Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/387

 with the ‘Husbandry.’ Editions of the ‘Hundred Points’ are also thought to have appeared in 1562 and 1564. In 1570 was published ‘A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandry, lately maried unto a Hundreth Good Poyntes of Huswifery.’ In 1573 they were amplified to five hundred, ‘Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandry united to as many of Good Huswifery,’ and to this edition was prefixed an autobiography in verse, which was amplified in succeeding editions. The 1573 edition was reprinted in 1574 (Brit. Mus.), an edition strangely overlooked by the modern editors, Mavor and Herrtage. Further reprints appeared in 1577, 1580, 1585, 1586, 1590, 1593, 1597, 1599 (twice, both by Peter Short in London, and Waldegrave in Edinburgh), 1604, 1610, 1614, 1620, 1638, 1672, 1692. All these sixteenth and seventeenth century editions are in black letter. In 1710 appeared ‘Tusser Redivivus,’ a reprint of the more practical part of Tusser's work in monthly issues. In this Tusser was brought up to date, and explained in a commentary (by one Daniel Hillman) inserted at the end of each stanza. Another edition of ‘Tusser Redivivus’ appeared in 1744.

In 1810 the incorrect 1599 edition by Short of Tusser's ‘Five Hundred Points’ was reprinted in Sir Walter Scott's edition of the ‘Somers Tracts’ (iii. 403–551). At the same time a reprint of the ‘Hundred Points’ appeared as part of Sir Egerton Brydges's ‘British Bibliographer,’ vol. iii. sub fin.; this edition was also reprinted separately in a neat thin quarto volume. In 1812 appeared Mavor's standard edition; in 1834 the ‘Hundred Points’ were again reprinted from the private press of Charles Clark of Great Totham, Essex; in 1848 a selection was printed at Oxford; in 1878 appeared the English Dialect Society's edition, edited by W. Payne and S. J. Herrtage. This consists of a reprint of the ‘Five Hundred Points’ from the issue of 1580 and of the ‘Hundred Points’ from that of 1557. Tusser's works also appear in Southey's ‘Select Works of the British Poets, from Chaucer to Johnson,’ 1831, pp. 143–199.

Southey, who appears to have been a careful student of Tusser (see Commonplace Book, 1851, i. 171–4, 497, 498, ii. 325, 331, iv. 290), speaks of him as a ‘good, honest, homely, useful old rhymer.’ His verses are not without practical agricultural value, and he has even been styled ‘the British Varro’. ‘There is nowhere to be found,’ says Sir Walter Scott, ‘excepting perhaps in Swift's “Directions to Servants,” evidence of such rigid and minute attention to every department of domestic economy. … Although neither beauty of description nor elegance of diction was Tusser's object, he has frequently attained, what better indeed suited his purpose, a sort of homely, pointed and quaint expression, like that of the old English proverb, which the rhyme and the alliteration tend to fix on the memory of the reader.’ It is indeed surprising how many English proverbs can be traced back to Tusser. It has been customary to contrast the shrewdness of Tusser's maxims with the apparent ill-success of his life; this idea is dwelt on in Peacham's ‘Minerva’ (1612), in an epigram which also appeared in a terser form as follows: Tusser, they tell me when thou wert alive Thou, teaching thrift, thyself couldst never thrive; So, like the whetstone, many men are wont To sharpen others when themselves are blunt. The same idea runs through Fuller's account in his ‘Worthies of England’: ‘This stone of Sisyphus could gather no moss;’ ‘He spread his bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon;’ ‘None being better at the theory or worse at the practice of husbandry.’

[Tusser's Metrical Autobiography, in the 1573 and later editions of his Husbandry; Coxe's Select Works of Benjamin Stillingfleet, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 563; Fuller's Worthies of England, Essex, 1662, i. 335; Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, ed. Price, 1840, vol. iii. § liii. pp. 248–57; Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica, 1802; Davy's Athenæ Suffolcienses apud Addit. MS. 19165 f. 225; Hawkins's General Hist. of Music, 1858, ii. 537; Sir Walter Scott's sketch in Somers Tracts, iii. 403–7; Mavor's Tusser, 1812, pp. 5–34; Payne and Herrtage's Tusser, 1878, pp. xi–xxxi; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. xii. 119, 193, 5th ser. xi. 416, 6th ser. x. 49.]  TUTCHIN, JOHN (1661?–1707), whig pamphleteer, was born about 1661, probably in Hampshire or the Isle of Wight (cf. Observator, iii. No. 87). He himself says (ib. 17 to 20 May, 8 to 12 July 1704) that he was born a freeman of the city of London, and that his father, grandfather, and several of his uncles were nonconformist ministers. No doubt he was nearly related to the Rev. Robert Tutchin of Newport, Isle of Wight, who, like his three sons, was ejected in 1662 (, The Nonconformist's Memorial, 1802, i. 349, ii. 262, 275–6). Tutchin seems to have been at school at Stepney, and is said by a detractor to have been expelled for stealing (The Devil turned Limner, 1704).

In 1685 Tutchin published ‘Poems on several Occasions, with a Pastoral [The Unfortunate Shepherd], to which is added a