
which had grown out of the people's love of singing in early Tudor
times. Songs were sung and sold at every street corner and
crossway, or outside the theatre doors, and so popular did some
airs become that Guilpin reckoned the chanting of Kemp's Jigge
and The Burgonians Tragedy among the nuisances of London.
Cornwallis describes a crowd gathered round a city minstrel. He
tells us how thoroughly the standers by are affected,. . . what shift
they make to stand to heare. Ballad-mongers, who were some-
times men of education', represented the public opinion of the
i The Cobler of Canterburie, 1608 (largely reprinted in The Tincker oj Turney, 1630).
2 Discussion on the origin of the word has been reopened in 1. & Q. no. 256,
21 Nov. 1908.
3 Ante, vol. in, chap. v, pp. 83–85.
Ante, vol. III, chap. v, p. 96, and bibl. ,
5 One of them, Thomas Spickernell, was first a ballad-monger and then a minister;
and another, Richard Corbet, M. A. , was first a doctor of divinity and then an
itinerant musician. See A. Clark, Shirburn Ballads, 1907.
P. 490.


## p. 363 (#385) ############################################

Local Tracts, Prophecies and Broadsides 363
lower classes. News of foreign and political events was circulated
this way; accounts of monstrosities, portents, prodigies and disasters
were graphically reported. Prophecies were composed or revived.
R. Waldegrave even published, in 1603, a whole volume of medieval
oracles from Merlin, Eltraine, Beid, Thomas the Rimer and others
Murders and executions were described with appropriate apologues
or, as in the case of Ravaillac's tortures, with harrowing and
imaginary details. Tales of love-making and domestic scenes are
found, some in dialogue or a kind of rude four-act drama. There
were other ditties, especially drinking songs, which were merely
coarse, and ‘Nownow,' in Kinde Hart's Dreame, complains that
crowds gather to hear children sing immoral lays. The old heroic
ballads were still favourites? , as, also, were naïve tales which bore
mark of medieval origin. A large number were nothing else than
church hymns, which a householder could buy on Saturday evening
a
for Sunday use. A pronounced liking for repentances and con-
fessions can also be traced. Many broadsides represent a doomed
man on the scaffold, addressing a farewell homily to the world, in
which he confesses his crimes and warns others to shun his be-
setting sin. Some contain tragedies of love or jealousy; others
touch on social and political grievances.
It will be noticed that these doggerel fragmentary verses
deal with the very subjects which supplied material for the
great pamphleteers and satirists of the age. Nor can the work
of Greene, Nashe, Dekker, Rowlands, Hall, Marston, Guilpin and
their peers be really understood unless this vast background of
varied plebeian sentiment be kept in view. And yet the golden
age of popular literature was past. The sixteenth century had
seen the rise of thoughtful humorists and investigators, whose
first care had been to probe the errors and expose the frauds of
the common people among whom they lived. But, in the literary
atmosphere of Jacobean London, this tractarian movement was
gradually becoming a series of elaborate experiments. The
brilliant writers of the age were evolving complex organs of ex-
pression and, already, before the Civil War, had laid the foundations
of eighteenth century prose literature. But they lost touch with
the deeper interests of the people.
Meanwhile, broadsides and
flysheets continued to multiply; but it was not till the advent
of the romantic movement that a school of writers again devoted
their talents to the interpretation of social life.
1 The terrible and deserved Death of Francis Ravilliack, 1610. Rptd Harl. Misc. vol. VI.
Cf. The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and Martin Parker's Ballads.


