712 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M. 
Columella, and Palladius* were published in England, and they must certainly 
have been known to Tusser, for in his ‘Five Hundred Points of Good Hus- 
bandry,’ composed some years later, there is clear evidence of the influence of the 
writings of Xenophon and Columella. From the latter author Tusser adopts the 
method of a calendar, and he appears now and again to adapt Roman maxims to 
modern conditions. Thus in his calendar Columella says of March that it ‘is the 
proper time to cleanse meadows, and to defend and secure them from cattle; in 
warm and dry places indeed that ought to be done even from the month of 
January,’ and Tusser in his calendar for March rhymes :— 
‘Spare meadow at Gregorie Marshes at Pask 
For feare of drie Sommer no longer time ask 
Then hedge them and ditch them, bestow thereon pence, 
corne, meadow, and pasture aske alway good fence.’ 
It might be, of course, that in discussing the same subject, a subject moreover 
which does not admit of much difference of opinion, the similarity of the above- 
quoted passages is accidental; but many of Tusser’s rhymes so closely follow 
Xenophon’s ‘ Householde’ and Columella’s Eleventh Book that I am satisfied 
Tusser was familiar with both these ancient writers. Here, for example, from 
Tusser, is the charge concerning sick servants which Ischomachus gives to his 
young wife :— 
“To Seruant in Sickness see nothing ye grutch, 
a thing of a trifle shell comfort him mutch.’ 
And here is a maxim for the housewife that Columella enforces :— 
‘ The woman the name of a huswife doth win 
by keeping hir house and of dooings therein 
And she that with husband will quietly dwell 
must thinke on this lesson and follow it well.’ 
Until the dawn of the twentieth century no mere man would have been found 
to question the conclusion come to in the above verse; nevertheless, the emphasis 
on the ‘ quietly dwell’ indicates that in this particular case the inspiration is 
derived from Columella rather than from Xenophon. For while the woman 
described by the Greek writer is likened to the queen bee, by the Roman there 
is much lamentation because of the emergence of the ‘butterfly.’ Columella 
refers to the diligent dames of ancient Rome who lived at home and studied to 
improve their husbands’ estates, and contrasts them with their successors in the 
first century, who had become indolent, refused to make their own clothes, and 
spent their husbands’ incomes on dress. He then remarks, ‘Is it a wonder that 
these same ladies think themselves mightily burdened with the care of rural 
affairs, and esteem it a most sordid business to stay a few days in their country 
houses ?’ 
Personal carefulness on the part of master and mistress was to the Roman 
the essence and the sign alike of good husbandry ; by Tusser’s rhymes this lesson 
was enforced at a time when an increase in the cost of living was attracting 
attention all over the country; his book went through a number of editions, and 
his pointed rhymes appear to have exercised a greater influence on the rural 
economy of the first half of the seventeenth century than the works of any other 
writer. Thus, for example, in Best’s ‘ farming Book,’ written by a Yorkshire 
gentleman in 1641 for the guidance of his son, Tusser is frequently cited as an 
authority. But Best, though a classical scholar himself and probably acquainted 
with some of the ancient writers on husbandry, makes no reference to them; 
the Yorkshire squire apparently regarded the writings of Varro and Columella 
as being of no real use to a farmer. 
It was, then, the practice of husbandry that engaged the English agriculturist’s 
attention from the time of Walter de Henley to Thomas Tusser, and the purpose 
of my digression into domestic subjects is to show that when the ancient writers 
were rediscovered in the middle of the sixteenth century, it was not the frequent 
* A translation of Palladius into English was made about 1420, but it was 
not discovered and published until within recent times. 
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