48 AGRICULTURAL WRITERS. 



following the directions of these ancient exponents of the art as against 

 the advice tendered by many modern instructors. Nor is the study of 

 these old writers a mere matter of fancy. We could take up almost any 

 one of them, and begin with him, the agricultural year — prepare the 

 field, sow the crop, weed it, reap it, harvest it, thrash it, ascertain the 

 weight per bushel, and the yield in flour or meal, market it, buy and sell, 

 collect manure, and make out at the end of the year a more accurate 

 balance sheet than could be furnished by half the farmers in Great 

 Britain to-day. 



Barnabe Googe, of Alvingham, near Louth, is brought down to us as 

 a celebrated poet and translator, born about 1540, and supposed to have 

 been a relation and a retainer to William Cecil, better known as Lord 

 Burghley, Queen Elizabeth's great minister, an ancestor of the present 

 Marquis of Salisbury, and who by this nobleman's interest was gentle- 

 man pensioner to the Queen. He is further believed to have been father 

 of Barnabe Googe, Master of Magdalen College, Cambridge, in 1605. 

 Several books emanated from his pen, and that which most concerns us 

 just now is for the best part made up of gleanings from the ancient 

 writers already referred to and described as shown in the photograph on 

 page 49 and also below.^ This appears to be the hrst edition. 



His authorities extend from the Bible and doctors of the Church, through the 

 Greek and Roman writers, Homer, Cato, &c., to the moderns as low as Rueliius, 

 Fuchsius, Matthioius, Cardanus, and Tragus. He subjoins a list of his friends and 

 •others who assisted him, which are the same as these mentioned by Googe, many of 

 which it will be noticed are British. 



At the back of the title page of some of the editions, dated from 

 Kingstone, are his armorial bearings, with the motto " Post tristia 

 laeta." About nine years later another edition appeared, with a new 

 publisher, and at the end is a woodcut of the printers with a motto 

 round it — " Welcome thee Wight that bringeth such Light." Under- 

 neath is—" Imprinted at London for John Wight, dwelhng in St. Paul's 

 Churchyard at the great North Doore of Paules, A.D. 1586." The 

 book is dedicated to " the Right Worshipful his very good friend Sir 

 William Fitzwilliam, Knight, who held the Treasurership of Ireland for 

 Her Most Excellent Majestie Queen Elizabeth." It w^as reprinted in 

 1596, and in 1614 another edition appeared (see page 51), supposed 

 to have been issued by Gervase Markham, of whom I shall have 

 something to say further on. 



The text is arranged in the form of a dialogue between four persons 

 — Cono, a gentleman retired in the country; Rigo, a courtier ; Metella 



*Conradus HeresbachiiisyN2i9.hoxx\\r\ 1^0%, died in 1576. He wrote various theological 

 works, beside his Rei Rusticce, libri iv., which was published in 1570, and his Legmn 

 rusticarum, et operarum per siiigidos Menses digester, in 1595. 



