These & many such like disguisings do we find in mans behauiour, & specially in the Courtiers of forraine Countreyes, where in my youth I was brought vp, and very well obserued their maner of life and conuersation, for of mine owne Countrey I haue not made so great experience.  Which parts, neuerthelesse, we allow not now in our English maker, because we haue geuen him the name of an honest man, and not of an hypocrite:  and therefore leauing these manner of dissimulations to all base-minded men, & of vile nature or misterie, we doe allow our Courtly Poet to be a dissembler only in the subtilties of his arte:  that is, when he is most artificiall, so to disguise and cloake it as it may not appeare, nor seeme to proceede from him by any studie or trade of rules, but to be his naturall:  nor so euidently to be descried, as euery ladde that reades him shall say he is a good scholler, but will rather haue him to know his arte well, and little to vse it.

And yet peraduenture in all points it may not be so taken, but in such onely as may discouer his grossenes or his ignorance by some schollerly affectation:  which thing is very irkesome to all men of good trayning, and specially to Courtiers.  And yet for all that our maker may not be in all cases restrayned, but that he may both vse and also manifest his arte to his great praise, and need no more be ashamed thereof, than a shomaker to haue made a cleanly shoe or a Carpenter to haue buylt a faire house.  Therefore to discusse and make this point somewhat cleerer, to weete, where arte ought to appeare, and where not, and when the naturall is more commendable than the artificiall in any humane action or workmanship, we wil examine it further by this distinction.

In some cases we say arte is an ayde and coadiutor to nature, and a furtherer of her actions to good effect, or peraduenture a meane to supply her wants, by renforcing the causes wherein shee is impotent and defectiue, as doth the arte of phisicke, by helping the naturall concoction, retention, distribution, expulsion, and other vertues, in a weake and vnhealthie bodie.  Or as the good gardiner seasons his soyle by sundrie sorts of compost:  as mucke or marle, clay or sande, and many times by bloud, or lees of oyle or wine, or stale, or perchaunce with more costly drugs:  and waters his plants, and weedes his herbes and floures, and prunes his branches, and vnleaues his boughes to let in the sunne:  and twentie other waies cherisheth them, and cureth their infirmities, and so makes that neuer, or very seldome any of them miscarry, but bring foorth their flours and fruites in season.  And in both these cases it is no smal praise for the Phisition & Gardiner to be called good and cunning artificers.