ll their matters: Singular in knowledge,
ignorant in nothyng: So singular in wisedome (in their owne opinion)
as scarse they counte the best Counsellor the Prince hath,
comparable with them: Common discoursers of all matters: busie
searchers of most secret affaires: open flatterers of great men:
priuie mislikers of good men: Faire speakers, with smiling
countenances, and much curtessie openlie to all men. Ready
bakbiters, sore nippers, and spitefull reporters priuily of good
men. And beyng brought vp in _Italie_, in some free Citie, as all
Cities be there: where a man may freelie discourse against what he
will, against whom he lust: against any Prince, agaynst any
gouernement, yea against God him selfe, and his whole Religion:
where he must be, either _Guelphe_ or _Gibiline_, either _French_ or
_Spanish_: and alwayes compelled to be of some partie, of some
faction, he shall neuer be compelled to be of any Religion: And if
he medle not ouer much with Christes true Religion, he shall haue
free libertie to embrace all Religions, and becum, if he lust at
once, without any let or punishment, Iewish, Turkish, Papish, and
Deuilish.

It is the old quarrel of classicists and Romanticists, of the _ancien
regime_ and the new school in literature, which runs nearly through
every age. It might be Victor Cousin reproving Victor Hugo, or, say,
M. Renan protesting, if he could protest, against M. Zola. Nor is the
diatribe against the evil communication that had corrupted good manners
any novelty in the quarrel. Critics have practically recognised that
letters are a reflex of life long before Matthew Arnold formulated the
relation. And in the disputing between Classicists and Romanticists it
has invariably happened that the Classicists were the earlier
generation, and therefore more given to convention, while the
Romanticists were likely to be experimental in life as in literature.
Altogether then, we must discount somewhat Ascham's fierce denunciation,
of the Italianate Englishman, and of the Englishing of Italian books.

There can be little doubt, I think, that in the denunciation of the
"bawdie stories" introduced from Italy, Ascham was thinking mainly and
chiefly of Painter's "Palace of Pleasure." The whole passage is later
than the death of Sir Thomas Sackville in 1566, and necessarily before
the death of Ascham in December 1568. Painter's First Tome appeared in
1566, and his Second Tome in 156