to Gravesend'. But the most remarkable pamphlet of this class is Pimlyco or, Runne Red Cap (1609). The poet describes himself lying in the grass amid the delights of spring, and watching lovers sport together, while, in the background, the towers and steeples of London

Lifted their proud heads bove the skies,

gleaming like gold in the morning sunlight. By chance, he finds Skelton's Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng; and, while reading the satire, looks up and beholds a motley crowd of men and women surging towards Hogsden to consume its ale. The contagious enthusiasm carries him along, and, with Skelton's poem in his hand, 'with those mad times to weigh our times,' he first breaks out into a burlesque eulogy on Pimlyco ale, and then wittily describes the insane rush for the pleasures of the resort. Payment for alehouse fare was vulgarly known as 'shot'; so he represents the place as a fort which an impetuous army is attacking with this artillery. In the ranks are all types of society who scramble for tankards, calling 'Fill, Fill, Fill.' Poets seek inspiration; ballad singers exercise their 'villanous yelping throats.' Lawyers, usurers, courtiers, soldiers, 'lads and greasie lownes,' women of every age and figure, jostle one another in their eagerness to squander money on tippling. Such a production is far more than a topical effusion. Pimlyco is a satirical rhapsody on the age's animal spirits and headlong folly, a burlesque review in which the genius and method of Cocke Lorell's bote3 are adapted to the interests of Jacobean London.

All this while, the exuberant national life continued to find yet another form of expression in the broadsides and street ballads which had grown out of the people's love of singing in early Tudor times. Songs were sung and sold at every street corner and crossway, or outside the theatre doors, and so popular did some airs become that Guilpin reckoned the chanting of Kemp's Jigge and The Burgonians Tragedy among the nuisances of London. Cornwallis describes a crowd gathered round a city minstrel. He tells us 'how thoroughly the standers by are affected,... what shift they make to stand to heare. Ballad-mongers, who were sometimes men of education, represented the public opinion of the 1 The Cobler of Canterburie, 1608 (largely reprinted in The Tincker of Turney, 1630). 2 Discussion on the origin of the word has been reopened in N. & Q. no. 256, 21 Nov. 1908.

3 Ante, vol. m, chap. v, pp. 83—85.

4 Ante, vol. I, chap. v, p. 96, and bibl., p. 490.

5 One of them, Thomas Spickernell, was first a ballad-monger and then a minister; and another, Richard Corbet, M.A., was first a doctor of divinity and then an itinerant musician. See A. Clark, Shirburn Ballads, 1907.

Local Tracts, Prophecies and Broadsides 363

lower classes. News of foreign and political events was circulated this way; accounts of monstrosities, portents, prodigies and disasters were graphically reported. Prophecies were composed or revived. R. Waldegrave even published, in 1603, a whole volume of medieval oracles from Merlin, Eltraine, Beid, Thomas the Rimer and others Murders and executions were described with appropriate apologues or, as in the case of Ravaillac's tortures1, with harrowing and imaginary details. Tales of love-making and domestic scenes are found, some in dialogue or a kind of rude four-act drama. There were other ditties, especially drinking songs, which were merely coarse, and 'Nownow,' in Kinde Hart's Dreame, complains that crowds gather to hear children sing immoral lays. The old heroic ballads were still favourites2, as, also, were naïve tales which bore mark of medieval origin. A large number were nothing else than church hymns, which a householder could buy on Saturday evening for Sunday use. A pronounced liking for repentances and confessions can also be traced. Many broadsides represent a doomed man on the scaffold, addressing a farewell homily to the world, in which he confesses his crimes and warns others to shun his besetting sin. Some contain tragedies of love or jealousy; others touch on social and political grievances.

It will be noticed that these doggerel fragmentary verses deal with the very subjects which supplied material for the great pamphleteers and satirists of the age. Nor can the work of Greene, Nashe, Dekker, Rowlands, Hall, Marston, Guilpin and their peers be really understood unless this vast background of varied plebeian sentiment be kept in view. And yet the golden age of popular literature was past. The sixteenth century had seen the rise of thoughtful humorists and investigators, whose first care had been to probe the errors and expose the frauds of the common people among whom they lived. But, in the literary atmosphere of Jacobean London, this tractarian movement was gradually becoming a series of elaborate experiments. The brilliant writers of the age were evolving complex organs of expression and, already, before the Civil War, had laid the foundations of eighteenth century prose literature. But they lost touch with the deeper interests of the people. Meanwhile, broadsides and flysheets continued to multiply; but it was not till the advent of the romantic movement that a school of writers again devoted their talents to the interpretation of social life.

1 The terrible and deserved Death of Francis Ravilliack, 1610. Rptd Harl. Misc. vol. vi. 2 Cf. The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and Martin Parker's Ballads.

CHAPTER XVII

WRITERS ON COUNTRY PURSUITS AND PASTIMES

GERVASE MARKHAM

WHILE the great Elizabethan writers were producing poems, plays and other masterpieces destined to take an enduring place in English literature, there was another side of literary activity, which, though practically unrecognised as literature, yet had an important influence on a large body of readers for the majority of whom polite literature scarcely existed. The books that formed this by-stream appealed to the country squire and the yeoman, not, indeed, as literature, but as storehouses of facts-practical guides to their agricultural occupations, or instruction in their favourite pastimes of hunting and hawking, fishing and gardening.

