panion with
honest study.

_Philologe_--Well, Toxophile, if you have no stronger defense of
shooting than poets, I fear if your companions which love shooting heard
you, they would think you made it but a trifling and fabling matter,
rather than any other man that loveth not shooting could be persuaded by
this reason to love it.

_Toxophile_--Even as I am not so fond but I know that these be fables,
so I am sure you be not so ignorant but you know what such noble wits as
the poets had, meant by such matters; which oftentimes, under the
covering of a fable, do hide and wrap in goodly precepts of philosophy,
with the true judgment of things. Which to be true, specially in Homer
and Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, and Galen plainly do show; when through
all their works (in a manner) they determine all controversies by these
two poets and such like authorities. Therefore, if in this matter I seem
to fable and nothing prove, I am content you judge so on me, seeing the
same judgment shall condemn with me Plato, Aristotle, and Galen, whom in
that error I am well content to follow. If these old examples prove
nothing for shooting, what say you to this, that the best learned and
sagest men in this realm which be now alive, both love shooting and use
shooting, as the best learned bishops that be? amongst whom, Philologe,
you yourself know four or five, which, as in all good learning, virtue,
and sageness, they give other men example what thing they should do,
even so by their shooting they plainly show what honest pastime other
men given to learning may honestly use. That earnest study must be
recreated with honest pastime, sufficiently I have proved afore, both by
reason and authority of the best learned men that ever wrote. Then
seeing pastimes be leful [lawful], the most fittest for learning is to
be sought for. A pastime, saith Aristotle, must be like a medicine.
Medicines stand by contraries; therefore, the nature of studying
considered, the fittest pastime shall soon appear. In study every part
of the body is idle, which thing causeth gross and cold humors to gather
together and vex scholars very much; the mind is altogether bent and set
on work. A pastime then must be had where every part of the body must be
labored, to separate and lessen such humors withal; the mind must be
unbent, to gather and fetch again his quickness withal. Thus pastimes
for the mind only be nothing fit for students, because the body, which
is most h