Notes and Illustrations. 2277, 
places of the earth, that they, remembering themselves to be Thy 
tenants, may not rack nor stretch out the rents of their houses and 
lands, nor yet take unreasonable fines and incomes after the manner 
of covetous worldlings, but so let them.out to others, that the 
inhabitants thereof may both be able to pay the rents, and also 
honestly to live and nourish their families, and relieve the poor. 
Give them grace also to consider that they are but strangers and 
pilgrims in this world, having here no dwelling-place, but seeking 
one to come; that they, remembering the short continuance of 
their life, may be contented with that which is sufficient, and not 
join house to house and land to land, to the impoverishment of 
others; but so behave themselves in letting out their lands, tene- 
ments, and pastures, that after this life they may be received into 
everlasting dwelling-places, through, etc.” 
“Fleeces” =fleecings, frauds, impositions. It may, perhaps, be 
used literally, of selling wool at a loss. 
2. 8. *‘Ictus sapit.” This corresponds to our proverb, ‘‘ The 
burnt child dreads the fire,” or perhaps more nearly to ‘‘ Once bit, 
twice shy.” In the ‘‘ Proverbs of Hendyng” we find it as: “‘ The 
burnt child fire dreadeth, quoth Hendyng.” Ray, in his ‘‘ Collec- 
tion of Proverbs,” edit. 1737, says: ‘‘ Piscator ictus sapit; struck 
by the scorpion fish, or pastinaca, whose prickles are esteemed 
venomous.” 
3. 4. If Tusser is here writing literally, the price of his book, in 
“the golden days of good Queen Bess,” was only a groat or two at 
the utmost.—M. 
3. 7. “Shere” =shire; the construction is—don’t think that every 
bit of land (or county) can profit by following my directions, for 
soils differ. Compare chapter 19, stanza 8, p. 48. 
4. 1. ‘‘ Must keepe such coile;”’ must bustle about, exert them- 
selves. Cf. Scott’s ‘‘ Lord of the Isles,” canto v. stanza 1: ‘“ For 
wake where’er he may, man wakes to care and co7/.” And Shak- 
spere: “I pray you watch about Signor Leonata’s door; for the 
wedding being there to-morrow, there is a great coz/ to-night.” 
5. 1. In the edition of 1570 the first stanza of the ‘ Preface to 
the Buier” reads as follows: 
«What lookest thou herein to haue ? 
Trim verses thy fansie to please ? 
Of Surry so famous that craue, 
Looke nothing but rudenes in these.” 
The reference in the third line being to Henry Howard, Earl of 
Surrey, author of the Translation of the second and fourth Books 
of the A‘neid of Virgil, and of numerous other poems, who was 
executed in 1547. In the footnote to this Preface it is stated that 
the metre is peculiar to Shenstone, but this is incorrect, as it is also 
used by Prior: ‘‘ Despairing beside a clear stream.” 
7. line 5. ‘‘ The sea for my fish,” z.e. for my fishpond. 
