"I cannot omit heere the hunting, namely, with running houndes, which is the most honourable and noblest sort thereof; for it is a theivish forme of hunting to shoote with gunnes and bowes; and greyhound hunting [35] is not so martial a game.
"As for hawkinge, I condemn it not; but I must praise it more sparingly, because it neither resembleth the warres so neere as hunting doeth in making a man hardie and skilfully ridden in all grounds, and is more uncertain and subjec. to mischances; and, which is worst of all, is there through an extreme stirrer up of the passions.
"As for sitting, or house pastimes—since they may at times supply the roome which, being emptie, would be patent to pernicious idleness—I will not therefore agree with the curiositie of some learned men of our age in forbidding cardes, dice, and such like games of hazard: [36] when it is foule and stormie weather, then I say, may ye lawfully play at the cardes or tables; for, as to diceing, I think it becommeth best deboshed souldiers to play at on the heads of their drums, being only ruled by hazard, and subject to knavish cogging; and as for the chesse, I think it over-fond, because it is over-wise and philosophicke a folly."
His majesty concludes this subject with the following good advice to his son: "Beware in making your sporters your councellors, and delight not to keepe ordinarily in your companie comœdians or balladines."
XV.—REVIVAL OF LEARNING.
The discontinuation of bodily exercises afforded a proportionable quantity of leisure time for the cultivation of the mind; so that the manners of mankind were softened by degrees, and learning, which had been so long neglected, became fashionable, and was esteemed an indispensable mark of a polite education. Yet some of the nobility maintained for a long time the old prejudices in favour of the ancient mode of nurture, and preferred exercise of the body to mental endowments; such was the opinion of a person of high rank, who said to Richard Pace, secretary to king Henry VIII., "It is enough for the sons of noblemen to wind their horn and carry their hawke fair, and leave study and learning to the children of meaner people." [37] Many of the pastimes that had been countenanced by the nobility, and sanctioned by their example, in the middle ages, grew into disrepute in modern times, and were condemned as vulgar and unbecoming the notice of a gentleman. "Throwing the hammer and wrestling," says Peacham, in his Complete Gentleman, published in 1622, "I hold them exercises not so well beseeming nobility, but rather the soldiers in the camp and the prince's guard." On the contrary, sir William Forest, in his Poesye of Princelye Practice, a MS. in the Royal Library, [38] written in the year 1548, laying down the rules for the education of an heir apparent to the crown, or prince of the blood royal, writes thus:
So must a prince, at some convenient brayde,
In featis of maistries bestowe some diligence:
Too ryde, runne, leape, or caste by violence
Stone, barre, or plummett, or suche other thinge,