## p. 364 (#386) ############################################

CHAPTER XVII
WRITERS ON COUNTRY PURSUITS AND PASTIMES
GERVASE MARKHAM
WHILE the great Elizabethan writers were producing poems,
plays and other masterpieces destined to take an enduring place in
English literature, there was another side of literary activity,
which, though practically unrecognised as literature, yet had an
important influence on a large body of readers for the majority
of whom polite literature scarcely existed. The books that formed
this by-stream appealed to the country squire and the yeoman,
not, indeed, as literature, but as storehouses of facts-practical
guides to their agricultural occupations, or instruction in their
favourite pastimes of hunting and hawking, fishing and gardening.
Before this period, but few books dealing with these subjects
had appeared in print. The first and most famous among them
was The Book of St Albans', first printed about 1486, which stood
practically alone until the appearance, early in the sixteenth
century, of Walter of Henley's Book of Husbandry and Fitz-
herbert's treatise on the same subject. But it was not till the
second half of the century that these subjects, in common with
every other branch of literature, were fully developed in that
productive age.
For the materials of this literature, there were two main
sources: one, the stock of native lore, which was the outcome of
the practical experience of generations, supplemented by an occa-
sional dip at the well of superstition, and this was preserved
to some extent in manuscript as well as handed down by oral
tradition; the other, contemporary foreign literature, notably that
of Italy, which was freely drawn upon in the way of translation,
these versions being often the work of the purely literary man or
of the hack-writer who brought to the subject little or nothing of
first-hand knowledge.
The outstanding name among the workers in this field is that
of the prolific and versatile enthusiast Gervase Markham, whose
i See vol. 11, p. 318.


## p. 365 (#387) ############################################

Markham's Cavelarice 365
activity extended from the last decade of the sixteenth century to
his death in 1637. He was born about 1568, and, in his early
years, spent at his Nottinghamshire home, he naturally became
familiar with every aspect of country life. Like many other
younger sons of the time, he took to a military career; but, after
some years' experience in the wars of the Low Countries, he
exchanged his sword for the pen.
The subjects with which he dealt included such matters as
hunting, hawking, husbandry, gardening, housewifery and the
military art, diversified by occasional excursions into polite lite-
rature in the shape of plays and poems. But, of the many sides of
his literary activity, the most prominent, as well as most congenial,
was, without doubt, that dealing with horsemanship and the vete-
rinary art.
The first of the long series of his books on horses was issued in
1593 under the title A Discource of Horsmanshippe. In this
same year, also, he made his first essay in belles lettres, by pre-
paring for the press a poem entitled Thyrsis and Daphne; but no
copy of this is known to have survived. After having reissued the
Discource in a new and enlarged guise, under the title How
to chuse, ride, traine, and diet, both hunting-horses and running
horses, he followed it, in 1605, with a treatise on How to trayne
and teach horses to amble. Two years later, Markham produced
his chief work on his favourite theme, the horse, 'with whose
nature and use,' he claims with some pride, 'I have been exercised
and acquainted from my Childhood, and I hope, without boast,
need not yield to any in this Kingdome. '
This book he entitled Cavelarice, or the English Horseman.
But it was not in Markham's nature to be satisfied with so brief,
though comprehensive, a title. Showman at heart as he was,
the big drum must be beat, and the attention of the world called
to the wonders to be found within. So, characteristically, and
with a flourish, he sets forth his wares in detail, and acclaims their
originality and his own altruism. Here is the whole:
Cavelarice, or the English Horseman: contayning all the Arte of Horse-
manship, as much as is necessary for any man to understand, whether he be
Horse-breeder, horse-ryder, horse-hunter, horse-runner, horse-ambler, horse-
farrier, horse-keeper, Coachman, Smith, or Sadler. Together with the
discovery of the subtill trade or mistery of horse-coursers, and an explanation
of the excellency of a horses understanding, or how to teach them to doe
trickes like Bankes his Curtall: And that horses may be made to drawe
drie-foot like a Hound. Secrets before unpublished, and now carefully set
down for the profit of this whole Nation.


