lie in grasse up to the chin."

But Chaucer was no farmer, or he would have known it to be bad husbandry
(even for poetry) to allow cattle steaming from the plough to lie down
in grass of that height.

* * * * *

Sir Anthony Fitz-herbert is the first duly accredited writer on British
husbandry. There are some few earlier ones, it is true,--a certain
"Mayster Groshede, Bysshop of Lyncoln," and a Henri Calcoensis, among
them. Indeed, Mr. Donaldson, who has compiled a bibliography of British
farm-writers, and who once threatened a poem on kindred subjects, has
the effrontery to include Lord Littleton. Now I have a respect for Lord
Littleton, and for Coke on Littleton, but it is tempered with some early
experiences in a lawyer's office, and some later experiences of the
legal profession; he may have written well upon "Tenures," but he had
not enough of tenderness even for a teasel.

I think it worthy of remark, in view of the mixed complexion which I
have given to these wet-day studies, that the oldest printed copy of
that sweet ballad of the "Nut Browne Mayde" has come to us in a
Chronicle of 1503, which contains also a chapter upon "the crafte of
graffynge & plantynge & alterynge of fruyts." What could be happier than
the conjunction of the knight of "the grenwode tree" with a good chapter
on "graffynge"?

Fitz-herbert's work is entitled a "Boke of Husbandrie," and counts,
among other headings of discourse, the following:--

"Whether is better a plough of horses or a plough of oxen."

"To cary out dounge & mucke, & to spreade it."

"The fyrste furryng of the falowes."

"To make a ewe to love hir lambe."

"To bye lean cattel."

"A shorte information for a young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve."

"What the wyfe oughte to dooe generally."

(_seq._) "To kepe measure in spendynge."

"What be God's commandments."

By all which it may be seen that Sir Anthony took as broad a view of
husbandry as did Xenophon.

Among other advices to the "young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve"
he counsels him to rise betime in the morning, and if "he fynde any
horses, mares, swyne, shepe, beastes in his pastures that be not his
own; or fynde a gap in his hedge, or any water standynge in his pasture
uppon his grasse, whereby he may take double herte, bothe losse of his
grasse, & rotting of his shepe, & calves; or if he fyndeth or seeth
anything that is amisse, & wold be amended, let him ta