Before this period, but few books dealing with these subjects had appeared in print. The first and most famous among them was The Book of St Albans', first printed about 1486, which stood practically alone until the appearance, early in the sixteenth century, of Walter of Henley's Book of Husbandry and Fitzherbert's treatise on the same subject. But it was not till the second half of the century that these subjects, in common with every other branch of literature, were fully developed in that productive age.

For the materials of this literature, there were two main sources: one, the stock of native lore, which was the outcome of the practical experience of generations, supplemented by an occasional dip at the well of superstition, and this was preserved to some extent in manuscript as well as handed down by oral tradition; the other, contemporary foreign literature, notably that of Italy, which was freely drawn upon in the way of translation, these versions being often the work of the purely literary man or of the hack-writer who brought to the subject little or nothing of first-hand knowledge.

The outstanding name among the workers in this field is that of the prolific and versatile enthusiast Gervase Markham, whose

1 See vol. I, p. 318.

Markham's Cavelarice

365

activity extended from the last decade of the sixteenth century to his death in 1637. He was born about 1568, and, in his early years, spent at his Nottinghamshire home, he naturally became familiar with every aspect of country life. Like many other younger sons of the time, he took to a military career; but, after some years' experience in the wars of the Low Countries, he exchanged his sword for the pen.

The subjects with which he dealt included such matters as hunting, hawking, husbandry, gardening, housewifery and the military art, diversified by occasional excursions into polite literature in the shape of plays and poems. But, of the many sides of his literary activity, the most prominent, as well as most congenial, was, without doubt, that dealing with horsemanship and the veterinary art.

The first of the long series of his books on horses was issued in 1593 under the title A Discource of Horsmanshippe. In this same year, also, he made his first essay in belles lettres, by preparing for the press a poem entitled Thyrsis and Daphne; but no copy of this is known to have survived. After having reissued the Discource in a new and enlarged guise, under the title How to chuse, ride, traine, and diet, both hunting-horses and running horses, he followed it, in 1605, with a treatise on How to trayne and teach horses to amble. Two years later, Markham produced his chief work on his favourite theme, the horse, 'with whose nature and use,' he claims with some pride, 'I have been exercised and acquainted from my Childhood, and I hope, without boast, need not yield to any in this Kingdome.'

This book he entitled Cavelarice, or the English Horseman. But it was not in Markham's nature to be satisfied with so brief, though comprehensive, a title. Showman at heart as he was, the big drum must be beat, and the attention of the world called to the wonders to be found within. So, characteristically, and with a flourish, he sets forth his wares in detail, and acclaims their originality and his own altruism. Here is the whole:

Cavelarice, or the English Horseman: contayning all the Arte of Horsemanship, as much as is necessary for any man to understand, whether he be Horse-breeder, horse-ryder, horse-hunter, horse-runner, horse-ambler, horsefarrier, horse-keeper, Coachman, Smith, or Sadler. Together with the discovery of the subtill trade or mistery of horse-coursers, and an explanation of the excellency of a horses understanding, or how to teach them to doe trickes like Bankes his Curtall: And that horses may be made to drawe drie-foot like a Hound. Secrets before unpublished, and now carefully set down for the profit of this whole Nation.

But, if Markham was adept at displaying his wares, he was no less a master in the choice of appropriate patrons and in the writing of dedications-a practice reduced to a fine art in those days. It was a poor book which could not be made to carry two, if not three, of his dedicatory epistles, for each of which he doubtless looked for some remuneration. In Cavelarice, the division into books affords him opportunity for no less than eight dedications, leading off with prince Henry, to whom succeed noblemen of various titles duly graduated. In issuing a new edition, 'corrected and augmented, with many worthy secrets not before known,' ten years later, the name of Charles, prince of Wales, is quietly substituted for that of the late prince, without the slightest change in the terms of the address.

And, when we come to the text of the book itself, Markham is not wanting in this matter either. He is master of his subject; and, whether he calls upon the stores of his own experience, or, as was much the fashion in his time, uses material 'drawen out of the most approved authors,' he conveys the impression of writing with full knowledge, and inspires confidence as one who speaks with the unhesitating assurance of authority. His directions are full and clear, and his style is touched with an enthusiasm and an engaging familiarity which bring his reader into close contact and almost convey the illusion of oral instruction. Now and again, one comes across bits of that deep-rooted country tradition which has not even yet worn itself out, such as when he directs that 'If your horse be shrewe-runne, you shall looke for a briere which growes at both endes, and draw your horse thorow it and he will be well.' But Markham is not much given to this kind of thing, and, whether it was a concession to rural superstition or a filching from one of his 'approved authors,' it is noticeable that he neither gives the symptoms of being 'shrew-runne' nor describes the nature of the malady.

The mention, in the title-page, of 'Bankes his Curtall,' is a reference to a celebrated performing horse, called 'Marocco,' which his owner, one Banks a Scotsman, had taught to do tricks so astonishing that both the 'dancing horse' and its trainer achieved a European reputation. Shakespeare, in Love's Labour's Lost, makes reference to Marocco's power of counting money, and many other allusions to his cleverness may be found in contemporary literature. The most renowned exploit of this famous animal was the ascent of St Paul's Cathedral, which took place in 1600. He was afterwards exhibited in Paris, Frankfort and other places,