## p. 366 (#388) ############################################

366 Writers on Country Pursuits
But, if Markham was adept at displaying his wares, he was
no less a master in the choice of appropriate patrons and in the
writing of dedications—a practice reduced to a fine art in those
days. It was a poor book which could not be made to carry two,
if not three, of his dedicatory epistles, for each of which he doubt-
less looked for some remuneration. In Cavelarice, the division
into books affords him opportunity for no less than eight dedica-
tions, leading off with prince Henry, to whom succeed noblemen
of various titles duly graduated. In issuing a new edition,
'corrected and augmented, with many worthy secrets not before
known,' ten years later, the name of Charles, prince of Wales, is
quietly substituted for that of the late prince, without the slightest
change in the terms of the address.
And, when we come to the text of the book itself, Markham is
not wanting in this matter either. He is master of his subject;
and, whether he calls upon the stores of his own experience, or,
as was much the fashion in his time, uses material drawen out
of the most approved authors,' he conveys the impression of writing
with full knowledge, and inspires confidence as one who speaks
with the unhesitating assurance of authority. His directions are
full and clear, and his style is touched with an enthusiasm and an
engaging familiarity wbich bring his reader into close contact and
almost convey the illusion of oral instruction. Now and again,
one comes across bits of that deep-rooted country tradition which
has not even yet worn itself out, such as when he directs that
'If your horse be shrewe-runne, you shall looke for a briere which
growes at both endes, and draw your horse thorow it and he will
be well. ' But Markham is not much given to this kind of thing,
and, whether it was a concession to rural superstition or a filching
from one of his 'approved authors,' it is noticeable that he neither
gives the symptoms of being ‘shrew-runne' nor describes the nature
of the malady.
The mention, in the title-page, of 'Bankes his Curtall,' is a
reference to a celebrated performing horse, called 'Marocco,' which
his owner, one Banks a Scotsman, had taught to do tricks so asto-
nishing that both the 'dancing horse' and its trainer achieved a
European reputation. Shakespeare, in Love's Labour's Lost,
makes reference to Marocco's power of counting money, and many
other allusions to his cleverness may be found in contemporary
literature. The most renowned exploit of this famous animal
was the ascent of St Paul's Cathedral, which took place in 1600.
He was afterwards exhibited in Paris, Frankfort and other places,


## p. 367 (#389) ############################################

Markham's Maister-peece
367
and the amazement which his performances created brought his
owner under the suspicion of employing magic. But Markham,
with his knowledge of horse training, calls Bankes an 'exceeding
honest' man; and, since it would be impossible for Markham to
admit his inferiority to any one in any matter relating to horse-
manship, a chapter is, accordingly, devoted to showing 'How à
horse may be taught to doe any tricke done by Bankes his
Curtall. '
In one of his later books', Markham complains that, by reason
of a too greedy and hasty bookseller, his Cavelarice was not only
exceedingly falsely printed, but, also, the most part of the book of
cures was left out. To supply this omission, he brought out, in
1610, his Maister-peece, wherein, he says, 'I have set down every
disease, and every medicine, so full and so exactly that there is
not a farrier in this kingdome, which knowes a medicine for any
disease, which is true and good indeed, but I will finde the
substance thereof in that booke' Markham evidently prided him-
self on this work, in which he describes himself to be amply and
fully adorned with the best of his own feathers; and his estimation
of it as his master-piece finds justification in the fact that it
continued in use for upwards of one hundred years?
Not content with having produced these comprehensive works
on his special subject, he sought to reach a still wider circle; and,
in 1616, he brought out a popular little octavo called Markhams
Method: or Epitome, which, with an innate knowledge of the
essential elements of popularity, he further attractively described
as containing ‘his approved remedies for all diseases whatsoever,
incident to horses, and they are almost 300, all cured with twelve
medicines onely, not of twelve pence cost and to be got commonly
everywhere'; and he also includes remedies for the diseases of
every description of domestic live stock, from oxen and sheep to
hawks and singing birds. By this time, he is well aware that he
has gained the reputation of being a book-maker, for, in the
preface, he says,
a
me thinks I heare the world say: Sir, why load you thus both mens mindes
and the Booke-sellers stalls with such change and variety of Bookes, all
upon one subject, as if men were tyed to your readings?
and he then proceeds, in three pages, to justify the appearance of
this epitome. But, however plausibly Markham might defend his
1 Markhams Method: preface.
2 The twenty-first edition appeared in 1734.


