to virtue. And there are some rogues
(sarcastic Philip Philip!) that make a living by dyeing
and selling these cockscombs, and many more
fools that wear them.

As to ruffs, Philip Philoponus roundly
asserts that they are an invention of the
Devil in the fulness of his malice. For in
Ailgua, look you, they have great monstrous
ruffs of cambric, lawn, holland or fine cloth
—some a quarter of a yard deep—standing
forth from their necks, and hanging over
their shoulder points like a veil. But if
AEolus, with his blasts (malicious Stubbes!)
—or Neptune, with his storms, chance to hit
upon the crazy bark of their bruised ruffs,
then they go flip-flap in the wind, like rags
that go abroad; or hang upon their shoulders
like the dishclout of a slut (ungallaut Philip!).
This is a shocking state of things enough, but
this is not all. The arch enemy of mankind,
not content with his victory over the children
of pride in the invention of ruffs, has
malignantly devised two arches or pillars to
underprop the kingdom of great ruffs withal
—videlicet, supportasses and STARCH. Now,
supportasses are a certain device made of
wires crested, whipped over with gold, silver
thread, or silk, to be applied round the neck
under the ruff, upon the outside of the band,
to bear up the whole frame and body of the
ruff from hanging and falling down. As for
starch, it is a certain liquid matter wherein
the Devil hath willed the people of Ailgna to
wash and dip their ruffs well, which being
dry, will then stand stiff and inflexible about
their necks. In another portion of the
Anatoinie, Stubbea calls starch the Devil's
liquor.

This persistent denunciation of the harmless
gluten of wheat flour, on the part of this
quaint old enthusiast, is very curious to
consider. How an educated Englishman—a
scholar, too, as Stubbes undoubtedly was
—could, in the Augustan age of Queen
Elizabeth in the very days when Shakspeare was
writing his plays and Bacon his essays
—gravely sit down and affirm that the Devil
had turned clearstarcher, and lured souls to
perdition through the medium of the washtub,
passes my comprehension. I should be
inclined to set Philip down at once as a crazy
fanatic, did I not remember with shame, that
in this present year of the nineteenth century
there are educated Christian mistresses in
our present Ailgna who look upon ringlets
and cap-ribbons in their female servants as
little less than inventions of the Evil One;
that there are yet schoolmasters who sternly
forbid the use of steel pens to their pupils as
dangerous and revolutionary implements; that
there are yet believers in witchcraft; and customers
to fortune-tellers, and takers of Professor
Methusaleh's pills. I dare say Stubbes and
his vagaries were laughed at as they deserved to
be by the sensible men of Queen Elizabeth's
time; but that, on the mass of the people, his
fierce earnest invectives against the fopperies
of dress made a deep and lasting impression.
This book-baby twelvemo of Philip Philoponus
is but a babe in swaddling-clothes now;
but he will be sent anon to the school of
stern ascetic puritanism, and Mr. Prynne's
Unloveliness of Lovelocks will be his horn-
book. Growing adolescent and advanced in
his humanities, his soul will yearn for stronger
meats, and the solemn league and covenant
will be put into his hand. He will read that,
and graduate a Roundhead, and fight at
Naseby, and sit down before Basing House,
and shout at Westminster, and clap his hands
at Whitehall. So, Philip Stubbes'
denunciations will be felt in their remotest
consequences, and starch will stiffen round the
neck till it cuts off King Charles the First's
head.

Our reformer's condemnation of starch is
clenched by a very horrible story—so
fearsome that I scarcely have courage to
transcribe it; yet remembering how many young
men of the present day are giving themselves
up blindly to starch as applied to all-round
collars, and wishing to bring them to a sense
of their miserable condition, and a knowledge
of what they may reasonably expect if they
persist in their present pernicious course of
life and linen, I will make bold to tell the
great starch catastrophe.

The fearful judgment showed upon a
gentlewoman of Eprautna (?)  (in the margin,
Antwerp) of late, even the twenty-second of
May, fifteen hundred and eighty-two. This
gentlewoman, being a very rich merchant-
man's daughter, upon a time was invited to a
wedding which was solemnised in that town,
against which day she made great preparation
for the "pluming of herself in gorgeous
array " (this reads like Villikins and his
Dinah), that, as her body was most beautiful
fair, and proper, so that her attire, in every
respect might be correspondent to the same.
For the accomplishment of which she curled
her hair, she dyed her locks, and laid them
out after the best manner. Also she coloured
her face with waters and ointments. But in
no case could she get any (so curious and
dainty was she) that would starch and set
her ruffs and neckerchief to her mind; wherefore
she sent for a couple of laundresses, who
did their best to please her humours, but in
any case they could not. Then fell she to
swear and tear (oh! shocking state of
things in Antwerp, when gentlewomen tore
and swore!), and curse and ban, casting the
ruffs under feet, and wishing that the devil
might take her when she wore any of those
ruffs again. In the meantime, the devil
transforming himself into a young man, as
brave and proper as she in every point of
outward appearance, came in, feigning himself
to be a lover or suitor unto her. And
seeing her thus agonised, and in such a " pelt
ing chafe," he demanded of her the cause
thereof. Who straightway told him (as
women can conceal nothing that lyeth upon