S. W. Singer.
"By Hook or by Crook" (vol. iii. p. 116.).—However unimaginative the worthy Cit may be for whose explanation of this popular phrase J. D. S. has made himself answerable, the solution sounds so pretty, that to save its obtaining further credence, more than your well-timed note is needed. I with safety can contradict it, for I find that "Tusser," a Norfolk man living in the reign of Henry VIII., in a poem which he wrote as a complete monthly guide and adviser for the farmer through the year, but which was not published till 1590, in the thirty-second year of Queen Elizabeth, has the following advice for March 30:
"Of mastiues and mongrels, that many we see
A number of thousands, to many there be:
Watch therefore in Lent, to thy sheepe go and looke,
For dogs will have vittels, by hooke and by crooke."
This must be a Norfolk phrase; for in January he advises farmers possessing "Hollands," rich grass lands, to only keep ewes that bear twins, "twinlins."
Blowen.
This appears as a well-known proverbial expression long before the time pointed out by J. D. S. Thus, in Devout Contemplations, by Fr. Ch. de Fonseca, Englished by J. M., London, 1629, we read that the Devil
"Overthroweth monasteries; through sloth and idleness soliciting religious men to be negligent in coming to Church, careless in preaching, and loose in their lives. In the marriage bed he soweth tares, treacheries, and lightness. With worldly men he persuadeth that he is nobody that is not rich, and therefore, bee it by hooke or by crooke, by right or wrong, he would have them get to be wealthy."