[6] This word is not obsolete.  South coast countrymen still
      eat nuntions and not luncheons.—­W.

      [7] Here follows a disquisition upon the table practices of
      the ancients.—­W.

With us the nobility, gentry, and students do ordinarily go to dinner at eleven before noon, and to supper at five, or between five and six at afternoon.  The merchants dine and sup seldom before twelve at noon, and six at night, especially in London.  The husbandmen dine also at high noon as they call it, and sup at seven or eight; but out of the term in our universities the scholars dine at ten.  As for the poorest sort they generally dine and sup when they may, so that to talk of their order of repast it were but a needless matter.  I might here take occasion also to set down the variety used by antiquity in their beginnings of their diets, wherein almost every nation had a several fashion, some beginning of custom (as we do in summer time) with salads at supper, and some ending with lettuce, some making their entry with eggs, and shutting up their tables with mulberries, as we do with fruit and conceits of all sorts.  Divers (as the old Romans) began with a few crops of rue, as the Venetians did with the fish called gobius; the Belgres with butter, or (as we do yet also) with butter and eggs upon fish days.  But whereas we commonly begin with the most gross food, and end with the most delicate, the Scot, thinking much to leave the best for his menial servants, maketh his entrance at the best, so that he is sure thereby to leave the worst.  We use also our wines by degrees, so that the hostess cometh last to the table:  but to stand upon such toys would spend much time, and turn to small profit.  Wherefore I will deal with other things more necessary for this turn.

CHAPTER VII

OF OUR APPAREL AND ATTIRE

[1577, Book III., Chapter 2; 1587, Book II., Chapter 7.]

An Englishman, endeavouring sometime to write of our attire, made sundry platforms for his purpose, supposing by some of them to find out one steadfast ground whereon to build the sum of his discourse.  But in the end (like an orator long without exercise), when he saw what a difficult piece of work he had taken in hand, he gave over his travel, and only drew the picture of a naked man[1], unto whom he gave a pair of shears in the one hand and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end he should shape his apparel after such fashion as himself liked, sith he could find no kind of garment that could please him any while together; and this he called an Englishman.  Certes this writer (otherwise being a lewd popish hypocrite and ungracious priest) shewed himself herein not to be altogether void of judgment, sith the phantastical folly of our nation (even from the courtier to the carter) is such that no form of apparel liketh us longer than the first