Contempt for Learning.
If a father have foure sonnes, three faire and well formed both mynde and bodie, the fourth, wretched, lame, and deformed, his choice shalbe, to put the worst to learning, as one good enoughe to becum a scholer. I have spent the most parte of my life in the Universitie, and therfore I can beare good witnes that many fathers commonlie do thus: wherof, I have heard many wise, learned, and as good men as ever I knew, make great, and oft complainte: a good horseman will choose no soch colte, neither for his own, nor yet for his master’s sadle.
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How to attract the Scholar.
Young men, by any meanes, losing the love of learning, when by tyme they cum to their owne rule, they carie commonlie from the schole with them a perpetuall hatred of their master, and a continuall contempt of learning. If ten gentlemen be asked why they forget so sone in court that which they were learning so long in schole, eight of them (or let me be blamed) will laie the fault on their ill handling by their scholemasters....
Yet, some will say, that children of nature love pastime and mislike learning: bicause, in their kinde, the one is easie and pleasant, the other hard and werisom: which is an opinion not so trewe, as some men weene: For, the matter lieth not so much in the disposition of them that be yong, as in the order and maner of bringing up by them that be old, nor yet in the difference of learnyng and pastime. For, beate a child if he daunce not well, and cherish him though he learne not well, ye shall have him unwilling to go to daunce and glad to go to his booke. Knocke him alwaies, when he draweth his shaft ill, and favor him againe, though he faut[76] at his booke, ye shall have hym verie loth to be in the field, and verie willing to be in the schole.[77]
PURITANISM ON DRESS.
Source.—Philip Stubbes: Anatomy of Abuses, 1583 (Ed. New Shakspere Society). Part i., pp. 51-52, 71-73.
But wot you what? The devil, as he is in the fulness of his malice, first invented these great ruffes, so hath he now found out also two great stayes to beare up and maintaine that his kingdome of great ruffes (for the devil is king and prince over all the children of pride): the one arch or piller whereby his kingdome of great ruffes is underpropped, is a certain kind of liquide matter which they call Starch, wherein the devil hath willed them to wash and dive[78] his ruffes wel, which, when they be dry, wil then stand stiffe and inflexible about their necks. The other piller is a certain device made of wires, crested for the purpose, whipped over either with gold, thread, silver or silk, and this he calleth a supportasse, or underpropper. This is to be applyed round about their necks under the ruffe, upon the outside of the band, to beare up the whole frame and body of the ruffe from falling and hanging down.