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Gentlemen's
Recreations |
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| The
Country-mans recreation illustrates the difficulty of establishing
the identity of an early modern book. The general title page announces
three "books"—and delivers four, if one counts Barker's
Art of Angling, which according to the title page is "likewise
added." Three of the components—A Perfect Platform
of a Hop-Garden, The Expert Gardener, and the Art
of Angling have individual title pages and were separately issued.
The last two are independently paginated with their own runs of "signatures"
(or gatherings of leaves). But the Perfect Platform shares
its signature run and pagination with The Country-mans recreation.
According to the title pages, those two also share a printer and publisher,
though not the date of publication. The Art of Angling was
the first published of Barker's works, and is mentioned in Izaak Walton's
Complete Angler (first published for Richard Marriott in
1653). Marriott published an edition of Barker's Art of Angling
in 1657. A third publisher, Humphrey Moseley—who was associated
with Royalist literature—also published an edition of the Art
of Angling in 1659.
In Shears's 1654 edition,
the Art of Angling is placed in a larger set of practical
treatises for the husbandman, not all of which were actually authored
by Thomas Barker. Though the title pages are not elaborated with
woodcut illustrations, the works are fully illustrated, including
twenty-two pages (or two and one-half signatures) In addition to grafting techniques, Barker wrote of fruit yields from apple and pear trees and schedules for planting vegetables. He also devoted a great deal of space to pest control. On this subject, as with others, he appears to have drawn largely from experience; however, he cited a few textual authorities on this matter. Barker noted that Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History that unsalted olive oil would keep worms away (p. 26), and that Palladius Rutilius said that dry seeds from tortoise skin would keep out "noisome vermine or creeping things" (pp. 26-7). He cited "Albertus," presumably Albertus Magnus, who wrote that stuffing garlic or leeks down molehills would either kill or drive them away (p. 31). A potential reader of Barker's treatise may not have had the means or desire to plant a knot garden but could have still profited from his treatise. Bruce Janacek
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