Page:Elizabethan & Jacobean Pamphlets.djvu/251

Rh good the vttermost borders of the body; but also (as a cunning painter) thy goodly lineaments are drawne out in their fairest proportion.

This lesson being playd, turne ouer a new leafe, and (vnlesse that Freezeland Curre, cold winter, offer to bite thee) walke awhile vp and downe thy chamber, either in thy thin shirt onely, or else (which, at a bare word, is both more decent and more delectable) strip thy selfe stark naked. Are we not borne so? and shall a foolish custome make vs to breake the lawes of our Creation? our first parents, so long as they went naked, were suffered to dwell in paradice, but, after they got coates to their backes, they were turnd out of doores. Put on therefore either no apparel at all, or put it on carelessly: for looke how much more delicate libertie is then bondage, so much is the loosenesse in wearing of our attire aboue the imprisonment of being neatly and Tailor-like drest vp in it. To be ready in our clothes, is to be ready for nothing else. A man lookes as if hee be hung in chaines; or like a scarcrow: and as those excellent birds (whom Pliny could neuer haue the wit to catch in all his sprindges) commonly called woodcocks (whereof there is great store in England) hauing all their feathers pluckt from their backes, and being turnd out as naked as Platoes cocke was before all Diogenes his Schollers: or as the Cuckooe in Christmas, are more fit to come to any Knights board, and