garment is in the wearing, if it continue so long,
and be not laid aside to receive some other trinket
newly devised by the fickle-headed tailors, who covet
to have several tricks in cutting, thereby to draw
fond customers to more expense of money. For
my part, I can tell better how to inveigh against this
enormity than describe any certainty of our attire;
sithence such is our mutability that to-day there
is none to the Spanish guise, to-morrow the French
toys are most fine and delectable, ere long no such
apparel as that which is after the high Almaine fashion,
by-and-by the Turkish manner is generally best liked
of, otherwise the Morisco gowns, the Barbarian fleeces,
the mandilion worn to Colley-Weston ward, and the
short French breeches make such a comely vesture that,
except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see
any so disguised as are my countrymen of England.
And as these fashions are diverse, so likewise it
is a world to see the costliness and the curiosity,
the excess and the vanity, the pomp and the bravery,
the change and the variety, and finally the fickleness
and the folly, that is in all degrees, insomuch that
nothing is more constant in England than inconstancy
of attire. Oh, how much cost is bestowed nowadays
upon our bodies, and how little upon our souls!
How many suits of apparel hath the one, and how little
furniture hath the other! How long time is asked
in decking up of the first, and how little space left
wherein to feed the latter! How curious, how nice
also, are a number of men and women, and how hardly
can the tailor please them in making it fit for their
bodies! How many times must it be sent back again
to him that made it! What chafing, what fretting,
what reproachful language, doth the poor workman bear
away! And many times when he doth nothing to
it at all, yet when it is brought home again it is
very fit and handsome; then must we put it on, then
must the long seams of our hose be set by a plumb-line,
then we puff, then we blow, and finally sweat till
we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us.
I will say nothing of our heads, which sometimes are
polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length
like woman’s locks, many times cut off, above
or under the ears, round as by a wooden dish.
Neither will I meddle with our variety of beards, of
which some are shaven from the chin like those of Turks,
not a few cut short like to the beard of Marquess
Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush, others
with a pique de vant (O! fine fashion!), or
now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being
grown to be so cunning in this behalf as the tailors.
And therefore if a man have a lean and straight face,
a Marquess Otton’s cut will make it broad and
large; if it be platter-like, a long, slender beard
will make it seem the narrower; if he be weasel-becked,
then much hair left on the cheeks will make the owner
look big like a bowdled hen, and as grim as a goose,
if Cornells of Chelmersford say true. Many old