which every
man may have it. And what is their ordinary exercise? [3642]"sit to eat,
drink, lie down to sleep, and rise to play:" wherein lies their worth and
sufficiency? in a few coats of arms, eagles, lions, serpents, bears,
tigers, dogs, crosses, bends, fesses, &c., and such like baubles, which
they commonly set up in their galleries, porches, windows, on bowls,
platters, coaches, in tombs, churches, men's sleeves, &c. [3643]"If he can
hawk and hunt, ride a horse, play at cards and dice, swagger, drink,
swear," take tobacco with a grace, sing, dance, wear his clothes in
fashion, court and please his mistress, talk big fustian, [3644]insult,
scorn, strut, contemn others, and use a little mimical and apish compliment
above the rest, he is a complete, (_Egregiam vero laudem_) a well-qualified
gentleman; these are most of their employments, this their greatest
commendation. What is gentry, this parchment nobility then, but as [3645]
Agrippa defines it, "a sanctuary of knavery and naughtiness, a cloak for
wickedness and execrable vices, of pride, fraud, contempt, boasting,
oppression, dissimulation, lust, gluttony, malice, fornication, adultery,
ignorance, impiety?" A nobleman therefore in some likelihood, as he
concludes, is an "atheist, an oppressor, an epicure, a [3646]gull, a
dizzard, an illiterate idiot, an outside, a glowworm, a proud fool, an
arrant ass," _Ventris et inguinis mancipium_, a slave to his lust and
belly, _solaque libidine fortis_. And as Salvianus observed of his
countrymen the Aquitanes in France, _sicut titulis primi fuere, sic et
vitiis_ (as they were the first in rank so also in rottenness); and Cabinet
du Roy, their own writer, distinctly of the rest. "The nobles of Berry are
most part lechers, they of Touraine thieves, they of Narbonne covetous,
they of Guienne coiners, they of Provence atheists, they of Rheims
superstitious, they of Lyons treacherous, of Normandy proud, of Picardy
insolent," &c. We may generally conclude, the greater men, the more
vicious. In fine, as [3647]Aeneas Sylvius adds, "they are most part
miserable, sottish, and filthy fellows, like the walls of their houses,
fair without, foul within." What dost thou vaunt of now? [3648]"What dost
thou gape and wonder at? admire him for his brave apparel, horses, dogs,
fine houses, manors, orchards, gardens, walks? Why? a fool may be possessor
of this as well as he; and he that accounts him a better man, a nobleman
for having of it, h