## p. 368 (#390) ############################################

368 Writers on Country Pursuits
book-making in print, the stationers concerned in his publications
felt that this multiplying of treatises was becoming a serious
matter, and, from the following entry in the register of the
Stationers' company, it appears that they took steps to protect
their interest in such of his books as were already in print.
Memorandum That I Gervase Markham of London gent Do promise
hereafter Never to write any more book or bookes to be printed, of the
Deseases or cures of any Cattle, as Horse, Oxe, Cowe, sheepe, Swine and
Goates &c. In witnes whereof I have hereunto sett my hand the 14th Day of
Julie. 1617.
Gervis Markham.
It is probably this memorandum which has led to Markham
being often described as the first English ‘hackney writer,' a
phrase used by Harte; but he no more deserves this appellation
than many another contemporary writer, and there is no evidence
that he was employed by the booksellers to write any of his
numerous books. How, or by whom, he was induced to sign the
promise does not appear, but it was hardly to be expected that
such an enthusiast could thus completely forswear his especial
hobby.
For some years, he spent his energies upon other subjects, but,
in his later days, he brought out yet two other small horse books,
The Complete Farriar, or the Kings High-way to Horsmanship
and Markhams Faithfull Farrier. In sending forth the latter,
he utters a note suggestive of the weariness of age, but he shows
no abatement of his claim to supremacy in veterinary lore, he has
lost nothing of his valiant assurance, and he still does all 'for the
publick good.
Having (he says) gained experience all my life to these present dayes,
wherein I am ready to creepe into the earth, willing now at the important
request of my best friends, [I] have yeelded my selfe to lay the glory of my
skill in Horsemanship, open to the World: and having kept secret in the
Cabinet of my Brest, these Secrets, by which I have gained from many a
Noble person, many a fayre pound, I now bestow it upon thee for the value
of sixe pence. It may be; some will account me a Foole in Print, for
disclosing my Secrets, but I ever regarded the life of a worthy Horse, before
the word of a foole.
Among the modern writers on horses to whom Markham,
in his Maister-peece, acknowledges his indebtedness, he especially
esteemed Salomon de la Broue, a man of exquisite practice and
knowledge,' whose work Le cavalerice François was printed at
Paris in 1593—4. Of English authors, he names Clifford and
Mascall, and also mentions among his authorities fifteen names


## p. 369 (#391) ############################################

Markham's Predecessors
369
which he terms private, meaning, it may be presumed, practitioners
of the veterinary art who did not publish. Christopher Clifford
was the author of The Schoole of Horsemanship, published in
1585; the works of Leonard Mascall are referred to below.
No other writer on this subject approached Markham, either in
popularity or in knowledge and literary craft. His books were
continually reprinted throughout the seventeenth century, and
they were not entirely superseded even by the great horse-
masters of the latter part of the century, the duke of Newcastle
and Sir William Hope, translator of Solleysel.
Perhaps get better known than his books on horses is the
collection of treatises on country matters which he gathered into
one volume, under the alluring title A Way to get Wealth. This
comprehensive work forms an encyclopaedia of rural occupations
and recreations, in which Markham brought up to date the existing
literature of the subject.
The earliest of his predecessors in this field was Walter of
Henley, whose Book of Husbandry, originally written in the
thirteenth century, circulated largely in manuscript', being added
to from time to time and amended as need arose. Its long con-
tinued popularity must have been due to the practical nature of
the work; and the sphere of its usefulness was extended by a trans-
lation, out of the original Anglicised Norman French, into English,
this version being attributed, on apparently insufficient grounds,
to Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln. After having enjoyed
popularity in manuscript for two hundred years, it was at length
printed by Wynkyn de Worde early in the sixteenth century, only
to be shortly afterwards superseded by Fitzherbert's Book of
Husbandry, which made its appearance about 1523.
It is a question whether the authorship of this treatise, as well
as of its companion volume, The Book of Surveying, should be
rightly assigned to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, justice of the common
pleas, or to his elder brother John Fitzherbert, lord of the manor of
Norbury in Derbyshire; but the balance of probability is in favour
of the latter? The squire, if he it be, tells us that the work was
the outcome of more than forty years' experience, and that it was
intended for the benefit of 'poore fermers and tenauntes. ' The
familiarity with detail, the minuteness of instruction and the care
with which the author states his reasons, well bear out his claim
1 See Lamond and Cunningham's edition (1890) for & list of the twenty-one
extant copies.
2 See English Historical Review, XII, 255 ff. (1897).
24
E. L. IV.
CH. XVII.


