Fuller, in his “Worthies,” says Tusser “spread his bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon.”  In short, though the poet wrote well on farm-practice, he certainly was not a good exemplar of farm-successes.  With all his excellent notions about sowing and reaping, and rising with the lark, I should look for a little more of stirring mettle and of dogged resolution in a man to be recommended as a tenant.  I cannot help thinking less of him as a farmer than as a kind-hearted poet; too soft of the edge to cut very deeply into hard-pan, and too porous and flimsy of character for any compacted resolve:  yet taking life tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself; making a rattling appeal for Christmas charities; hospitable, cheerful, and looking always to the end with an honest clearness of vision:—­

    “To death we must stoop, be we high, be we low,
    But how, and how suddenly, few be that know,
    What carry we, then, but a sheet to the grave,
    (To cover this carcass,) of all that we have?”

* * * * *

I now come to Sir Hugh Platt, called by Mr. Weston, in his catalogue of English authors, “the most ingenious husbandman of his age."[7] He is elsewhere described as a gentleman of Lincoln’s Inn, who had two estates in the country, besides a garden in St. Martin’s Lane.  He was an enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticultural inquiries, corresponding largely with leading farmers, and conducting careful experiments within his own grounds.  In speaking of that “rare and peerless plant, the grape,” he insists upon the wholesomeness of the wines he made from his Bednall-Greene garden:  “And if,” he says, “any exception shold be taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am content to submit them to the censure of the best mouthes, that professe any true skill in the judgment of high country wines:  although for their better credit herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who (now almost two yeeres since, comming to my house of purpose to tast these wines) gaue this sentence upon them:  that he neuer drank any better new wine in France.”

[Footnote 7:  Latter part of sixteenth century; and was living, according to Johnson, as late as 1606.]

I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the wine than of the speech of the ambassador; French ambassadors are always so complaisant!

Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit whereby that “delicate Knight,” Sir Francis Carew, proposed to astonish the Queen by a sight of a cherry-tree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had gone by in England.  “This secret he performed, by straining a Tent or couer of canuass ouer the whole tree, and wetting the same now and then with a scoope or horne, as the heat of the weather required:  and so, by witholding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the berries, they grew both great, and were very long before they had gotten their perfect cherrie-colour:  and when he was assured of her Majestie’s comming, he remoued the Tent, and a few sunny daies brought them to their full maturities.”