'These steps| both reach|| and teach| thou shalt|
To come| by thrift|| to shift| withal|.'——Tusser.
'The pi|pers loud|| and loud|er blew|,
The dan|cers quick|| and quick|er flew|.'——Burns."
The following are Tusser's principal peculiarities:—
1. The use of a plural noun with a verb singular. This very frequently occurs. "Some," too, is almost invariably treated thus.
2. His omissions and elliptical phrases, such as [while] plough-cattle [are] a-baiting ([85/2]); thy market [having been] despatched, [57/45]; a small [income] [62/11]; in the mottoes of the months, [work] forgotten [in the] month past; and in such expressions as "fault known" [47/22], "that done" [55/2], "who living" [26/1], etc.
3. Peculiarities of rime. Tusser appears to have attributed far more importance to the outward appearance of his riming words, than to the reality of the rimes. So long as they appeared to rime, it seems to have mattered little that in pronunciation they were widely different. We thus find them constantly (a) changing the spelling of words in order to make them look like others; and again (b) using as rimes words which, though similarly spelt, are totally unlike in pronunciation. The following examples will suffice. In alterations of orthography we find weight (for wait) to rime with eight; raies (for raise); mutch to rime with hutch; thease to rime with ease; ise (for ice) to rime with device; flo (for flow) to rime with fro; feere (for fire or fier) to rime with Janiveere; tought (for taught) to rime with thought; cace (for case) to rime with place; waight (for wait) to rime with straight; bilde, to rime with childe; thoes (for those) to rime with sloes, etc.
On the other hand, we find such rimes as the following: plough, rough; shew, few; have, save; have, crave; feat, great; overthwart, part; shal, fal; and a very curious instance in [Chapter 69, stanza 1], where thrive is made to rime with atchive.
If the number of editions through which an author's works pass be a proof of merit, as it certainly is of popularity, few writers of his time can enter into competition with Tusser. During the forty years from the appearance of the first edition of the "One Hundreth Poyntes" in 1557 to the end of the sixteenth century, no fewer than thirteen editions of his work are known to have been published. Yet all are scarce, and few of those surviving are perfect; a proof that what was intended for practical use had been sedulously applied to that purpose. "Some books," says Mr. Haslewood, in the "British Bibliographer," No. iii., "become heir-looms from value; and Tusser's work, for useful information in every department of agriculture, together with its quaint and amusing observations, perhaps passed the copies from father to son, till they crumbled away in the bare shifting of the pages, and the mouldering relic only lost its value by the casual mutilation of time." Subjoined is a list of all the various recorded editions, extracted from Mavor's introduction and other sources.