## p. 370 (#392) ############################################

370 Writers on Country Pursuits
6
to long experience. The whole course of farming operations is
dealt with, including the management of horses, cattle and sheep;
woodcraft finds a place, and there is likewise a chapter on bees,
which are 'lyttell charge but good attendaunce. ' And, country
squire-like, caring for the welfare of his people, he concludes with
some thirty admonitory essays suited to various occasions, from
the Occupation of a Wife' to 'the Manner of Almsdeeds. ' The
Book of Surveying, which had a forerunner in the rules drawn
up by bishop Grosseteste for the countess of Lincoln, dealt with
duties pertaining to the office of steward or bailiff, and was, in effect,
a hand-book of estate management, designed for the profytte of
all noble men and women. '
For a considerable period, Fitzherbert's Book of Husbandry
had no rival, and it was several times reprinted before the end of
the century, when it finally gave way to the Elizabethan writers
on the subject, to whom it had served as a useful quarry. Of
these writers, the most notable, to name them in chronological
order, were Thomas Tusser, Leonard Mascall, Barnabe Googe,
Sir Hugh Plat and Markham.
Thomas Tusser, whose Hundreth good pointes of Husbandrie
(1557), afterwards amplified into Five Hundreth Pointes (1573),
was rather a collection of riming aphorisms than a regular
treatise, is dealt with in another volume of the present work?
Leonard Mascall, quoted by Markham as one of his authorities
and, next to Markham, the best known writer of the time on
husbandry, is said by Fuller to have introduced pippin apples and
carp into England; but carp were already known in 1496, and
Mascall's statement in his Book of Fishing may have referred to
one of his ancestors rather than to himself. Mascall's first book
was of the arte and maner howe to plant and graffe all sortes
of trees (1572), and, for this, he drew upon French and Dutch
sources, supplemented by his own observation. The husbandlye
ordring and governmente of Poultrie, which he brought out in
1581, seems to be the earliest independent treatise which was printed
on the subject. Mascall's chief work, The government of cattell,
made its first appearance in 1587, and, though very largely a com-
pilation, nevertheless represented the best practice of the day, and
continued in vogue together with Markham's books until far into
the succeeding century. This was followed in 1590 by A booke of
fishing with hooke and line. . . Sundrie engines and trappes to take
polcats, buzards, rattes, mice, and all other kindes of vermine.
1 See vol. 111, chap. vill.
2 See Buok oj St Albans.


## p. 371 (#393) ############################################

Barnabe Googe.
Sir Hugh Plat 371
Barnabe Googe takes his real place in literature in another
department', but his translation of the Foure bookes of Husbandry,
collected by M. Conradus Heresbachius (1577) must be noted
here. As Googe remarks in his preface, you have here set down
before you ‘the rules and practices of the olde auncient husbands,
as well Greekes as Latines whose very orders, for the most, at this
day wee observe'; and, though he professes to have increased the
work both by his own reading and the experience of his friends,
yet it represents precepts of the older writers rather than con-
temporary knowledge and practice, and the subject is treated from
the stand-point of a man of letters rather than from that of a
professed agriculturist. The authorities quoted in the preface
include the names of several Englishmen, and he mentions in terms
of respect ‘Master Fitzherbert and Master Tusser: whose workes
may, in my fancie, without any presumption, compare with any,
either Varro, Columella, or Palladius of Rome. Some fifty years
later, the book was re-edited and enlarged by Markham.
Sir Hugh Plat, an interesting person whose activity extended
to other matters besides agriculture, was known as the author of
many curious inventions, a number of which are described in his
Jewell House of Art and Nature: conteining divers rare and
profitable inventions, together with sundry new experimentes in
the art of husbandry, distillation, and moulding (1594). He
applied himself more particularly to improvements in farming and
gardening, his most useful contribution to the subject being a
treatise on manures, which, under the title of Diverse new sorts of
soyle not yet brought into any publique use, for manuring both
of pasture and arable ground, formed the second part of the
Jewell House. About 1596, he also issued an exposition of
The new and admirable arte of setting corne. Harte, in his
Essays on Husbandry (1764), speaks of him as the most ingenious
husbandman of his times, and says that he corresponded with all
the lovers of agriculture and gardening throughout England.
Here, again, as in the field of horsemanship, Markham holas
the foremost place in his day. His books on husbandry are, perhaps,
not written with so intimate a first-hand knowledge, but a faculty
for minute observation and a long acquaintance with country
matters in general enabled him to supplement his own knowledge
by selecting and assimilating what was best and most advanced in
existing literature; and his literary taste and skill enabled him to
present it in a form at once attractive and practical. He is equally
at home in expounding the best methods of tillage, the treatment
1 See vol. II, chap. VIII.
24-2


