ve been ill-suited to his fortune, and to his vocation. A
love of hospitality probably kept him from independence; yet if he was
imprudent, we cannot help loving the man and admiring the justness of
his sentiments on every subject connected with life and morals."

Fuller, in his _Worthies of Essex_, says, "he spread his bread with all
sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon. Yet I hear no man to
charge him with any vicious extravagancy, or visible carelessness,
imputing his ill success to some occult cause in God's counsel."

I am indebted, in some degree, for these several testimonies, to Mr.
Mavor's spirited edition of this book, which he has enriched with a
biographical sketch of Tusser, and with many interesting illustrations
of his poem. He exhibits another instance of the private character of
Tusser, in his concluding remarks on the last page of his work:--"The
moral feeling and the pious resignation which breathe in the concluding
stanzas of this poem, leave a powerful impression on the mind; and
whatever vicissitudes in life the Editor or his Readers may experience,
he wishes for Himself and for Them, the same philosophic and christian
composure, on a retrospect of the past, and the anticipated view of
futurity."

Of Mr. Warton's remarks on Tusser, Mr. Mavor thus partly speaks:--"For
the personal kindness of Warton to me, at an early period of life, I
shall ever retain an affectionate remembrance of him, and for his genius
and high attainments in literature, I feel all that deference and
respect which can belong to his most enthusiastic admirers; but no man
was less a judge of the merits of a book on Husbandry and Huswifry."

Mr. Warton observes, that "Tusser's general precepts have often an
expressive brevity, and are sometimes pointed with an epigrammatic turn,
and smartness of allusion."

In Tusser's poetical account of his own unsuccessful life,

_How through the briers my youthful years
Have run their race_,--

how he was forced from his father's house when a little boy, and driven
like a POSTING HORSE, being impressed to sing as a chorister, at
Wallingford College; his miseries there, and the _stale bread_ they gave
him; the fifty-three stripes the poor lad received at Eton, when
learning Latin; his happy transfer to Trinity College, which to him
seemed a removal from hell to heaven; the generosity of Lord Paget,

_Whose soul I trust is with the just_;

then his