cloth for the vicar of saint fooles: then begins he to take his sissars in his hand and his combe, and so to snap with them as if he meant to give a warning to all the lice in his nittye lockes for to prepare themselves, for the day of their destruction was at hande, then comes he out with his fustian eloquence, and making a low conge, saith, Sir will you have your wor haire cut after the Italian maner, shorte and round, and then frounst with the curling yrons, to make it looke like a halfe moone in a mist? or like a Spanyard long at the eares, and curled like to the two endes of an olde cast perriwig? or will you bée Frenchefied with a love locke down to your shoulders, wherein you may weare your mistresse favour? The English cut is base, and gentlemen scorne it, novelty is daintye. Speake the woord sir, and my sissars are ready to execute your worships wil. His head being once drest, which requires in combing and rubbing some two howers, hée comes to the bason: then béeing curiously washt with no woorse than a camphire bal, he descends as low as his berd and asketh whether he please to be shaven or no, whether he will have his peak cut short and sharpe, amiable like an inamorato or broad pendant like a spade, to be terrible like a warrior and a Soldado, whether he wil have his crates cut low like a Iuniperbush, or his suberches taken away with a rasor, if it be his pleasure to have his appendices primd, or his mustachios fostered to turn about his eares like the branches of a vine, or cut down to the lip with the Italian lash, to make him look like a halfe faced bauby in bras? These quaint tearmes, Barber, you greet maister Velvetbreeches withall, and at every word a snap with your sissors, and a cring with your knee, whereas when you come to poore Cloth-breeches you either cutte his beard at your owne pleasure, or else in disdaine aske him if he wil be trimd with Christs cut, round

like the halfe of a holland cheese, mocking both Christ and vs for this your knauerie my wil is you shall be none of the iurie.

Velvet-breeCHES OBJECTS TO AN HONEST Knight. WHY you may gesse the inwarde minde by the outward apparell, and see how he is adicted by the homely robes he is suted in. Why this knight is mortall enimy to pride and so to me, he regardeth hospitality and aimeth at honor with releeving the poore: you may see although his landes and revenewes be great, and he able to maintain himself in great bravery, yet he is content with home spun cloth, and scorneth the pride that is now adaies used amongst young upstarts: he holdeth not the worth. of his Gentry to be and consist in velvet breeches, but valeweth true fame by the report of the common sort, who praise him for his vertue, Iustice, liberality, housekeeping and almesdeeds: Vox populi vox Dei, his tenants and farmers would, if it might bee possible, make him immortall with their praiers and praises. He raiseth no rent, racketh no lands, taketh no incombs, imposeth no mercilesse fines, envies not another, buyeth no house over his neighbours head, but respecteth his country and the commodity thereof, as deere as his life. Hee regardeth more to have the needy fed, to have his boord garnished with full platters, then to famous himself with excessive furniture in apparel. Since then he scorneth pride, he must of force proclaime himselfe mine enimy, and therfore he shal be none of my iury: and such as himselfe I gesse the Squire and the Gentleman, and therefore I challeng them all three. Why, quoth I, this is strange, that a man should be drawne from a quest for his goodnesse.

From 'A Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance."

AND thou2 no lesse deserving than the other two,8 in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour; driven (as my selfe) to extreame shifts, a little have I to say to thee and were it not an idolatrous oth, I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art unworthie better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay. Base minded men al three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned for unto none of you (like me) sought those burres to cleave: those Puppits (I meane) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they al have beene beholding; is it not like that you, to whome they all have beene beholding, shall (were ye in that case that I am now) be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide,5 supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you and being an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie. O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable courses: and let those Apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions.

1 Greene exhorts his fellow-dramatists to give up writing plays, and reflects on Shakespeare for borrowing without acknowledgment. (See Grosart's edition of Greene's works.) 2 Peele. 3 Marlowe and Nashe. 4 Shakespeare. Parody of 'Henry III.,' Part III., Act I., Sc. 4 : "O tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide!'

THOMAS NASHE [1567-1601].

From The Anatomie of Absurditie' (1589).

IT fareth nowe a daies with unlearned Idiots as it doth with she Asses, who bring foorth all their life long: even so these brainlesse Buzzards are every quarter bigge wyth one pamphlet or other. But as an Egge that is full, beeing put into water sinketh to the bottome, whereas that which is emptie floateth above, so those that are more exquisitely furnished with learning shroude themselves in obscuritie, whereas they that are voide of all knowledge endevour continually to publish theyr follie.

Such and the very same are they that obtrude themselves unto us, as the Authors of eloquence, and fountains of our finer phrases, whenas they sette before us nought but a confused masse of wordes without matter, a Chaos of sentences without any profitable sence, resembling drummes, which beeing emptie within, sound big without. Were it that any Morall of greater moment might be fished out of their fabulous follie, leaving theyr words, we would cleave to their meaning, pretermitting theyr painted shewe, we would pry into their propounded sence, but when as lust is the tractate of so many leaves, and love passions the lavish dispense of so much paper, I must needes sende such idle wits to shrift to the vicar of S. Fooles, who in steede of a worser may be such a Gothamists ghostly father. Might Ovids exile admonish such Idlebies to betake them to a new trade, the Presse should be farre better employed, Histories of antiquitie not half so much belyed, minerals, stones and herbes should not have such cogged natures and names ascribed to them without cause, Englishmen shoulde not be

halfe so much Italinated as they are, finallie, love woulde obtaine the name of lust, and vice no longer maske under the visard of vertue.

One requiring Diogenes judgment when it was best time to take a wife, he answered, for the young man not yet, and the olde man never. Pythagoras sayd, that there were three evils not to be suffered, fire, water, and a woman. And the fore named Cinick deemed them the wisest lyers in the world, which tell folke they will be married, and yet remaine single, accounting it the lesse inconvenience of two extremities to choose the lesse. . . . What shall I say of him that being askt, from what women a man should keepe himselfe, answered, from the quick and from the deade, adding moreover, that one evill ioynes with another when a woman is sicke. Demosthenes saide, that it was the greatest torment that a man could invent to his enemies vexation, to give him his daughter in marriage, as a domesticall Furie to disquiet him night and day. Democritus accounted. a faire chaste woman a miracle of miracles, a degree of immortality, a crowne of tryumph, because shee is so harde to be founde. Another being asked, who was he that coulde not at any time be without a wife, answered, hee that was accurst: and what dooth thys common proverbe, he that marrieth late marrieth evill, insinuate to us, but that if a man meane to marry, he were as good begin betimes as tarry long, and beeing about to make a vertue of necessitie, and an arte of patience, they are to begin in theyr young and tender age. ... There be two especiall troubles in this world, saith Seneca, a wife and ignorance. . . . For my part I meane to suspende my sentence and to let an Author of late memorie be my speaker, who affyrmeth that they carrie Angels in their faces to entangle men and devils in their devices. . . . I