## p. 372 (#394) ############################################

372 Writers on Country Pursuits
6
of live stock, the subtleties of hawking, the secrets of angling, or
the most approved recipes for the housewife; there is little, indeed,
in the whole range of country pleasures and duties, upon which
he did not discourse with ease, enthusiasm and authority, and,
on all occasions, with that display of omniscience which is a mark
of the true journalist.
All these characteristics are seen to advantage in that encyclo-
paedic and seductive volume A Way to get Wealth. The first
treatise in this collection, Cheap and Good Husbandry, deals
with the management of domestic animals and fowls and the
cure of their diseases. As in duty bound, he leads off with his
favourite, the horse, and, in the directions for training, the gentle-
ness of his methods is particularly noticeable. Correction, indeed,
is to be given ‘soundly and sharply, as oft as just occasion shall
require'; but there is much more of 'cherishing' than chiding, and
suaviter in modo is the key-note of all his instruction. No
treatise on rural economy of this period seems to have been
considered complete without its chapter on bees, and Markham
duly devotes a section to these 'gentle, loving and familiar
creatures. '
Having dealt with the duties of country life, Markham then
proceeds in Country Contentments to set out the various recrea-
tions wherewith a husbandman may refresh himself after the toil
of more serious business. Here, he writes with accustomed ease,
and in somewhat more leisurely manner, as befits the occasion.
The singular rhythmical charm of his style is at its best; nothing is
abrupt or unfinished; sentences are rounded off with a due regard
to effect; and, in the direct simplicity of his diction, nothing of
clearness is lost. What, for instance, could be better and more
attune to its subject than these instructions for the composition of
a pack of hounds:
If you would have your Kennell for sweetnesse of cry, then you must
compound it of some large dogges, that have deepe solemne monthes, and are
swift in spending, which must as it were beare the base in the consort; then
a double number of roaring, and loud-ringing mouthes, which must beare the
counter tenor; then some hollow plaine sweete mouthes, which must beare
the meane or middle part: and soe with these three parts of musicke, you
shall mal your cry perfect. . . .
If you would have your Kennell for loudnes of mouth, you shall not then
choose the hollow deepe mouth, but the loud clanging mouth, which spendeth
freely and sharpley, and as it were redoubleth in the utterance: and if you
mix with them the mouth that roareth, and the mouth that whineth, the
crye will be both the louder and smarter; . . . and the more equally you
compound these mouthes, having as many Roarers as Spenders, and as many
wbiners, as of either of the other, the louder and pleasanter your cry will
be, especially if it be in sounding tall woods, or under the eccho of Rocks.


## p. 373 (#395) ############################################

A
Way to get Wealth
373
Hunting is followed by hawking, ‘a most princely and serious
delight”; and shooting with long-bow and cross-bow, and the
games of bowls, tennis and baloon are all included. The moral-
ising chapter in which The whole Art of Angling is introduced
is entirely in keeping with the spirit of 'the contemplative man's
recreation, and therein Markham shows himself a not unworthy
precursor of Izaak Walton. After commendation of the gentle
art, the making of rods, lines and other implements is described
with a particular nicety, and other directions follow, all set forth
with similar conciseness.
In the English Huswife, which forms the second part of
Country Contentments, Markham, for once, does not claim origin-
ality, but describes it as being in great part from 'a Manuscript,
which many yeeres agon belonged to an Honourable Countesse.
In it, the whole sphere of the housewife's domain is dealt with,
household physic, cookery, distilling, dairying and brewing.
Recipes are given for every domestic occasion, from a remedy for
the Tysicke to the making of Ipocras, with many other conceited
secrets. The cookery directions are characterised by lavishness,
and some of the other recipes are, to say the least, somewhat
curious. If Markham had been challenged as to the 'halfe a
bushell of the doune of Cats tailes' prescribed for the concoction
to cure burning or scalding, he would, probably, have referred it to
the countess's manuscript; but he might not have disowned the
description of qualities which should be discernible in the good
housewife, when he says
First, shee must bee cleanly both in body and garments, shee must have a
quicke eye, a curious nose, a perfect taste, and ready eare; (shee must not be
butter-fingred, sweete-toothed, nor faint-hearted) for, the first will let every
thing fall, the second will consume what it should increase, and the last will
loose time with too much nicenesse.
A Way to get Wealth also contains The Inrichment of the
Weald of Kent and Markhams Farewell to Husbandry, both
of which treat of the manuring and enrichment of poor soils ;
and it concludes with two or three horticultural treatises, the most
important of which, A New Orchard and Garden, was the work
of William Lawson. The collection was many times reprinted, the
fifteenth edition making its appearance in 1695.
Markham wrote several other books on practical subjects, the
titles of which, as well as of works by contemporary writers on
country matters, will be found in the bibliography. Among the
latter, may be specially noted Turbervile's Booke of faulconrie


