206] who writes to his pupil:

"I would not have you too studious, for too much contemplation spoils
action, and Virtue consists in that." The Prince's model is to be the
Bishop of Chichester, his tutor, who "hath no pedantry in him: his
learning he makes right use of, neither to trouble himself with it or
his friends: ... reades men as well as books: ... is travell'd, which
you shall perceive by his wisdome and fashion more than by his
relations; and in a word strives as much discreetly to hide the scholler
in him, as other men's follies studies to shew it: and is a right
gentleman."[207]

Of pedantry, however, there never seems to have been any danger in Court
circles, either in Tudor or Stuart days. It took constant exhortations
to make the majority of noblemen's sons learn anything at all out of
books. For centuries the marks of a gentleman had been bravery, courtesy
and a good seat in the saddle, and it was not to be supposed that a
sudden fashionable enthusiasm for literature could change all that.
Ascham had declared that the Elizabethan young bloods thought it
shameful to be learned because the "Jentlemen of France" were not
so.[208] When with the general relaxation of high effort which appeared
in so many ways at the Court of James I., the mastery of Greek authors
was no longer an ideal of the courtier, the Jacobean gallant was hardly
more intellectual than the mediaeval page. Henry Peacham, in 1623,
described noblemen's flagging faith in a university education. They sent
their sons to Oxford or Cambridge at an early age, and if the striplings
did not immediately lay hold on philosophy, declared that they had no
aptitude for learning, and removed them to a dancing school. "These
young things," as he calls the Oxford students "of twelve, thirteene, or
foureteene, that have no more care than to expect the next Carrier, and
where to sup on Fridayes and Fasting nights" find "such a disproportion
betweene Aristotles Categories, and their childish capacities, that what
together with the sweetnesse of libertie, varietie of companie, and so
many kinds of recreation in towne and fields abroad," they give over any
attempt to understand "the crabbed grounds of Arts." Whereupon, the
parents, "if they perceive any wildnesse or unstayednesse in their
children, are presently in despaire, and out of all hope of them for
ever prooving Schollers, or fit for anything else; neither consider the
nature of youth, nor the effect of