nest and prudent wight must needs be
sore offended and scandalized by all this appalling array of armour
and bucklers and the horde of warriors Homer calls _Corythaioloi_
(glancing-helmed) by reason of the terrifying hideousness of their
head-gear, and that the portrayal of these same fighting fellows was
in very truth unseemly, as contrarie to good and peaceable manners,
immodest, no thing in the world being more shameful then homicide, and
eke lascivious, as alluring folk to cruelty, the which is the worst of
all allurements. For to entice to pleasant dalliaunce is a far lesse
heinous fault.

And the aforesaid Philemon was used to say that it was honest, decent,
of good ensample and entirely modest to show by painting, chiselling, or
any other fine artifice the scenes of the Golden Age, to wit maidens and
young men interlacing limbs in accord with the craving of kindly Nature,
or other the like delectable fancy, as of a Nymph lying laughing in the
grass. And on her ripe smiling mouth a Faun is crushing a purple grape.

And he was used to say that belike the Golden Age had never flourished
save only in the fond imagining of the poets, and that our first
forebears of human kind, being yet barbarous and silly folk, had known
naught at all thereof; but that, an the said age could not credibly be
deemed to have been at the beginning of the world, we might well wish
it should be at the end, and that meanwhiles it was a gracious boon to
offer us a likeness of the same in pictured image.

And like as it is (so he would say) obscene,--'t is the word Virgil
writes of dogs wallowing in the mud and mire,--to depict murderers,
whoreson men-at arms, fighting-men, conquering heroes and plundering
thieves, wreaking their foul and wicked will, yea! and poor devils
licking the dust and swallowing the same in great mouthfuls, and one
unhappie wretch that hath been felled to the earth and is striving to
get to his feet againe, but is pinned down by an horse's hoof pressing
on his chops, and another that looketh piteously about him for that his
pennon hath been shorn from him and his hand with it,--so is it of right
subtile and so to say heavenly art to exhibit prettie blandishments,
caresses, frolickings, beauties and delights, and the loves of the
Nymphs and Fauns in the woods. And he would have it there was none
offence in these naked bodies, clothed upon enow with their owne grace
and comeliness.

And he had in his closet, this sa