## p. 374 (#396) ############################################

374 Writers on Country Pursuits
(1575), and The Noble arte of venerie or hunting, also attributed to
Turbervile, and both compilations from foreign sources ; Simon
Latham's two books of Falconry (1615—8); and John Dennys's
Secrets of angling (1613), from which Markham drew more than
inspiration, and with which Walton was acquainted. Descriptive
natural history makes a good beginning in Topsell's illustrated
Historie of Fourefooted Beastes (1607), in which, as the author
frankly and quaintly says,
I have followed D. Gesner as neer as I could, I do profess him my Author
in most of my stories, yet I have gathred up that which he let fal, and added
many pictures and stories as may apeare by conference of both together.
A companion volume, The historie of Serpents, or the second
booke of living creatures, was published in the following year.
Both these books were re-issued in 1658, together with the Theater
of Insects, the latter being a translation of Thomas Moffett's
Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum, which, though
written in 1590, first appeared in its Latin form in 1634. Moffett,
who had studied medicine in Cambridge and Basle and travelled in
Italy and Spain, was also the author of a descriptive and moralising
poem on The silkewormes and their flies (1599). Silk culture was
receiving some attention in England about this time, and other
practical treatises on the subject were brought out. The newly
imported accomplishment of smoking tobacco was also contributing
its quota to literature.
The earliest of the numerous herbals which appeared in England,
the Grete Herball, founded on the French Grand Herbier, was
printed by Peter Treveris at Southwark in 1526, and several
times reprinted before the middle of the century. William Turner,
the reformer, who had a garden at Kew, diversified his protestant
polemics with botanical pursuits; and his New herball (1551-
62) is considered a starting point in the scientific study of botany
in England. Matthias de L'Obel, whose important works appeared
only in Latin, was a resident in England and botanist to king
James I. The Niewe herball (1578) of Rembert Dodoens, in its
English dress by Henry Lyte, through the French version of
L'Écluse (Clusius), was very popular, as was also the abridgment
by William Ram, published in 1606 under the title Rams little
Dodeon. It was also from Dodoens's Pemptades that John Gerard,
through the manuscript of Priest's translation which came into
his hands, derived and adapted, without acknowledgment, a great
part of his celebrated Herball or generall historie of Plantes


