seeme idle when they
be earnestly occupied & entend to nothing but mischieuous practizes, and
do busily negotiate by coulor of otiation. Or as others of them that go
ordinarily to Church and neuer pray to winne an opinion of holinesse: or
pray still apace, but neuer do good deede, and geue a begger a penny and
spend a pound on a harlot, to speake faire to a mans face, and foule
behinde his backe, to set him at his trencher and yet sit on his skirts
for so we vse to say by a fayned friend, then also to be rough and
churlish in speach and apparance, but inwardly affectionate and fauouring,
as I haue sene of the greatest podestates and grauest iudges and
Presidentes of Parliament in Fraunce.

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