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BOUT the fame time flourished Thomas Tuffer, one of our earliest didactic poets, in a science of the highest utility, and which produced one of the most beautiful poems of antiquity. The viciffitudes of this man's life have uncommon variety and novelty for the life of an author, and his history conveys fome curious traces of the times as well as of himself. He seems to have been alike the sport of fortune, and a dupe to his own difcontented difpofition and his perpetual propenfity to change of fituation.

He was born of an antient family, about the year 1523, at Rivenhall in Effex; and was placed as a chorifter, or fingingboy, in the collegiate chapel of the castle of Wallingford in Berkshire. Having a fine voice, he was impreffed from Wallingford college into the king's chapel. Soon afterwards he was admitted into the choir of faint Paul's cathedral in London; where he made great improvements under the instruction of John Redford the organist, a famous musician. He was next fent to Eton-school, where, at one chastisement, he received fifty-three stripes of the rod, from the fevere but celebrated mafter Nicholas Udall '. His academical education was at Trinity-hall in Cambridge: but Hatcher affirms, that he was from Eton admitted a fcholar of King's college in that university,

2 This chapel had a dean, fix prebendaries, fix clerks, and four choristers. It was diffolved in 1549.

Udall's English interludes, mentioned above, were perhaps written for his fcho

lars. Thirty-five lines of one of them. are quoted in Wilfon's ARTE OF LOGIKE, edit. 1567. fol. 67. a. "Suete maiftreffe "whereas, &c."

under

under the year 1543. From the univerfity he was called up to court by his fingular and generous patron William lord Paget, in whose family he appears to have been a retainer". In this department he lived ten years: but being difgufted with the vices, and wearied with the quarrels of the courtiers, he retired into the country, and embraced the profeflion of a farmer, which he fucceffively practifed at Ratwood in Suffex, Ipfwich in Suffolk, Fairftead in Effex, Norwich, and other placés. Here his patrons were fir Richard Southwell', and Salisbury dean of Norwich. Under the latter he procured the place of a finging-man in Norwich cathedral. At length, having perhaps too much philosophy and too little experience to fucceed in the business of agriculture, he returned to London: but the plague drove him away from town, and he took shelter at Trinity college in Cambridge. Without a tincture of careless imprudence, or vicious extragance, this defultory character feems to have thrived in no vocation. Fuller fays, that his ftone, which gathered no mofs, was the ftone of Sifyphus. His plough and his poetry were alike unprofitable. He was by turns a fiddler and a farmer, a grafier and a poet with equal fuccefs. He died very aged at London in 1580, and was

buried in faint Mildred's church in the Poultry o.

Some of these circumstances, with many others. of lefs confequence, are related by himself in one of his pieces, entitled the AUTHOR'S LIFE, as follows.

MSS. Catal. Præpos. Soc. Schol. Coll. Regal. Cant.

d Our author's HUSBANDRIE is dedi cated to his fon Lord Thomas Paget of Beaudefert, fol. 7. ch. ii. edit. ut infr.

In Peacham's MINERVA, a book of emblems printed in 1612, there is the device of a whetstone and a fcythe with these lines, fol. 61. edit. 4to.

They tell me, TUSSER, when thou wert alive,

And hadft for profit turned euery ftone, Where ere thou cam. cft thou couldst neuer thriuc,

Though heereto beft couldft counsel every

one,

As it may in thy HUSBANDRIE appeare
Wherein afresh thou liuft among vs here.

So like thy felfe a number more are wont,
To fharpen others with advice of wit,
When thy themfelues are like the whet-
ftone blunt, &c.

f See LIFE OF SIR THOMAS POPE, 2d edit. p. 218.

See his Epitaph in Stowe's SURV. LOND. p. 474. edit. 1618. 4to. And. Fuller's WORTHIES, P. 334. What

h

What robes how bare, what colledge fare!
What bread how ftale, what pennie ale!
Then WALLINGFORD, how wert thou abhord
Of fillie boies!

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"two degrees of men, which haue the

higheft offices under the king in all this "realme, fhall greatly lacke the vse of "finginge, preachers and lawyers, be"caufe they fhall not, withoute this, be "able to rule theyr BRESTES for euerye "purpose, &c." fol. 8. b. Lond. 1571. 4to. Bl. Lett.

It came to pas, thus beat I was:

See, Udall, fee, the mercie of thee
To me, poore lad!

TO LONDON hence, to CAMBRIDGE thence,
With thankes to thee, O TRINITE,

That to thy HALL, fo paffinge all,
I got at last.

There ioy I felt, there trim I dwelt, &c.

At length he married a wife by the name of Moone, from whom, for an obvious reafon, he expected great inconftancy, but was happily disappointed.

Through Uenus' toies, in hope of ioies,

I chanced foone to finde a Moone,
Of cheerfull hew:

Which well and fine, methought, did shine,
And neuer change, a thing most strange,
Yet kept in fight, her course aright,

And

compas trew, &c.

Before I proceed, I muft fay a few words concerning the very remarkable practice implied in these ftanzas, of feizing boys by a warrant for the fervice of the king's chapel. Strype has printed an abstract of an instrument, by which it appears, that emiffaries were dispatched into various parts of England with full powers to take boys from any choir for the use of the chapel of king Edward the fixth. Under the year 1550, fays Strype, there was a grant of a commiffion" to Philip Van Wilder gen"tleman of the Privy Chamber, in anie churches or chappells "within England to take to the king's use, fuch and as many

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finging children and chorifters, as he or his deputy shall think good'." And again, in the following year, the mafter of the king's chapel, that is, the mafter of the king's finging-boys, has licence to take up from time to time as many children [boys] "to ferve in the king's chapel as he fhall think fit." Under the year 1454, there is a commiffion of the fame fort from king Henry the fixth, De miniftrallis propter folatium regis providendis, for procuring minstrels, even by force, for the folace or entertainment of the king and it is required, that the minstrels so procured, should be not only skilled in arte minftrallatus, in the art of minstrelsy, but membris naturalibus elegantes, handsome and elegantly shaped ". As the word Minstrel is of an extenfive fignification, and is applied as a general term to every character of that species of men whofe business it was to entertain, either with oral recitation, mufic, gefticulation, and finging, or with a mixture of all thefe arts united, it is certainly difficult to determine, whether fingers only, more particularly fingers for the royal chapel, were here intended. The last clause may perhaps more immediately seem to point out tumblers or posture-masters °. But in the register of the capitulary acts of York cathedral, it is ordered as an indifpenfable qualification, that the chorister who is annually to be elected the boy-bishop, fhould be competenter corpore formofus. I will tranfcribe an article of the register, relating to that ridiculous ceremony. "Dec. 2. 1367. Joannes

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"the queen and cardinal [Pole] looking

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on; whereat fhe was obferved to laugh "heartily, &c." Strype's EccL. MEм. iii. P. 312. ch. xxxix. Mr. Aftle has a roll of fome private expences of king Edward the fecond: among which it appears, that fifty fhillings were paid to a perfon who danced before the king on a table, et "lui fift tres grandement rire." And that twenty fhillings were allowed to another, who rode before his majefty, and often fell from his horfe, at which his majefty laughed heartily, de queux roi rya grantement. The laughter of kings was thought worthy to be recorded.

"de

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