## p. 375 (#397) ############################################

Herbals
375
(1597). The majority of the numerous woodcuts used in this folio
had previously appeared in the Eicones plantarum of Tabernae-
montanus (1590). A revised and enlarged edition was brought
out by Thomas Johnson in 1633.
These herbals, though not professedly horticultural works, give
occasional glimpses into plant culture as practised at that time;
and the art of gardening, which was then making consider-
able progress in this country at the hands of a number of enthusi-
astic devotees, also began to produce its own special literature.
Dutch and other foreign sources provided ready material and
inspiration for some of the earlier writers, among whom there is
naturally a good deal of repetition ; illustrations were also freely
copied, especially designs for knots, or carpet beds, which seem to
have been highly esteemed, but of which Bacon, in his magnificent
plan of a princely garden, says contemptuously that you may see
as good sights, many times, in Tarts. ' Tusser has introduced a
considerable amount of gardening detail into his Pointes of good
husbandrie ; but Thomas Hill, or ‘ Didymus Mountain'as he some-
times facetiously styled himself, was one of the earliest to compile
a book devoted exclusively to horticulture. This was printed in
1563 under the title A most briefe and pleasaunt treatyse,
teachynge howe to dress, sowe, and set a garden, and afterwards
enlarged as The proffitable arte of gardening. Markham's writings
on the subject are to be found chiefly in his English Husbandman,
Country-mans Recreation, and Country Housewifes Garden, the
latter sometimes printed with Lawson's New Orchard mentioned
above. In 1608, Sir Hugh Plat published his contribution to
horticulture under the title Floraes Paradise ; and, in 1629, the
ardent botanist and lover of flowers, John Parkinson, king's
herbarist, brought out his delightful Paradisi in sole Paradisus
terrestris, or a garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our
English ayre will permitt to be noursed up: with a kitchen
garden . . . and an orchard, the woodcuts for which were specially
done in England; this was followed in 1640 by his great herbal,
Theatrum botanicum, with its description of nearly 3800 plants
and its 2600 illustrations.
In his recension of the Book of St Albans, issued in 1595 as the
Gentlemans Academie, Markham came into touch with heraldry ;
but, as he merely modernised the diction without revision of
the matter, he can scarcely be deemed a writer on this science.
The section on coat-armour in the St Albans book was the first
English treatise on heraldry, and is not without some practical


## p. 376 (#398) ############################################

376
Writers on Country Pursuits
value; it was derived largely from Nicholas Upton's De officio
militari (1441), first printed in 1654 by Sir Edward Bysshe. In
1562, Gerard Legh brought out his popular Accedens of Armory,
and several other writers, such as John Bossewell, Sir John Ferne
and William Wyrley, followed him; but most of these works were
vitiated by flights of imagination and absurd legends about the
antiquity of coat-armour, and it was left to John Guillim, whose
Display of Heraldrie, first printed in 1610, is still a classic, to
place the science on something approaching a sound basis.
According to Langbaine, Markham was esteemed a good scholar
and an excellent linguist, understanding perfectly the French,
Italian and Spanish languages. He was certainly well read in the
subjects which he handled, and thoroughly conversant with the
classical allusions with which it was the fashion in his day to over-
lay polite literature. In verse, however, his achievement does not
reach a high order; his was not a lyric muse, and the long parra-
tive poems which he attempted are dull conventional productions,
lacking inspiration and spontaneity. Even his best opportunity,
the thrilling story of the last fight of the Revenge', fails to arouse
him, and the poem, dragged out through 174 stanzas of eight lines
each, is a tedious performance, clogged with laboured metaphor
and classical simile. In other poems he deals with some of the
sacred themes much affected at that time: the Poem of poems, or
Sions muse, contayning the divine Song of Salomon in eight
eclogues, the subject of one of bishop Hall's satires? and mentioned
by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia, made its appearance in 1595;
and, in 1600, was printed Teares of the Beloved : or, the lamenta-
tion of Saint John concerning the death and passion of Christ
Jesus our Saviour, a poem of 140 six-lined stanzas in heroic metre;
Marie Magdalens lamentations for the losse of her Master Jesus,
a similar poem of the following year, has also been attributed to
him.
Besides these original exercises, Markham translated from the
French of Madam Genevefve Petau Maulette,' Devoreux, or
vertues tears (1597), a lament on the death of Henry III of France
and of Walter Devereux, a brother of the Earl of Essex. In 1609,
he produced The Famous Whore, or Noble Curtizan, being the
story of the career of 'Paulina, the famous Roman curtizan, some-
times mes unto the great Cardinall Hypolito, of Est,' a poem in
riming couplets translated, it is said, from the Italian; but the
6
6
1 The Most Honorable Tragedie of Sir Richard Grinvile, Knight, 1595.
2 Bk. 1, Sat. VIIL.


## p. 377 (#399) ############################################

Markham's Poems and Translations 377
6
original of this, as likewise of Devoreux, has not been traced.
Rodomonths Infernall, or the Divell conquered, a spirited English
rendering from the French of Desportes, also belongs to him ; but
the version of Ariostos Satyres, issued under Markham's name
in 1608, was claimed by Robert Tofte.