THOMAS TUSSER 
My first acquaintance with Thomas Tusser came through a 
book; Thomas Tusser » 1557 floruit » His Good Points of Hus¬ 
bandry, collated and edited by Dorothy Hartley and published 
in London by Country Life Limited in 1931. In even a casual 
examination of his verses, however, one finds so many sur¬ 
prisingly familiar phrases and sayings that he promptly feels 
like an old friend and reminds the reader of the lady in the 
ancient story who "didn’t see why everyone thought Hamlet 
such a good play - just a lot of old quotations strung to¬ 
gether," Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations gives more than a 
page of lines from Tusser, and although some undoubtedly are 
"quotations" from earlier writers such as Heywood, all are 
rhythmically and memorably phrased in Tusser’s characteristic 
fashion, he can thank him for such sayings as these: "Buying 
... a pig in a poke," "It is an ill wind turns none to good," 
"Naught venture, naught have," "Who goeth a borrowing goeth 
a sorrowing," "Christmas comes but once a year." 
Although A hundreth good pointes of husbandrie , printed 
in facsimile from the British Museum copy of the 1557 edition, 
and Five hundred good points of husbandry , transcribed from 
the enlarged 1571 edition, make up the bulk of Miss Hartley’s 
book, I shall not try to discuss here their excellent admoni¬ 
tions in detail. I cannot resist saying though that Thomas’s 
gift for compression is marvelous; he easily gets a whole 
Farmers * Bulletin into a stanza or sol What better directions 
could the aspiring apiculturist ask than these? 
Now bum up the bees, that ye mind for to drive, 
at Midsummer drive them, and save them alive; 
Place hive in good aier, set southly and warm, 
and take in due season, wax, honey and swarm. 
Set hive on a plank, not too low by the ground, 
where herb with the flowers may compass it round; 
And boards to defend it from north and north-east, 
from showers and rubbish, from vermin and beast, 
September’s Husbandry 
It was the good husbandman himself, though, that aroused 
my warm interest, and it is about him that I should like to 
write. He happily has himself supplied much of the data which 
Miss Hartley’s book makes readily available by including The 
Life of Tusser, his autobiography in verse from the 1573 edi¬ 
tion oF the Five Hiandred Points, his Be leeff , appearing in edi¬ 
tions from 1571 to 1580, the dedication of his book to the son 
of his former patron. Lord Thomas Paget, and finally his char¬ 
acteristic will discovered in the Registry at Ely, These to¬ 
gether with the glimpses he gives of himself through his ad¬ 
vice to others in the Five Hundred Points enable us not only 
to know the chief facts of his life but to form an admiring 
impression of his character. 
